Abstract
Music in ancient Israel/Palestine is discussed from its documented beginnings in the Stone Age (c. 10’000 B.C.) to the late Roman period (4th cent. CE). The study considers archaeology as the primary source of investigation; all other sources – written (mainly Biblical texts), comparative anthropological/ethnological, sociological linguistic etc. – are discussed against the background of the material evidence. Since no reliable musical texts are known, musical analysis must concentrate on sound producing tools, i.e., musical instruments.
This approach results in a re-consideration of accepted opinions and in new interpretations. For example, the musical instrument of the socio-clerical elite was the lyre, not the harp; the musical splendour of the Second Temple seems to be mainly a later glorification legend; the local musical culture appears as a mosaic of many musical traditions (Philistine, Phoenician, Israel/Judean, Nabataean, Samaritan, Idumeans, Dionysian, etc.), some of them ignored until now.
While the musical tradition of the Stone Age had remained rather stable for a long time, the 4th millennium B.C. brought about the Acoustic-Organological Revolution: the establishment of the adaptation and change, generated a new musical reality. As musical life in ancient Israel/Palestine developed in a complex ethno- and socio-historical arena, an autochthonous and generally homogenous Near Eastern musical culture broke up into numerous heterogeneous musical styles corresponding to various ethnical, social and cultic sub-systems. The resulting musical ambience was characterised by the co-existence, and sometimes fusion, of extremely polarized tendencies, the archaic-obsolete and the contemporary-modern.
Braun, Joachim