first annotated piece

[Judith R. Cohen <judithc...>]

I'm losing track of who said what, but I think Robert said the first
annotated piece of Jewish music is "from the 10th century, not the
15th". Actually, in between. There's very little that's decipherable
with any reliability of any western-notated music in the 10th century,
Jewish or otherwise. What we have is a 12th (I think, maybe 13th but not
15th anyway) century manuscript of a couple of piyyutim fragments, one
of which has been recorded quite often, including by the Boston Camarata
(with a mystifyingly medieval-church-y style accompaniment as I
remember). These were transcribed (or who knows, maybe even composed) by
a convert TO Judaism instead of the other way around, known as Ovadiah
the Proselyte, and they are written in plainchant neumes - BACKWARDS, to
accomodate the Hebrew script! The manuscript is problematic because of
gaps, and the clef, and a etc. but Avenary at least published it. I use
an overhead transparency of it soemtimes in lectures so people can see
how the church neumes are used for the Hebrew writing. 
And that's about it for notated medieval Jewish music. 
Judah's point about harmony is one most ethnomusicologists take for
granted -unfortunately,  we tend to be educated to be conditioned  that
western-style harmony is the "next step" in "progress" rather than one
splendid possibility among many others in the world for musical systems. 

But, as for:

> ) To listen to London via 
> Amsterdam via Spain via ... ?  settings of Psalms and other Biblical and 
> liturgical material is to listen to what we today recognize as Gregorian 
> chant--and is, probably, a pretty good idea, or as close as we can get, to 
> what "we" (i.e., Jews--or the Levitical choirs, anyway) sounded like in 
> Second Temple days. -- 

Huh? How did we get to that conclusion???? :)  Judith

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