Gregorian Chant: A Guide

Description

Have you heard of the musicologist Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura and her work La Musique de la Bible Révélée? She tried to decode/interpret Hebrew cantillation marks as musical notes (isn't that what cantillation etymologically means, anyways?). Sounds pretty speculative (as is deciphering languages' authentic pronunciation). She seems like the "Dom Gueranger of Hebrew psalmody."

See: "Gregorian chant originates from ancient Jewish psalmody?"

Yes, she was a Jewish musicologist (as you already noticed), but did also play the organ in Catholic churches while living in Paris. Her work is a reconstruction (one can also reconstruct something of the manner in which pre-Syriac, NT Western Aramaic was sung using ancient Palestinian cantillations), but likely a pretty fair one. The link between the original Davidic chant of the Psalms and Gregorian chant is not a stretch, and it seems to have occurred to her through both intuitive hearing and speculative application to deciphering diacritical signs as intonation marks.

Ancient Hebraic cantillation is based on the original orality of the Hebrew Bible. Orality here always implies musicality , the first relying on mnemonic laws and devices, especially formulism and rhythmism, whose influence is found through Scripture; the second on the codification of intonation marks (musical pitches).

The rhythmic format of Hebraic recitations, the Psalms of David but also of many other oral texts comprising the scriptural corpus, is designed as a mnemonic and arithmetic means of both memorization and sacred (ritual) cantillation.

שִׁירוּ-לוֹ שִׁיר חָדָשׁ הֵיטִיבוּ נַגֵּן בִּתְרוּעָה

“Cantate ei canticum novum; bene psallite ei in vociferatione.”