WHERE IS THE LOST MUSIC OF THE PSALMS?

YEARS AGO, I sat at my desk reading my Hebrew Bible. Then I fell into a deep reverie, wondering where the lost music of the Psalms had gone and how I could find it. I asked myself, “Who would know this? Could the secret be with some rabbi or cantor in Yemen or Bukhara? Or is it buried in a cave somewhere, waiting to be found, like the Dead Sea Scrolls? Or is it just lost for ever?”

Little did I know that the lost music of the Psalms was lying right there, in front of my eyes…

Unbeknown to me, the lost music of the Psalms lies encoded in the cantillation marks of the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible.

So I set out bravely to search for that which was missing in plain sight. Finally, I came to see that the Masoretic cantillation really was the lost music of the Psalms. But having realized that, two issues remained.

1. Is the Masoretic cantillation really a record of the Psalms from temple times, or is it just someone else’s much later attempt to reconstruct that music?
2. If the Masoretic cantillation really is the ancient music of the Psalms, then how can we begin to decode it?

So I spent years on this trail looking for answers to these questions. On the way, I discovered the lost messianic Message of the Psalter. But, as regards the music, I finally concluded as follows.

(1) Yes, the Masoretic cantillation does date from temple times; it really is the ancient music of the Psalms. (2) Decoding it is possible with the help of two key Psalms, namely, Psalms 114 and 136. The synagogue melody of Psalm 114 is our best-preserved fragment of ancient synagogue psalmody. It enables us to approach the decoding of the Masoretic cantillation deductively. Meanwhile ancient Psalm 136 is the most rudimentary and simple of all the Psalms. So it lets us take an inductive approach to decoding the cantillation.

If you want to learn more about the lost music of the Psalms, I write about it in Chapters 11 to 13 of The Songs of Ascents.