The Original 3000 Year Old Melody of Psalm 113 - Revealed?

Following the tragic destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, the entire musical legacy of the Temple, both vocal and instrumental, seemed to be forever lost. However, the Masoretic scribes preserved (along with the biblical consonantal text itself) an ancient "reading tradition" dating back (according to themselves) to the Second Temple Era; and beginning about 1,200 years ago, they painstakingly copied that tradition out in exacting detail. The Masoretic Text is still the oldest complete copy of the Hebrew Bible that we have.

Part of the "reading tradition" the Masoretes preserved was a series of "accents" ("Te Amim"), which occur throughout the entire Tanakh (Torah, Nevi'im and Ketuvim) in two systems. The Masoretes did not understand the meaning or the monumental significance of these accents, and for centuries, there have been countless theories as to what their original meaning was.

Most theories have started from the assumption that they were to emphasize precise points of grammar in the text. Leaving aside all these debates, Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura concentrated solely on finding a musical meaning of these "accents".

Through countless experiments and a laborious process of irrefutable verification (using the Hebrew verbal phrase structure itself as her "Rosetta Stone"), she finally realized that all these symbols represent musical tones: the 7 degrees of a heptatonic scale, or else ornaments of one to three notes! The accents, were, in fact transcriptions of hand gestures - which formed the ancient musical notation system of cheironomy, whereby a specific hand gesture represented a specific change in the pitch of a melody.

This presentation features Haik-Vantoura's original 1976 recording on volume 3 of her album, "La Musique De La Bible Revelee", of her reconstruction of what could well be the original 3000 year old biblical melody, once sang to Psalm 113:

For full details, please see my website blog:

I am regrettably but a humble Levite descendant, not a trained musicologist, so if anyone would like to contact me to add to my blog, particularly in the way of adding well informed, critical arguments against Haik Vantoura's discovery, this would be most welcome, in my aim of offering a more balanced exposure of Haik Vantoura's work:

Many thanks!

The astonishing significance of Haik Vantoura's musical accomplishment , if true, is that not only does Haik Vantoura reveal to us such magnificent music of such incredible spiritual worth, but in doing so, she also revealed to us the only surviving example so far known, of the world's complete art music - written maybe 1000 years earlier than the 2000 year old ancient Greek 'Skolion of Seikilos'; the only other piece of written music from antiquity to have survived completely intact, in its complete, original form...

[aprillee]

I find it fascinating that so many people are skeptics when it comes to any Biblical archaeological texts and discoveries and assertions, but you know if this was "ancient Druid music" or "ancient Hindu music of the Bhagavad Gita" or "ancient Chinese Taoist music" or any other ancient interpretation/discovery of music, everybody would simply say "Wow that's so cool" with no scholarly skepticism whatsoever.

[markspurlockmft]

Hallelujah ♥️🔥May the Name of the Lord be praised! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[jmalko]

May God be praised, both back then and forever more

[Sennmut]

"God is enthroned upon the praises of His people."

[AHSongbird]

this is absolutely amazing, i have been wanting to know since i was a kid what did the psalms sound like and was always excited when it said to the chief musician. that was absolutely beautiful.

[louiseteaches]

Incredibly transcendent and beautiful. Thank you.

[keeshabrown]

Beautiful, soothing, and relaxing. Thank You very much for sharing.

[wendellpeters]

Be alert, for no one knows when the Bridegroom cometh..

[banjoboy]

I have a degree in Bible, and I'm a professional musician, so this is fascinating. I'm just skeptical as to why the ancient Isrealites sang music that sounds an awful lot like it works on the Western 12-tone scale. I'm not saying it couldn't have happened, and I haven't done any research on it (indeed, the Western scale had to come from somewhere), but did King David really write songs that sound like the soundtracks of American movies? Like, did he really use our exact scale, when really no other traditional music from ancient peoples on earth did? I find that quite incredible.

[amandaguidry]

The hallelujah at the end have me full body chills ❤❤❤❤

[HeartOnMySleeve]

Thank you for sharing this! Very fascinating! I've been trying to find out what music in biblical times sounded like. Specifically during the time of David's Psalms.

[martinboudville]

May the name of God Almighty be praised in all the earth, I am not Jewish but I do know that God Almighty made us all in his image, So I pray that God give me the strength to live my life in a way that brings Honour to Him.

[ob]

As an Hebrew mother tongue speaker he sing it correctly, your channel is awesome Mr. Levy

[moonhue]

In the word of the Lord he teaches with one clear factor and a lesson for all. Forgiveness. Forgiveness in all forms and to all, living or dead or neither existence from earth.

[weekenddream]

want it to be played at my funeral!

I believe that jesus christ the messiah died for my sins
and Jesus Christ is risen HalleluYAH

read the bible Isaiah 53

[artdanks]

Regardless of whether or not she was correct, this music is beautiful, and spiritually very uplifting! Thank you!

[amberpipkin]

I'm not clear from this. Was an actual music manuscript found? I've been intrigued to what the Psalms may have originally sounded like, but don't see how that's possible unless the written music was found.

[jaycorby]

This, and others in this series by Michael Levy, are quite beautiful. And, I realize he was not the music historian/archeologist who recreated the Psalms of David as they were sung in the ancient Jewish temple. However, I'm not convinced that the performance of music, via instruments  of that time especially, would have sounded this good. I'd be interested in the comments of other listeners on this topic.

[lincolnsalles-]

eu tenho pesquisado música dos salmos pra edificação e isso é fascinante. espero poder pesquisar mais sobre isso. tenho dificuldade de encontrar os salmos cantados ou musicalizados de forma mais próxima possível de como deveria ser, isso foi um achado.

[izharventura]

Halelu-YAH
Halelu 'abdei YHVH
Halelu eth-shem YHVH
Yehi shem YHVH meborac
Me'athah ve'ad-'olam
Mimmizraj-shemesh 'ad-mebo'o
Mehullal shem YHVH
Ram 'al-col-goim YHVH
'Al hashamaim kebodo
Mi caYHVH Eloheinu
Hammagebbihi lashabeth
Hammashpili lireoth
Bashamaim uba'arets
Meqimi me'afar dal
Me'ashepoth yarim abeyon
Lehoshibi 'im-nedibim
'Im nedibei 'ammo
Moshibi 'aqereth habbaith
Em-habbanim semejah.
Halelu-YAH