Ancient Echoes, SAVAE

Track 1 Ashir shirim (language: Hebrew)
Notes: Music directly from Idelsohn (from Babylon).

Track 2 Rannanu (language: Hebrew)
Notes: Featuring lyrics taken from the Dead Sea Scrolls. Based on melodic motifs that Idelsohn collected.

Track 3 Abwoon (language: Aramaic)
Notes: A rendition of the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic. Based on melodic motifs that Idelsohn collected.

Track 4 Arabian Dance (instrumental)
Notes: Music directly from Idelsohn (from Turkey and Palestine).

Track 5 Song of Seikilos (language: Greek )
Notes: In the 1^st century a man named Seikilos engraved this song on his wife’s gravestone in Greece. Both the lyrics and melody were written in Greek letters. The lyrics are about enjoying life and living in the present because you never know when you are going to die. This is the only track with physical evidence dating to the 1^st century. It was included on CD because of strong influence of Greek culture in Jerusalem at the time.

Track 6 Tubwayhun l’ahbvday sh’lama (language: Aramaic)
Notes: Based on melodic motifs that Idelsohn collected.

Track 7 Sounding of the Shofar & Shema Israel (language: Hebrew)
Notes: Music directly from Idelsohn (from Babylon).

Track 8 Bircath Cohenim (language: Hebrew)
Notes: Track 8 and 16 are the same song. The melody is taken from symbols in the Torah above and below the letters that indicate music. It was a form of ancient music notation that was expressed through the use of hand gestures rather than written (chironomy).  The musician would read the hand gestures of the chironomist, who originally kept music in his memory. This tradition goes back to Egypt. There evolved from these hand gestures, descriptive signs that would be written down that stood for a hand gesture, and the hand gesture would stand for a pattern of notes. A musician/composer/theorist in France named Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura devoted herself to trying to translate musical meaning. So in this song alone, SAVAE gives people an idea of how music derived from encoded notations in the Bible may have sounded.

Track 9 Wa y’daber Elohim (language: Hebrew)
Notes: Music directly from Idelsohn (from Babylon).

Track 10 Tubwayhun layleyn d’khafnin w’tseyn (language: Aramaic)
Notes: Based on melodic motifs that Idelsohn collected.

Track 11 Ze Eli meode (language: Hebrew)
Notes: Music directly from Idelsohn (from Babylon).

Track 12 Tubwayhun l’miskeneh’eh b’ruh (language: Aramaic)
Notes: Based on melodic motifs that Idelsohn collected.

Track 13 Psalm 114: B’tseth Israel (language: Hebrew)
Notes: In Middle Ages, this exact melody was song by Sephardic/Spanish Jews and Christians. Christians were singing Latin text, instead of Hebrew. Some scholars believe this melody comes out of the Jewish tradition and goes back to the Temple, which is why SAVAE included it. Jews who became Christians took it with them but translated it into Latin. But the Jews that did not become Christians kept the Hebrew lyrics. So this is both a Sephardic melody as well as a Gregorian chant.

Track 14 Tubwayhun  l’bwileh (language: Aramaic)
Notes: Based on melodic motifs that Idelsohn collected.

Track 15 Abwoon (language: Aramaic)
Notes: Spoken prayer.

Track 16 Bircath Cohenim reprise (language: Hebrew)
Notes: See notes for Track 8 above.