I’m in San Antonio this week attending the Usenix technical conference, so
this is a good time for me to give a listen to an album by the San Antonio
Vocal Arts Ensemble, an early-music group based in this city.
“Ancient Echoes” (from World Library Publications — yes, the missalette publisher) is an attempt to present some very early music: Jewish music as it might have been heard in the time of our Lord. Some of it’s good, and some of it’s not quite as good. Let’s start with a sample.
“Ashir Shirim” is a wedding song that musicologist Abraham Idelsohn transcribed in the early 1900s. He tried to reconstruct music of the Babylonian Jews during the Exile, on the basis of commonalities in living Jewish music of his time. It’s a good tune (01_ashir1.mp3), and the instrumentalists of the group do a reasonable job with it. When the vocalists start to sing the Hebrew, however, (01_ashir2.mp3), they aren’t as convincing as the players were. The instrumentalists take another turn and then the singers come back to do some pretty good ululation (01_ashir3.mp3). In the end, though, they go back to the text with an All-American cheerfulness that makes them sound like members of Up With People.
(to be continued)