The Duties of the Singers and Musicians

The singers and musicians were selected and set apart to their assigned function. There were a total of 288 singers (1 Chronicles 25:7-31) and 4,000 musicians (1 Chronicles 23:5). They were also divided into 24 courses. Therefore each course had 12 singers and more than 160 musicians. Unlike the singers, the 160 musicians were coming from several families. The ministry was subdivided among the families, and only one family of 20 to 30 musicians accompanied the 12 voice choir.

The real service of praise in the Temple was only with the voice. The instrumental music served only to accompany and sustain the song. The musical instruments used were mainly the Nevel (harp) and the Kinnor (lyre). The silver trumpets used in the Temple, blown by priests only, were not part of the instrumental music, but were intended for assembling Israel to worship at the Temple. The other musical instrument mentioned was the cymbal. But this "sounding brass" and "tinkling cymbal" also formed no part of the Temple music itself, and served only as the signal to begin that part of the service.

Nevel

The Nevel (translated to harp) was either a portable harp (left) or a lute (far left). Ancient harps generally had soundboxes and even soundboards made of skin stretched over a wooden framework.

Biblical references:

1 Samuel 10:5; 2 Samuel 6:5; 1 Kings 10:12; 1 Chronicles 13:8; 15:16, 20, 28; 25:1, 6; 2 Chronicles 5:12; 9:11; 20:28; 29:25; Nehemiah 12:27; Psalm 33:2; 57:8; 81:2; 92:3; 108:2; 144:9; 150:3; Isaiah 5:12; 14:11; Amos 5:23; 6:5



Kinnor

These pictures show two versions of the Kinnor (lyre). The lyre is box-shaped, with two arms and a yoke, and of an approximate average height of 50-60 cm. The design of the lyre is based on an ancient coin from the Second Temple era. The Kinnor is sometimes translated as "harp", but it is not a harp at all. In Jewish tradition, this instrument is associated with King David and is also referred as the "Davidic Harp."

Biblical references:

Genesis 4:21; 31:27; Nehemiah 12:27; 1 Samuel 10:5; 16:16,23; 2 Samuel 6:5; 1 Kings 10:12; 1 Chronicles 13:8; 15:16, 21, 28; 16:5; 25:1, 6; 2 Chronicles 5:12; 9:11; 20:28; 29:25; Psalm 33:2; 43:4; 57:8; 71:22; 81:2; 92:3; 98:5; 108:2; 147:7; 149:3; 150:3; Isaiah 5:12; 30:32

The Levite choir offered praises in the morning and evening services. They were trained in singing and skillful (1 Chronicles 25:6-7), and were free from other duties (1 Chronicles 9:33).

I'm trying to find something that has an example of the music they made we can listen to.

Could this be an example...?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb9T2qLnXOw

http://www.calstatela.edu/centers/Wagner/treble.htm



Judaic Practices

The tradition of female exclusion from liturgical worship dates from Christianity's antecedent, Judaism (Dickinson 30). The female voice, free to participate in singing at home and in the processions and celebrations outside the temple, was not heard within its walls (Dickinson 29). This contravention had the force of the Halakah (Schleifer 23-24), the legal rulings of the Gemara, the section of the Talmud which provides the commentary to the Mishna--the "text of the Oral Law"--of the Talmud (Bridgwater 1939). Its rulings addressed the question quite explicitly: "'Men singing and women answering is promiscuity; women singing and men answering like fire set to chaff' (Sotah 48a)" (Schleifer 24) and "'A woman's voice is indecency' (Ber. 24a)" (Schleifer 23). Consequently, the gender-segregated seating in the temples and, later in the synagogues, provided no opportunity for antiphonal singing (Schleifer 24).

During the existence of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, boys were added to the ranks of the adult Levites who had exclusively populated the Temple choir (Schleifer 20). The Levites, one of the twelve tribes of Judaism, was the only one which possessed no land; the other tribes were required to provide for its existence through alms and, later, work: "With the unification of worship at Jerusalem the Levites became temple servants with hereditary assignments" (Bridgwater 1125). Therefore, the exigency of providing for these sons of Levi became a liturgical matter for the Temple which decreed that only a male Levite could become an ecclesiastical singer (Finn 1: 119). As Schleifer notes, according to Ezra 2:41, "one hundred and twenty-eight singers . . . are said to have returned from Babylonian exile" with the call to rebuild the Temple in Judah (19).

After the destruction of the Second Temple in C.E. 70, synagogue worship differed from that in the Temple (Schleifer 22). Under the control of each local rabbi, both instrumental music and singing in the synagogues were circumscribed by the "rules of Sabbath observance; the mourning over the destruction of the Temple; and the struggle against what the rabbis took to be promiscuity" (Schleifer 22). This "struggle" seems not to have curtailed singing--male and female--in such paraliturgical customs as the Sabbath meal (Schleifer 36). Indeed, the history of the hymn with its accentual rhythm probably dates from the extra-liturgical tradition of this period (Phillips 31). Speculation exists that, because of the impossibility of duplication of the Temple rituals in the much-smaller synagogues, psalmody became a part of the latter's services after the Temple's destruction (Fassler and Jeffery 84). During the following Diaspora, folk songs based on gentile melodies and Arab-influenced Jewish poetry in the Judeo-Spanish dialect, and perhaps the older hymns, were in the oral custody of Jewish women at the time of the Jewish expulsion from Spain (Schleifer 36).