The Melody Web what each genre heard, and what it passed on

heard passed on Click or tap a node to recenter. Use a connecting line, or Influence, for the story.

Heard

Second Temple music practice · 516 BCE–70

After 70 CE the synagogue keeps the psalm and lection job and drops the Temple’s public instrument kit.

Influence

Synagogue psalmody

tradition · 1st century–

Also called Jewish liturgical chant, synagogue cantillation

Unaccompanied Jewish sacred recitation: psalmody, cantillation, and speech-related sacred song in the synagogue. It hears Second Temple music for the psalm job after the instruments stop. It is a tradition, not a concert genre. Shared psalm function with early Christian song is real; Idelsohn–Werner tune pedigrees into Plainchant and Byzantine chant leftover as refused (Jeffery). Empty Given is historically checked. Surviving regional dialects (Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Yemenite) leftover as later faces of this family, not second-century tapes (Hiley).

Listen

  1. Psalm 114 (synagogue psalmody) Jewish liturgical tradition (traditional)
  2. Psalm 29 Jewish liturgical tradition (traditional) YouTube
  3. Ashkenazi Torah cantillation Ashkenazi synagogue tradition (traditional)
  4. Sephardi psalmody Sephardi synagogue tradition (traditional)
  5. Yemenite psalmody Yemenite Jewish tradition (traditional) YouTube
  6. Haftarah cantillation synagogue tradition (traditional) YouTube

Passed on

Nothing in the corpus yet that this genre passed on.

Second Temple music → Synagogue psalmody

function and contextmelodyperformance practicestrength: highscholarly consensus70–200liturgyoral

Mechanism

After 70 CE the synagogue keeps the psalm and lection job and drops the Temple’s public instrument kit. Strength high for function and reciting habit. The synagogue already existed beside the Temple; destruction makes it the main vehicle, not the invention of psalmody.

Evidence

Biblical and Mishnaic descriptions of Levitical song; post-70 rabbinic worship as voice-led recitation; Grove and Hiley on Jewish liturgical song and on what cannot be reconstructed as melody.

Debate

Tunes do not survive. Living Ashkenazi, Sephardi, and Yemenite dialects are later. Do not draw Greek mousikē onto this hop. Mesopotamian court hymnody is a different job (palace/temple professionals with lyres), not a skip onto trop.

Mediators

community: Post-70 Jewish communities; institution: Synagogue