Timeline of European Art and Music - The Tenth Century BC

Music

0:00 - Circa 10th century BC - Lyre of Har Megiddo - Played by King David (Jewish) - Improvised instrumental played on a replica of the ancient lyre. The “Lyre of Har Megiddo” is an instrument etched onto an ivory plaque that was discovered in the excavations of a royal palace in the ancient city of Megiddo (aka Armageddon) in Israel, and said to be the same played by King David himself.

2:23 - Circa 10th century BC - Psalms 23 in Hebrew - King David (Jewish) - According to tradition, of the 150 psalms in the Old Testament Book of Psalms, 73 are said to have been written by David himself. Of these, Psalm 23 is one of the most well known. Based on the lyre of Har Megiddo.

Psalm 23

1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

A note from Peter Pringle, who performed this piece. "No one has any idea what the psalms might have sounded like sung by David but we do know he was a singer and an instrumentalist. No music has survived, and the texts were not written down until several hundred years after David’s death. I can make no claims to authenticity in this rendition, since we do not even know how David tuned his lyre. For this video, I have tuned to an F minor harmonic scale, and I sang in a gentle, lyric, style, which seems appropriate for the content. All I can say for sure is that it would have been possible for David to play this on his 10-string “kinnor”."

6:30 - Circa 10th century BC - Zemer Atik (Jewish) - Performance of the traditional Hebrew song "Zemer Atik" or "Ancient Melody". Performed on a replica of a surviving ancient Egyptian lyre (circa 1300 BC) from just before the traditional Biblical time period of King David (10th century BC). Performed by Micheal Levy with the aim of replicating what a lyre form the time of King David would have sounded like.

10:03 - Circa 10th century BC - Kinnor (Jewish) - Performance on a 10-string Biblical lyre of the Shabbat melody composed by Rabbi Israel Goldfarb, "Shalom Aleichem", a spoken greeting in Hebrew, meaning "peace be upon you". Micheal Levy's attempt to evoke the feeling of the music of ancient Israel/Judea, with arrangements of both traditional Jewish sacred and instrumental Klezmer music, uniquely arranged for my evocation of the 10-string Biblical lyre known in Hebrew as the "Kinnor", which is vividly described both throughout the Biblical text and also in the writings of the first century Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, who actually witnessed the Levites play their Kinnors in the Temple of Jerusalem.