Synagogue music

The earliest synagogal music was based on the same system as that used in the Temple in Jerusalem. According to the Talmud, Joshua ben Hananiah, who had served in the sanctuary Levitical choir, told how the choristers went to the synagogue from the orchestra by the altar (Talmud, Suk. 53a), and so participated in both services.

Biblical and contemporary sources mention the following instruments that were used in the ancient Temple:

According to the Mishna, the regular Temple orchestra consisted of twelve instruments, and the choir of twelve male singers.

A number of additional instruments were known to the ancient Hebrews, though they were not included in the regular orchestra of the Temple: the uggav (small flute), the abbuv (a reed flute or oboe-like instrument).

After the destruction of the Temple and the subsequent diaspora of the Jewish people, there was a feeling of great loss among the people. At the time, a consensus developed that all music and singing would be banned; this was codified as a rule by some early Jewish rabbinic authorities. However, the ban on singing and music, although not formally lifted by any council, soon became understood as only a ban outside of religious services. Within the synagogue the custom of singing soon re-emerged. In later years, the practice became to allow singing for feasts celebrating religious life-cycle events such as weddings, and over time the formal ban against singing and performing music lost its force altogether, with the exception of the Yemenite Jews. The Jews of Yemen maintained strict adherence to Talmudic and Maimonidean halakha and "instead of developing the playing of musical instruments, they perfected singing and rhythm." (See Yemenite Jewish poetry. For the modern Yemenite-Israeli musical phenomenon, however, see Yemenite Jewish music.)

It was with the piyyutim (liturgical poems) that Jewish music began to crystallize into definite form. The cantor sang the piyyutim to melodies selected by their writer or by himself, thus introducing fixed melodies into synagogal music. The prayers he continued to recite as he had heard his predecessors recite them; but in moments of inspiration he would give utterance to a phrase of unusual beauty, which, caught up by the congregants.

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