Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura (née Vantoura; 13 July 1912 – 22 October 2000) was a French
organist
An organist is a musician who plays any type of organ (music), organ. An organist may play organ repertoire, solo organ works, play with an musical ensemble, ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers or instrumentalist, instrumental ...
composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music.
Etymology and def ...
and
music theorist
Music theory is the study of theoretical frameworks for understanding the practices and possibilities of music. '' The Oxford Companion to Music'' describes three interrelated uses of the term "music theory": The first is the " rudiments", that ...
. Her main work was in the field of
musicology
Musicology is the academic, research-based study of music, as opposed to musical composition or performance. Musicology research combines and intersects with many fields, including psychology, sociology, acoustics, neurology, natural sciences, ...
.
Personal life
Vantoura was born in
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...
Harmony
In music, harmony is the concept of combining different sounds in order to create new, distinct musical ideas. Theories of harmony seek to describe or explain the effects created by distinct pitches or tones coinciding with one another; harm ...
. Four years later, she was awarded a First Prize in
Fugue
In classical music, a fugue (, from Latin ''fuga'', meaning "flight" or "escape""Fugue, ''n''." ''The Concise Oxford English Dictionary'', eleventh edition, revised, ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson (Oxford and New York: Oxford Universit ...
(1938). She was a pupil of the well-known organist and composer
Marcel Dupré
Marcel Jean-Jules Dupré (; 3 May 1886 – 30 May 1971) was a French organist, composer, and pedagogue.
Early life and education
Born in Rouen into a wealthy musical family, Marcel Dupré was a child prodigy. His father Aimable Albert Dupré ...
from 1941 to 1946.
During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, Vantoura and her family fled from the
Nazis
Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
to southern France. There she studied the
cantillation marks
Hebrew cantillation, trope, trop, or ''te'amim'' is the manner of chanting ritual readings from the Hebrew Bible in synagogue services. The chants are written and notated in accordance with the special signs or marks printed in the Masoretic ...
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach" . '' Masoretic Text
The Masoretic Text (MT or 𝕸; ) is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (''Tanakh'') in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocaliz ...
), forming the basic hypothesis of her system for decoding the Masoretic cantillation. After the war she put aside this work and did not resume it until, after her retirement in 1970, she finally published her system in ''La Musique de la Bible revélée'' (1st ed.: 1976). She died on 22 October 2000 in
Lausanne
Lausanne ( , ; ; ) is the capital and largest List of towns in Switzerland, city of the Swiss French-speaking Cantons of Switzerland, canton of Vaud, in Switzerland. It is a hilly city situated on the shores of Lake Geneva, about halfway bet ...
, Switzerland at the age of 88. Her husband Maurice Haïk had died in 1976. The couple had no children.
Career
She was Honorary professor of music education (1937–61).
She was organist at the Synagogue de l'Union liberale Israelite de Paris (1946–53) and organist at the Église Saint-Hélène in Paris (1966–79).
Compositions
* ''Quatuor florentin'', 1942
* ''Un beau dimanche'', 1957
* ''Destin d'Israël'', 1964
* ''Versets de psaumes'', 1968
* ''Offrande'', 1970
* ''Adagio for saxophone and organ'', 1976
''Music of the Bible Revealed''
''Music of the Bible Revealed'' was her
magnum opus
A masterpiece, , or ; ; ) is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, skill, profundity, or workmanship.
Historically, ...
cantillation marks
Hebrew cantillation, trope, trop, or ''te'amim'' is the manner of chanting ritual readings from the Hebrew Bible in synagogue services. The chants are written and notated in accordance with the special signs or marks printed in the Masoretic ...
(as musical notes which support the syntax and meaning of the words) of its 24 books, to music.
Study
Haïk-Vantoura argues that the accentual system preserved in the Masoretic Text was originally a method of recording hand signals ("chironomy") by which temple musicians were directed in the performance of music.
Noticing the marks in the version of the Hebrew Bible she used to read, Vantoura affirmed she had read in an unnamed encyclopedia that these signs of cantillation dated back to antiquity and that their real musical meaning was lost. This, she said, triggered her curiosity. Working step by step, she made the assumption it was significant that the sublinear signs were never absent from the text, while entire verses are totally lacking supralinear signs. In her opinion it had to mean that the sublinear signs had to be "more important" than the supralinear ones. This conclusion formed the basis of her conjectures.
She deals extensively with both the prose (the 21 books in which there are 8 sublinear signs) and poetry (the three books, Psalms, Proverbs, and the poetic sections of Job in which there are 7 sublinear signs). She made the hypothesis that the sublinear signs correspond to the eight degrees of a modal scale. She experimented with several different modes. As she worked with each verse she became convinced that the notes of her transcription formed coherent melodies and not random sounds. By comparing individual verses she then compiled tables of concordant sequences. Analyzing the shapes of signs, she finally assigned conjectural values to the 8 sublinear signs of the prose system, suggesting that they are the 8 notes of a scale.
Musicologists have resoundly rejected Haïk-Vantoura's various hypotheses. Her reconstructions, which rely on the assumption that cantillation marks represent the degrees of various musical scales, are incongruent with all existing traditions, where the signs invariably represent melodic motifs, not individual notes; it also takes no account of the existence of older systems of notation, such as the Babylonian and
Palestinian
Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine.
*: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...
systems. As such, scholars have rejected her results as dubious and her methodology as flawed.
Nevertheless, in 1978, the Institut de France awarded the second edition of Haik-Vantoura's French book the Prix Bernier, its highest award. Encyclopaedia Universalis, a French online encyclopedia, presents her work as a firmly scientifically established conclusion. Some musicians have also produced recorded music based on her alleged decipherment, more particularly the French harp player Esther Lamandier an Chanticleer Haik-Vantoura's work has been rejected by some researchers as based on Western preconceptions and subjective assignments, coupled with historical misunderstandings. However author David C. Mitchell has defended it, noting that it agrees closely with the best remaining fragments of ancient psalmody.See David C. Mitchell, ''The Songs of Ascents: Psalms 120 to 134 in the Worship of Jerusalem's temples'' (Campbell: Newton Mearns 2015); 'Resinging the Temple Psalmody', ''JSOT'' 36 (2012) 355–78; "How Can We Sing the Lord's Song?" in S. Gillingham (ed.), ''Jewish and Christian Approaches to the Psalms'' (OUP, 2013) 119–133.
A brief introduction is available fro Public Radio 1986
Publications
A partial listing of Haik-Vantoura's publications (which ultimately included about 5,000 verses of the Masoretic Text) follows:
* ''La musique de la Bible revélée'' (book), 1976; second revised edition, 1978 (Dessain et Tolra)
* ''La musique de la Bible revélée'' (LP), 1976 (Harmonia Mundi France HMU 989)
* ''Quatre Meghilot: Esther, L'Ecclesiaste, Les Lamentations, Ruth dans leurs mélodies d'origine'' (melody-only score), 1986
* ''The Music of the Bible Revealed'' (book), trans. Dennis Weber, ed. John Wheeler, 1991 (BIBAL Press)
* ''Les 150 Psaumes dans leurs mélodies antiques'' (melody-only score), revised French-English edition, 1991
* ''Message biblique intégral dans son chant retrouvé'' (melody-only score), 1992
References
Sources
* Obituaries of French musicians 10/200 * Orientations in Piano Creation of Banat in the period between the two World War * Haïk-Vantoura's personal Web site (down since 2002; archive available from ww.archive.orgbr> * Temple Cantillation of Psalms (Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906