Ancient Echoes - SAVAE
This album is subtitled “Music from the Time of Jesus and Jerusalem’s Second Temple.” With respect to the San Antonio Vocal Arts Ensemble, that subtitle is a lie. It’s music from 2002.
Okay, I’m being pedantic. It’s music made with instruments, techniques, and languages thought to be in use at the time of Jesus, recorded with an aim toward reviving an aesthetic as close to authentically ancient music as practicable given that time travel hasn’t been invented yet. The liner notes detail these elements along with explanations of all texts used in the songs, some of which come from Neil Douglas-Klotz’s refreshingly progressive translation of biblical verses.
Since I first got this album as a teenager, I have deepened my skepticism for anything claiming to authentically recreate elements of the past - a skepticism that first began to form when I learned that ancient Greece was not really anything like the world I saw through Kevin Sorbo’s Hercules. Yet, as I’ve shown repeatedly throughout this review project, I still deeply appreciate any modern attempts to aesthetically invoke ancient sounds and sights: drumming, wooden flutes, group chanting, and the like. I especially like when these elements are combined with modern sounds, as that seems much more honest - the present may borrow from the past, but cannot become it.
But it’s also nice to hear attempts like this one to use purely ancient sounds, or as pure as we can get it on a digital recording.
It’s also worth saying that the music is quite powerfully beautiful. While driving home from work a few nights ago, I’m sure I had a religious experience hearing the climax of B’tseth Israel (Psalm 114) where the voices all join together in piercing harmony. Other highlights of the album are a rendition of Song of Seikilos (the oldest written song known to history), and each of the beatitudes individually set to music.
Next: Parables and Primes
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