Suzanne Haik-Vantura

Suzanne Haik-Vantoura (Ventoura) (July 13, 1912 October 22, 2000) was an organist, music teacher, composer as well as music theorist. Her magnum opus had been within the area of musicology.

Vantoura was born in Paris on July 13, 1912. In 1931 Vantoura began studying at Conservatoire National Superieur de Paris, (CNSMDP), and in 1934 has been granted First Prize in Harmony. Four years afterwards, she was awarded First Prize in Fugue (1938). She has been a pupil of the great organist and composer Marcel Dupré from 1941 to 1946.

Figure 11: Suzanne Haik-Vantura

During World War II, Vantoura and her family fled from the Nazis to southern France. There she researched the cantillation marks, (melodic accents or Ta'amim), in the Hebrew Bible (Masoretic Text). Following the war she paused this work, until her pension in 1970.

Her old teacher Marcel Dupré and others advised her to complete her work on Ta'amim. Immediately after her retirement in 1970, she devoted herself for the task and (by her very own testimony) has been overwhelmed at occasions through the utter size of it.

The earliest full, extensive, and completely understandable manuscripts of music date no sooner than the 9th and 10th centuries, just a bit before the start of the middle ages period of time. Any kind of interpretation of music supposed older than that is going to be in the domain of reconstructions, projections, presumptions, and in some cases downright quackery and all of that is in evidence here.

She passed away October 22, 2000 in Lausanne, Switzerland at the age of 88. Her husband Maurice Haik had died in 1976. The couple had no children.

``By dint of deductions as well as tests,'' she managed to ``decode'' the particular 19 signs positioned above and below the Hebrew text, among the vowels and suggested a code with regard to musical prosody and chanted cantilée biblical: an excellent source ``to look at each and every verse and each word of the ancient prayer, as though the particular pulsing rhythms of world beat...'' (André Chouraqui.)

The signs associated with this particular notation called Tiberias had been ``disclosed'' within the 9th century by the rabbis Masoretes but their musicianship, according to S. Haik-Vantoura, had been lost after the fall of the Second Temple of Jerusalem (70 AD.).

The Levitical priests, the son of Zadok, the one which King Solomon (tenth century BC. JC) designated priest of the temple (I Kings 2, 35 and Ezekiel 44, 15-16) had been totally linked with the texts as were the Karaites (Son of writing) to which in turn were attached Masoretes largely. Fearing how the tradition of singing the temple not forgotten, it is feasible, therefore, clarifies Suzanne Haik-Vantoura, Karaites that these experts have made the decision to share for their contemporaries, musical code structured straight into nineteen signs regarding which we are rediscovering nowadays abundant and motivated musical force.