“Keḥi kinnor” by Samuel Archivolti (d. 1611): A Wedding Ode with Hidden Messages

Abstract

Most research has a preliminary story embedded in earlier writings, which raise questions and spawn new inquiries conducive to new findings. The present study was born of other circumstances: I was asked by the directors of the early music group Ensemble Lucidarium if, for purposes of performance, I knew of a translation of Samuel Archivolti's Hebrew wedding ode “Keḥi kinnor” (Take a lyre). I had run across the ode in various listings, but was unfamiliar with any translation, so I suggested doing my own. That is where the problems began. To establish a clean reading for the poem, I consulted its manuscript and printed sources; to confront its verbal obscurities, and pinpoint its meanings, I traced its references to biblical and rabbinical literature; and to satisfy my own curiosity about how it was sung, I looked into the few recorded examples of its melodies. It follows that in this article, I shall be concerned mainly with semantics and music. Yet, to begin, I shall present some information about the author, sources, and prosody of the poem; and, to conclude, I shall compare it with other wedding odes of his and his contemporaries, and, in an epilogue, appraise its singularity.