Simeon Duran

Simeon ben Zemah Duran was a rabbi, Kabbalist and philosopher, born in Majorca in 1361 and died in Algiers in 1444. His name is associated with music not because he was a composer, but because of the reflections he devoted to chant in Jewish liturgy in his work Magen avot, which survives in seven manuscripts, not all of them complete.

In that work music is treated in three distinct passages. The first holds that music is inherent in speech: "musical speech" combines consonants, vowels and melodic formulas to intone sacred texts, and the author recalls that the Levites, following the example of King David, sang the reading of the Temple liturgy. The second distinguishes the te'amim, the melodies of biblical cantillation, from the piyyutim, poetic songs with defined intervals and measured rhythm that often drew on Arabic, French or Christian melodies. The third addresses the spiritual power of the te'amim, relating them to the sefirot, or emanations of God, through a Kabbalistic exegesis.

The importance of his contribution lies in having linked the analysis of biblical intonation with Kabbalistic thought, at a time when such questions were rarely addressed systematically.