Seeing, Hearing and Performing the Hebrew Scriptures

Seeing, Hearing and Performing the Hebrew Scriptures 2016/05/20

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Abstract: This article looks at the cantillation signs (te’amim, accents) in the Hebrew text of the Bible and

how they directly translate into Music according to well-defined and consistent rules. These rules,

inferred from the position and use of the accents by Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura in the 20th century, increase

transparency of individual verses, reveal inter-verse relationships, complex sentence constructions

across multiple verses, inter-chapter and even inter-book connections that cannot be easily understood

without the aural component that allows recognition of the musical motifs. Besides the beauty and

clarity of the transformation of the Scripture, her work is also confirmed by the similarity of her

deciphering of Psalm 114 and the 9th tone of traditional Gregorian chant, tonus peregrinus, still used in

Anglican chant for Psalm 114.

CONTENTS

1 The Ancient Code .................................................................................................................................. 3

2 Can Punctuation be Music? .................................................................................................................. 3

3 The Deciphering Key ............................................................................................................................. 4

4 The Music of the Psalms ....................................................................................................................... 7

4.1 Psalm 18.20-25 .............................................................................................................................. 7

4.2 The beauty of Inscriptions ............................................................................................................ 9

5 The manner of singing ........................................................................................................................ 10

5.1 Syllables ....................................................................................................................................... 10

5.2 Pulse ............................................................................................................................................ 11

5.3 Awkward intervals ...................................................................................................................... 12

5.4 English Underlay ......................................................................................................................... 12

5.5 The Name .................................................................................................................................... 12

5.6 Word painting ............................................................................................................................. 12

5.7 Modes ......................................................................................................................................... 13

6 Prose Examples ................................................................................................................................... 13

6.1 Moses’ complaint over Israel ...................................................................................................... 13

6.2 The Decalogue ............................................................................................................................. 15

6.3 David’s lament for Absalom ........................................................................................................ 16

6.4 Where the same text uses both prose and poetry accents ........................................................ 16

7 A theory that goes beyond verses. ..................................................................................................... 18

8 Many Questions .................................................................................................................................. 19

9 References .......................................................................................................................................... 20


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Figure 1 The ornaments for the prose books ............................................................................................... 5

Figure 2 The ornaments for the poetry books .............................................................................................. 5

Figure 3 Psalms 18.20-25 .............................................................................................................................. 8

Figure 4 Examples of Inscriptions ................................................................................................................. 9

Figure 5 Rhythmic accompaniment ............................................................................................................ 11

Figure 6 Psalms 4.7-8 .................................................................................................................................. 12

Figure 7 Psalm 32.9 ..................................................................................................................................... 13

Figure 8 Modes ........................................................................................................................................... 13

Figure 9 Moses’ complaint to Yahweh ........................................................................................................ 14

Figure 10 Job 14.15 ..................................................................................................................................... 15

Figure 11 Moses’ warning to the people, Deuteronomy 8.11 .................................................................... 15

Figure 12 Exodus 20.14-15 – poetry and music in law ............................................................................... 15

Figure 13 David's lament on the death of Absalom, his son....................................................................... 16

Figure 14 Psalm 105.1 – uses the poetic accents ....................................................................................... 17

Figure 15 1 Chronicles 16.8 – uses the prose accents for the same text as Psalm 105.1 ........................... 17

Figure 16 Part of the Aleppo codex, Psalm 96.1 ......................................................................................... 17


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1 THE ANCIENT CODE

The Hebrew Bible is meant to be sung. The text includes, syllable by syllable, a set of musical instructions. The deciphering of these instructions was done solely by inference of their usage in the last half of the 20th century by the French organist and composer, Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura.1 In the winter of 2014, I wrote a computer program with rules based on her work, to convert the Hebrew text into Music XML2. In contrast to the lexical problem of automating the derivation of the root of a Hebrew word may lead to more than one possible result, the conversion of the text to music is a well-defined function and once a set of rules is applied, it is unambiguous, indicating that these Scriptures are a programmed art-form from ancient minds.

The data I have used is from the Leningrad codex from Tanach.us. It was brought into a hand-crafted database of the Old Testament by web service mediated by the development interface GX-LEAF.3 The work was completed under a community fellowship at the University of Victoria in 2016. The examples have been produced by automation based on the rules inferred by Haik-Vantoura. No data is lost from manuscript to score. The scores and the questions that can be asked of the data are a thorough test of her thesis. The results are memorable.

2 CAN PUNCTUATION BE MUSIC?

Victor Borge4 “invented phonetic punctuation”, he says, “a few years ago”. The results are of course very funny, and I leave it to your memory or a visit to you-tube to find out about this relationship between written marks and sound.

In our typical Latin-based texts, we have 26 letters, words, and punctuation. The letters are vowels and consonants, a single letter (like Y or W) occasionally acting in both roles, especially when sung. The punctuation is accomplished through fewer than a dozen marks. In the Hebrew Scriptures, there are 22 consonants, a dozen or so vowels, and the te’amim, a set of 22 marks considered for the last 1000 years as punctuation, but which David Mitchell5 dubs a kind of “punctuation on steroids”. Both vowels and

te’amim are under and over the letters of the text, like this letter bet with an ‘a’ under it, ב pronounced

ba or va. The te’amim, called marks of taste6, or simply accents, like this mark, ב, can be seen as punctuation but are also of sufficient complexity taken together to be hand signals or chieronomy, signs indicating the movements of the hands of a conductor of music.

1 Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura. (1976). The Music of the Bible Revealed: The Deciphering of a Millenary Notation. 2 XML is extended markup language. Music XML allows a musical score to be described in words. Most music programs support reading such a description and interpreting it into a regular musical score. 3 GX-LEAF, Live Enterprise Accountability Framework, is an interactive development environment for Oracle, .Net, built by Anthony Macauley Associates. GX-LEAF allows the user to define secure, interactive web forms and queries for data collection, experimentation, and presentation without the technical knowledge necessary to set up the full system. See http://gx.ca/software/leaf.html for further information and examples of usage in Government, International Development, and Academia. 4 Victor Borge, 1909-2000, pianist and comedian, see for example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bpIbdZhrzA. 5 http://home.scarlet.be/~tsf07148/theo/Resinging.pdf published in the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 36/3, March 2012. 6 The word טעם ta’am, taste, from which the name of the signs is derived, can also mean a slight madness. Both these meanings are evident in the alphabetic acrostic poem, Psalm 34, verses 1 and 9 in the Hebrew numbering. In verse 1, David feigns his madness so he can escape from Abimelech, and in the first word of verse 9 (tet being the ninth letter of the alef-bet) the poet uses the same word to mean taste.

http://gx.ca/software/leaf.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bpIbdZhrzA

http://home.scarlet.be/~tsf07148/theo/Resinging.pdf


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The article, The Masoretes and the Punctuation of Biblical Hebrew,7 is typical of the complex entrenched explanations for the system of accents as punctuation. If a data designer came to me with such a complex proposal, I would ask for a simplification and reduction of the number of signs. The design as described has more symbols and sequences of symbols than would be required for the conjunctions and disjunctions in a system of punctuation.8 But it is not too complex for a musical interpretation. And it shows itself capable of sufficient variety of application to the possibilities of musical expression.

If it is music, then all the Hebrew Scriptures are written to be sung. The music so revealed tempers our knowledge of the structure and theology of the sacred texts based on words alone, and can teach us hearing and performance in a different way. I have not seen any other reconstructed key to these signs that considers all of them with such beautiful consistency.

Letter Rough

pronunciation

Lamed l ל

Mem m מ ם

Nun n נ ן

Samech s ס

Ayin guttural deeper than alef ע

Peh p or f פ ף

Tsade ts צ ץ

Qof q ק

Resh r ר

Shin sh ש

Sin s ש

Taf t תThe Hebrew Letters and vowels (illustrated with the vav)

3 THE DECIPHERING KEY

The accents consist of two overlapping sets of signs, one for the books of Psalms, Proverbs, and the speeches of Job, and one for all the rest of the Hebrew Bible. For convenience, I will distinguish these two sets by the names poetry for the 3 books, and prose for the remaining 21 books.

The first thing to note about the accents is that there are exactly eight signs below the letters for the prose and seven for the poetry. This was the first of the clues that was pointed out and followed by the French organist and composer, Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura. The second clue she followed is that the signs below the text occur in every verse, but the signs above the text do not, and are entirely absent in about 14% of the verses of the Bible. Haïk-Vantoura considered that she had reconstructed what she hoped is

7 http://lc.bfbs.org.uk/e107_files/downloads/masoretes.pdf 8 It is fair to say that I am slightly overstating the case. The signs could be syntactical (punctuation) if we include parentheses and invent some other signs to bring the required total to 19 or so.

Letter Rough

pronunciation

Alef guttural or nothing א

Bet b or v ב

Gimel g (hard) ג

Daleth d or th ד

Heh h ה

Vav ו

ו vɘ ו vi ו vo ו ve ו oo ו va ו veh ו v

or nothing

Zayin z ז

Chet ch ח

Tet t ט

Yod y י

Kaf k כ ך

http://lc.bfbs.org.uk/e107_files/downloads/masoretes.pdf


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the original music of the Temple in Jerusalem9. Though her claim may be excessive, what she has done is to infer a key that unlocks the windows of our ears as we listen afresh to the Hebrew Bible.

Haïk-Vantoura noticed that the signs below the text could be applied to a musical scale, the full octave for the prose, and a modal scale for the poetry. The remaining signs, with some duplication of those used below the text, all occur above the letters. There are eleven in use for the prose and eight for the poetry. The overlap between the sets is quite comprehensible to a musician. It is feasible to learn to sight-read the music, much as a musician can sight-read tonic sol-fa or a musical staff.

Here is the first set, the scale for the prose books as deciphered by Haïk-Vantoura.

ב ב בבבבבב These she sets to correspond (reading left to right) exactly to a tonic sol-fa scale with a raised fifth. C D E F, G# A B C. Notice how close the poetry scale is: D# E F# G A B C.

ב בבבבבב

All these pitches are relative to the tonic, the third note of the prose scale and the second note of the poetry scale.10 The tonic is signified by the silluq under the letter. Readers of Hebrew will recognize that this sign occurs at the end of every verse. Frequently, a verse comes to rest on the A subdominant. Readers of Hebrew will recognize the sign, the atnah, as the primary disjunctive mark in a verse.

Haïk-Vantoura interpreted the set of signs that occur above the letters as ornaments relative to the current reciting note. By default, the starting reciting note is the tonic. The reciting note remains current until a new sign is encountered below the letters. The ornaments return to the reciting note either on the current syllable or on the next syllable. The determination is made based on the placement of the sign and whether the pitch changes on the next syllable. Here are the ornaments for the prose books as they would be interpreted on a musical staff when the reciting note is A.

Figure 1 The ornaments for the prose books

בבבבבבב בבבב And here are the ornaments for the poetry books again based on the current pitch as A.

Figure 2 The ornaments for the poetry books

בבבבבבבב

9 Ce sont les chants des LEVITES, ceux perpétués au Temple de JERUSALEM sous l’impulsion de DAVID et selon sa gestuelle. (Frontispiece of the French edition.) 10 The choice of E is arbitrary and may be adjusted to a lower pitch if singers or instruments require it.


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In all the many examples developed by Haïk-Vantoura, she says she has applied these notes without exception to decipher the music from the Hebrew text.11 She recommends using the Max Letteris edition (1896). Mitchell (2013)12 points out that her bias is not justified in that she likely never saw the more reliable Aleppo Codex. Nonetheless, if the signs are perceived as punctuation and as informing a particular reading, then differences in the punctuation marks can result in shifting the meaning of a text. If this destroys the musical interpretation, it may be a clue that the copyist or editor is not taking an expected turn for the better.

With computers, it is now possible to repeat her experiments and derive statistics on usage far more easily than her manual methods. It is from her own statistics that she derived the most likely shape of the ornaments. For example, the shalshelet, ב as a prose ornament, occurs only 4 times in Torah and although excluded by Haïk-Vantoura

from her prose deciphering key, it also occurs once each in Isaiah, Amos, and Ezra. Similarly, though the pashta, ב, is included in both her prose and poetry lists, it is often doubled on consecutive syllables in the prose books (qadma, pashta) and never doubled in this way in the poetry. Is there a relationship between usage, interpretation, and mode that may help fit the pieces of the puzzle together?

There are particular patterns in approaching the mid verse cadence and in returning to the tonic. Those shown in the tables are ones that occur more than 500 times. In 23,151 verses, no pattern is very common. Here we are seeing half-verses only and the maximum (1571) is less than 7% of the verses. In these measures, I have eliminated the ornaments (accents above the letters) from consideration.

11 But she is quite subjective at some points especially in mode 4 rejecting the A# where it suits her taste. Nonetheless, her consistency is very high if not as rigid as a computer program must be. 12 David Mitchell (2013). How can we sing the Lord’s Song? Deciphering the Masoretic Cantillation in Jewish and Christian Approaches to the Psalms: Conflict and Convergence, ed. Susan Gillingham, OUP.

Sequence of notes approaching atnah

Count (Prose)

Count (Poetry)

e B A 601

g B A 504

e B g B A 774 467

e g B A 699 444

e B g A 639 315

e f g A (four note scale) 1079

e f g B A 769

e g A 718

e B f g A 560

as part of an approach

… e f g A 1563 0

… e B g A 811 323

Sequence of notes returning to the tonic

Count (Prose)

Count (Poetry)

f g e 1571

g e 1304

g f e 1207

f g f e 1008

B g f e 756

B g e 731

B f g e 553

f e 1414

g B e 887

e 614


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4 THE MUSIC OF THE PSALMS

4.1 PSALM 18.20-25 A portion of the text of Psalm 18 shows the consonants and cantillation.

The score (Figure 3)

was created in Music

XML by automation

from the Hebrew text

of the Westminster

Leningrad codex.13 In

some cases I have

compared the text

with the Aleppo

codex.14The

transcription software,

using the facilities of

GX-LEAF (www.gx.ca),

has been my

development

environment over the

past 10 years. The automation process saves an estimated half-day or more of manual work for each 10

verses. Editing and underlay in English remains a manual task (except where I incorporate the text

without syllabification as in Figure 3).

The Hebrew text in the music of Figure 3 comes word by word from the Leningrad codex via a web

service. I exclude annotations and the very few signs that are not in the Haïk-Vantoura model. The music

is an automated representation of the cantillation according to her deciphering key. The first line of the

libretto is an automated transcription of the consonants and vowels, syllable by syllable. The English was

adjusted using a music program which can read XML (Musescore).

Each verse in this section rises to the rest point on A. The Hebrew syllable below the first A on each line

shows the resting point of the verse ^. In this section, the repeated words of verses 21 and 25 are set to

musical phrases of the same shape. This section is identical in Mode 1 or Mode 3 except for verse 22

which directly uses the G as a reciting note.

Notice how each verse except verse 23 begins and ends on E. This observation eventually leads to a

recognition of how verses are connected through the accents. In verse 24 above, if one was setting the

lyrics in English, ‘and I am י יםcomplete ו אה מ מו with him ת one would set am after the bar as well as ,’ע

note the accent on complete. The word him would occur on the resting note in the verse. In the same

verse there are 7 beats after the caesura with the rest note as reciting note. The variation in pitch is

determined in this section through the ornaments, which always return to the reciting note. The musical

line in this verse will lead to the stress on the second syllable of iniquity.

13 www.tanach.us/Tanach.xml 14 www.aleppocodex.org

וציאני למרחבוי

ץכייחלצני יחפ ב 20

He has brought me out into a spacious room he will rescue me for he delighted in me

כצדקייהוהיגמלני יישיבידיכבר ל 21

Yahweh will reward me for my righteousness for the purity of my hands he will turn to me

י־כ יהוהדרכימרתיש א־רשעתי יול אלה מ 22

for I have kept the ways of Yahweh and I have not been wicked with my God

לנגדיכל־משפטיוכי

א־אסירוחקתיו ניל מ 23

for all his judgments are before me and his statutes I will not put aside from me

עמותמיםאהיו

אשתמר עוו ימ נ 24

and I am complete with him and I have kept myself from my iniquity

שב־יהוה כצדקיליוי

יולנגדידיכבר עינ 25

and Yahweh turned to me for my righteousness for the purity of my hands before his eyes

http://www.gx.ca/

http://www.tanach.us/Tanach.xml

http://www.aleppocodex.org/


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Figure 3 Psalms 18.20-25


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4.2 THE BEAUTY OF INSCRIPTIONS In Book 1 (Psalms 1-41) we have 37 or 38 Psalms of David. The inscriptions are variable, rarely using the

same accent combination for something as simple as mizmor ledavid. But the music is beautiful, so

perhaps the formality of a tabular approach to life has not occurred to the poets. The inscriptions make

use of both primary (atnah) and secondary (ole-veyored) cadences or for that matter, neither.

Psalms 4 and 5 are subdued, with neither primary nor secondary cadence.

Figure 4 Examples of Inscriptions

Psalm 7 as a reel may be set in the pronounced chromatic hypodorian mode that gives no sense of rest.

Psalm 9 is the first to begin on a note other than the tonic. As such this connects it to the prior psalm. It

is the first of the Acrostics, each of which celebrates the psalm that precedes it.

After being so used to cadences on the subdominant or the second, the opening of Psalm 44 is striking.

Wickes (1881 :35) complains that these poets are not using the dichotomy consistently. And so they

aren’t. They likely had not heard of it. Not one of the corrections that he proposes is required for the

music. The idea of continuous dichotomy should be removed from discussion. Music is subject to more

nuanced shape than a hierarchy, a concept that is overused in most professions.

Forty-six psalms begin their music on something other than the tonic. What is the reason for each

unique beginning? Psalms 1 and 2 are themselves unique as a pair. Psalm 1 begins on an f# perhaps

showing that the psalms do not stand alone. 2 begins on a g, implicitly linking it with 1. Psalm 22 is


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perhaps the cost of being a king (reflecting the prayer and answer of 20-21). Psalm 40 begins with an

ornament.

The ornament is confirmed in the Aleppo codex as well as in the Leningrad codex. So it stands out in

Book 1 at its beginning. Psalm 41 reverts to the simplicity of the early Davidic psalms. One could give an

excuse for each of these psalms since there are frequent strong connections between psalms, but

perhaps this exercise is too subject to imagination. Nonetheless, the inscriptions are integrated with the

music. And looking further, Psalm 70 imitates the opening of Psalm 40. This is of course suitable since

almost all the words (39/47) of Psalm 70 are in Psalm 40. (Psalms 40, 70, and 89 share the same shape in

verse 1). All the Psalms of Ascent are connected to each other in this sequential way. And the last five

psalms 146-150 are joined similarly as a group.

5 THE MANNER OF SINGING

5.1 SYLLABLES Haïk-Vantoura suggests two differing approaches to the singing. For the prose, she assumes an

imprecise word based rhythm. It does not require ‘precision, seeing that it is framed on verbal

discourse’.15 In rather vague terms, she insists on a syllabic pulse after the manner of plainchant for the

poetry. In practice, there is little to differentiate these. And the performances indicate that syllables are

important in a word based free rhythm as words are important in a syllable-based rhythm. That is, in all

texts, syllables ‘gather themselves together equally’ in ones, twos, threes, fours, fives, and so on, each

group creating a ‘beat’ in the musical line subdivided into syllables of equal duration with little if any

additional word stress. Ornaments (written in 8th notes) will naturally extend a syllable's length (except

in the case of a deliberately rhythmic treatment) and will interpret the words. This is true whether one is

thinking of the ‘words’ or of their syllables. In modern notation, recitation may be spelled out in ‘notes’

but note values are not to be slavishly interpreted. Having noted this, it is possible that some psalms

were sung rhythmically. Where this may be the case for Hebrew, an equivalent English rhythm may be

found. Haïk-Vantoura writes that there is to be a constant duration for a syllable in the poetry. It is clear

from attempted musical reconstructions of performance today that this claim is an approximation.

15 Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura, op. cit. page 54, French edition.


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5.2 PULSE In my automated transcriptions, a dashed bar line immediately precedes a change in reciting note. The

direction of the vocal line and its pulse is thus signaled by the bar-line. The subdominant A is signaled by

the sign called atnah, or place of rest. In mode 4, the A is sharpened and acts against any suggestion of

rest or repose. Note also that some verses (7% of the text) have no rest point and may sometimes be

chanted as a single phrase.16 Some verses have multiple phrases, but never more than one atnah. The

rest point is marked with a caesura indicating the appropriateness of a pause – even in the middle of a

sentence, as one would pause in plainsong to allow consideration of the words.

The Hebrew pulse and accents may suggest other possible performance ideas or word underlay to the

choir director. Such performance ideas are encouraged. Since many of the psalms are ‘for the choir

director’, choir directors may of course use their discretion in suggesting alternatives with respect to

mode, rhythm or pitch or even the interpretation of ornaments. Psalm 117 has some potential for

rhythmic accompaniment and differing modes. In this example in Figure 5, you can observe the effect of

generating the score using different modes. The software to generate the score is not yet available on

the web.

Figure 5 Rhythmic accompaniment

16 Part 1 of the Song of Solomon contains an example of eleven verses in a row without a resting point. Lamentations 3 has only one of 66 verses at rest.


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5.3 AWKWARD INTERVALS There are some awkward intervals but they can be learned and often are surprising annotations on the

text. Psalm 4 provides a good example. The rising augmented fifth in verse 7 (Hebrew numbering)

colours the extreme rudeness and provocation in the words. The music confirms the quotation marks

noted in the English. The next rising perfect fifth contrasts faith with provocation.

Figure 6 Psalms 4.7-8

5.4 ENGLISH UNDERLAY In the English libretto, the symbol / indicates that the note is not needed and has therefore a zero time

value. If the English libretto has multiple syllables for a single note, then subdivide all the syllables and

gather them equally into the current reciting note. Slurs apply to the English libretto to assist the singer.

A slur with a syllable below each note may be sung as a slur on the first syllable with the second syllable

appended to the second note. Sometimes a slur will extend over additional notes to allow the English to

resolve the ornament back to the reciting note. The underlay has been designed so as to preserve with

the least compromise the line and stress of the Hebrew. So wherever possible, without distorting the

English word order beyond recognition, ornaments are on an equivalent syllable and slurred as in the

Hebrew and the change in reciting note reflects a similar word and stress as in the Hebrew.

5.5 THE NAME In many translations, the Name, יהוה the four letters yod, heh, vav, heh, is rendered as the LORD. Such a

rendering fails both grammatically and theologically: theologically because the Name is intimate,

grammatically, because the Name must behave as a proper name, not as title or rank. Debate is

extensive over how the Name was pronounced or when it stopped being said as a name. In my

translations, the mid-20th century rendering Yahweh has been used. This may be sung as two or three

syllables as needed. There is a suggestion from the stresses in the music that it was three syllables with

the stress on the third. There are no consonants in the name. Sing it as Ee-aa-oo-eh with the oo

bordering on an O. It is a good singing exercise.

5.6 WORD PAINTING The music is not there for its own sake, but for the words. Psalms 32 provides a good example. Note the bucking horse and mule. Note also the words on the atnah or rest point in the verse. There is no atnah in verse 1. Words on the atnah in the following verses are: iniquity, bones worn out, changed, Yahweh, many waters, security, walk, curbed, Yahweh, and righteous ones. There is a progression in this psalm


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from trouble to release including the reference to the judgment of many waters and the need for a secure guided walk for the poet / singer.

Figure 7 Psalm 32.9

5.7 MODES

Figure 8 Modes

Determining the mode of a particular psalm is subjective at the current stage of research. It may be that

some note patterns are unacceptable in some modes. This is an uncertain decision, since instrument and

voice can each be tuned to each of these modes. Equally, it may be that some psalms even if sung

consecutively were sung in two differing modes. If different tuning is required, then two instruments

may be prepared. The Selah may give the player a chance to change instruments.

6 PROSE EXAMPLES

6.1 MOSES’ COMPLAINT OVER ISRAEL Numbers 11.11-12 illustrates a poignant dialogue. Moses begins by raising his voice. The song is

punctuated at key points by a high C reminding us of the opening statement. The ornamentation carries


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the C to a D three times at the emotional high points: 1. the initial lament, 2. the weeping of the people

for flesh, 3. Moses conditional request to be slain.

Note the movement of notes up and down is governed by ornament in the first two phrases. Only one

change of note (E to C) is governed by the sub-linear signs. In the second two phrases, note movement is

by change in the base note, and only one ornament is found.

Figure 9 Moses’ complaint to Yahweh

In quite a different fashion, reading from Deuteronomy 8.11, the song of Moses reflects the tenderness

of God. The music in these two contrasting examples shows different human emotions than we might

have imposed on our reading with words alone. In some senses we can then retain tone of voice for the

written word over the millennia. Rather than the punitive moral tone, perhaps we have a reflection of

Job’s prayer.


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Figure 12 Exodus 20.14-15 – poetry and music in law

Figure 10 Job 14.15

Figure 11 Moses’ warning to the people, Deuteronomy 8.11

6.2 THE DECALOGUE The music of the Ten Commandments in both Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 stands out as exploiting

the possibilities of music accompanying and interpreting the words. In both these passages there are

many examples of two ‘punctuation’ marks under a single syllable. These become in the music a unique

form of emphasis rather more poignant than an exclamation point followed by a question mark, a

semicolon following a colon, or a comma following a period. Figure 10 gives an example.

Here we see on each

of the first three

words two sub-linear

marks, and on the last

syllable an ornament

together with a

change in reciting note.

The font does not

distinguish the proper

order of these marks.

My program interprets them in the sequence in which they were coded in the input text.

Wickes (1881 :23) writes concerning the Decalogue (both in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5): The two

sets of accents reflect two reading modes, one to be used in synagogue, and one for study. The reading


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in synagogue splits the Decalogue more obviously into 10 distinct utterances, and so necessitates a

different set of accents of accommodate the different lexical parsing. That is one explanation and there

are other detailed explanations from earlier centuries. But the interpretation proposed by Haïk-

Vantoura has no difficulty in accepting multiple notes per syllable.

6.3 DAVID’S LAMENT FOR ABSALOM This verse from 2 Samuel 18.33 (19.1) is a favorite for composers and performers. It illustrates how well

the music fits the text. An English underlay is feasible. Note the ironic word painting in descending a

major sixth on the word up.

Figure 13 David's lament on the death of Absalom, his son

How did the deciphering key yield the above vocal line? The Hebrew text is with the accents is shown in

the score. Every accent determines syllable by syllable the shape and tonality of the musical line.

The text is from the prose books and therefore uses the eight-note scale with the raised fifth. The

default applies to the starting note. On the third syllable, the (munah) indicates that the current pitch

rises a fifth to the dominant. On the second syllable of the second word, there is a revia, , interpreted as

an appoggiatura.

6.4 WHERE THE SAME TEXT USES BOTH PROSE AND POETRY ACCENTS Psalm 105 (1 Chronicles 16.8 ff) is one of many examples where verses are cited in both the 21 books

and the 3 books and therefore use different accents to illustrate the same words.


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Figure 14 Psalm 105.1 – uses the poetic accents

Psalm verse (105.1) is phrased as a bi-colon, but the equivalent 1 Chronicles 16.8 is clearly a tri-colon.

The power of the supra-linear accents to divide the line is also illustrated. The cadence on the

subdominant, the atnah, seldom occurs in 1 Chronicles 16. From verse 7 to 33, it occurs only in verses 29

and 33. In its place in the other verses is the zaqef-qatan, essentially an appoggiatura acting as a

cadence. This is in contrast to the frequent use of atnah in the Psalter in these same poems. The tone

and shape of a psalm will be changed by the different musical interpretation. Each works in context in its

own way.

Figure 15 1 Chronicles 16.8 – uses the prose accents for the same text as Psalm 105.1

A rendition of 1 Chronicles 16.8-36 from the Letteris edition shows a number of additional meteg

accents (=silluq) which are varied from both the Aleppo and the Leningrad codices. Levin (1994 :129)

notes a tendency that earlier manuscripts have fewer meteg accents but here both Aleppo and

Leningrad are also different. While the differences are not critical to transparency, they do make me

wonder what the rationale was in the scribe’s mind for the additional accents. Were they accents only? I

suspect so. But if followed they frequently bring the music down from a C recitation to a low e recitation.

As a result, verses that would have had a similar shape in the song now differ.

Some changes are also evident between later editions of Psalm

96 (||1 Chronicles 23-33). Letteris (or the manuscript he was

working from) has added a meteg and again, likely inadvertently,

changed the music. Letteris 1946 was not aware of Haïk-

Vantoura’s work. The meteg may have been deemed necessary

for stress but is needed for the music only if the composer want to return to the tonic, and this

particular one (Figure 14) is not in the Aleppo or the Leningrad codex. But it sounds very rhythmic and

Figure 16 Part of the Aleppo codex, Psalm 96.1


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suitable in the context. That demonstrates that the text as we have received it may have copying

problems that impair or enhance, even if by accident, the effectiveness of the music derived according

to Haïk-Vantoura’s key.

7 A THEORY THAT GOES BEYOND VERSES.

A good theory should explain or even predict things that would otherwise be missed. William Wickes

studied many manuscripts directly. He begins his first thesis: “I soon saw that even our best texts need

correction, as far as the accents are concerned; and that, without a correct text, I could not hope to

establish any rules on a satisfactory basis. I therefore visited the leading Libraries of Europe, and collated,

as far as seemed necessary, most of the known MSS” (1871 :preface).

We see from this that he is searching for the rules that govern the placement of accents. Here he is

doing what each of us might do in order to understand the coding. He differs in access to many libraries

from Haïk-Vantoura, who worked by musical inference. He differs in technology from the 21st century

investigator in that he cannot have access by database to all the data from one source. There may well

be errors in my source, but the volume of data will largely render them harmless to analysis.

Wickes makes several regulatory claims. One that would be understood in traditional cantillation is this:

"Logically, a verse may be closely connected with the one preceding or following it; but musically and

accentually no such connection exists." (1881 :23). He is oriented towards his dichotomy model whereby

every phrase decomposes itself into two using the disjunctive accents (1887 :20). As such he is stopping

in the middle of a musical phrase rather than hearing its completion. Also he is biased toward the

dissociation of each verse from any other “Each section or verse was then treated as an independent

whole; and, whatever its connection in sense with the verse preceding or the verse following, had its

musical division assigned to it, quite irrespectively of them.” (1887 :27). This is not a necessary

assumption. And assumption is what it is.

This is a testable claim. Perhaps one exception would prove that such a general rule cannot stand. But

there is not just one, there are examples on every page of Scripture that deny that general statement.

The music of this deciphering key sings relationships within verses and between verses and chapters.

Just note those verses that do not begin on the tonic, a listening skill that is quickly learned and easier

than describing a sequence of accents. This is an advance over considering that the accents are confined

to grammatical relationships within one verse.

No example I have looked at fails to illustrate this far in excess of what any punctuation could do. No

explanation using accent sequences can achieve the understanding that the ear hears. A simple example

is the pairing of the speeches in Job. Every pair is introduced by the narrator beginning on the tonic. And

every response is noted by the narrator with a verse beginning on the third note above the tonic.

Another example is the complex long sentence in the second half of proverbs 2 where verses 11-20 are

clearly related through the shape of the music. I could multiply examples.

Mitchell (2013) also points out the example of Tonus Peregrinus, a known melody used in several

traditions. It is the only remaining mode of traditional plainsong that uses two reciting notes. Haïk-

Vantoura never mentions this tune, yet her deciphering key applied to Psalm 114, demonstrates a tune

that is very close to Tonus Peregrinus, the tune still used in the Anglican Psalter for this psalm. Mitchell

concludes: It follows that the Tonus Peregrinus is our best remaining fragment of Temple Psalmody. In


MacDonald Page 19

his 2015 volume on the Psalms of Ascent, he uses the Tonus Peregrinus as a test for alternative

interpretations of the te’amim.

It is evident from manuscripts among the Dead Sea scrolls that Psalm 114 and 115 were considered a

pair (Yarchin :775). Psalm 115 has a unique beginning: C f#. The full pattern is shared only with Job 38.41.

The opening two notes are shared by 21 other verses.

8 MANY QUESTIONS

A transcription from signs to a musical score requires much more than notes. Even with the notes, how

do we know that ornamentation was fixed as Haïk-Vantoura has suggested? Yet her ornaments work (to

a degree). Then there are questions of mode and rhythm, of multi-voice possibilities, responsive psalms,

harmony, and accompaniment.

Haïk-Vantoura suggests several modes. Are there clues in the inscriptions (of the psalms that have them)

that would allow us to associate a mode with a psalm? Are there clues in the music? Certain patterns

are the same in more than one mode. Some patterns may be harder to sing in one mode rather than

another.

The more serious question of the history of the signs is raised in Mitchell (2012) and developed by him in

his later book17: how did the Masoretic system of the te’amim come into being? There is no history of

this fully formed symbol system. His summary is very helpful:

Since this alternative view of the origin of the te’amim is essential to Haïk-Vantoura’s theory, let us

summarize the evidence.

1) Cantillation marks per se are found in 2nd millennium BCE in Sumerian literature. They are found on

biblical texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Babylonian and Palestinian accent systems, and are referred

to in the Talmud.

2) However, the Masoretic system stands apart from its predecessors in its sudden appearance as a highly

perfected system.

3) By the testimony of Mosheh Ben Asher himself, the Masoretes received the te’amim from the second-

century BCE Elders of Bathyra. This conforms to the Masoretic credo of not innovating but preserving.

4) The Masoretes’ rabbanite contemporaries – Natronai b. Hilai and Sa‘adia – objected to the Masoretes’

work not because the te‘amim were a novelty, but because they thought them ancient but sealed.

5) The similarity of the Masoretic te’amim to the symbols of a third-century BCE text of Euripides18 shows

that they are indeed musical symbols of pre-Christian times. For the Masoretes to have invented them

would be as anachronistic as for us annotate a Bible in runes.

If indeed these are indications of scale and ornaments, here are some questions for research.

1. How accurately did the signs survive copying and transmission to the present time? They are almost without redundancy. It may be that the punctuation role has preserved them to some degree but Hebrew Bible editions vary. Haïk-Vantoura preferred the Max Letteris edition (1896). There are differences that significantly weaken the music in the te’amim of the Snaith edition (1958). The

17 Mitchell, David. 2015. The Songs of Ascents: Psalms 120 to 134 in the Worship of Jerusalem's Temples, Campbell Publications. 18 http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/crai_0065-0536_1973_num_117_2_12889

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/crai_0065-0536_1973_num_117_2_12889


MacDonald Page 20

Westminster Leningrad codex19 has very cleanly coded data, but if accurately transcribed, it shows some errors in the codex itself. These may be verified from the Aleppo codex.20

2. What rhythmic possibilities are reasonable? Is there a syllable pulse as in plainsong? Or are more regular rhythms possible? Mitchell maintains that Haïk-Vantoura’s (and Wheeler’s) insistence on a plainsong style is not justified.

3. Do the ornaments and degrees of the scale relate to the meaning of the poems? If so, how? For example, a double pashta repeats several times in the book of Jonah and signals an important feature of the story-teller’s thought. Much word-painting is evident in the rendition.

4. What mode is appropriate for each psalm? For example, a major minor mode for Psalm 32 is apt for the combination of fear and joy expressed in the Psalm, and highlights, like a donkey braying, the horse and mule image in the poem.

5. Does the music shed any light on words in the inscriptions such as mode, melody, or author? 6. Is it possible using these signs to translate and sing the psalms in a foreign tongue (like English)?

Could such music be adapted for congregational singing? Experiments show this to be possible, but it is clear that the underlay will not always correspond to the musical line of the Hebrew.

7. Are there patterns in the usage of the te’amim that would support reading the Psalter as a unit as my first volume has suggested? How might such patterns relate to the words under study in that volume?

8. Would they support sequences of psalms like the Psalms of Ascent? For example, how many different melodies and modes are to be found in any particular set of psalms? Mitchell will address this question head on in his forthcoming volume.

9. When did the word become part of the musical tradition? It seems unlikely that the prophets sang their prophecies. But it is likely that the poets sang their songs. To what extent did prophetic word and music evolve together?

10. How can we make the deciphering of the text easier using digital media? There is still a gap between music and text in the digital world, but from the text in a database, the music in XML with Hebrew transliterated underlay has been proven to be a computable process.21

It is difficult to believe that an unexplained and self-contradictory system of ‘punctuation’ could give rise

to such beautiful and appropriate music. The musical interpretation of the signs never varies. There is no

confusion over conjunctive and disjunctive. The continuous dichotomy is lobotomized.

For more examples, type “The Music of the Bible Revealed” into a search engine. There were at least 50

very fine performance recordings available of examples of this music as reconstructed by Haïk-Vantoura.

This analysis and performance only scratches the surface of the implications and possibilities for this

reading of the ancient texts.22

9 REFERENCES

Adler, Cyrus, and Cohen, Francis L. http://jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3986-cantillation.

19 Online at http://www.tanach.us/Tanach.xml. 20 Online at http://www.aleppocodex.org/newsite/index.html, regrettably with many sections unavailable. 21 All the Music XML and the corresponding PDFs for the entire Old Testament are available through this link: http://meafar.blogspot.ca/p/music.html 22 E.g.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlwgafUj9D8 Psalm 1, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PexZW0ZKZ6E Genesis 1, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK4iKMQcmYQ Psalm 150, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCi92IwdaE0 Psalm 29.

http://www.tanach.us/Tanach.xml

http://www.aleppocodex.org/newsite/index.html

http://meafar.blogspot.ca/p/music.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlwgafUj9D8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PexZW0ZKZ6E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK4iKMQcmYQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCi92IwdaE0


MacDonald Page 21

Anonymous. 1744. The Majesty and Singular copiousness of the Hebrew Language Asserted and Illustrated. In Eighteenth Century Collections Online, via the University of Victoria Library.

DeCaen, Vincent. 2005. On the distribution of Major and Minor Pause in Tiberian Hebrew in the Light of the Variants of the Second Person Independent Pronouns. Journal of Semitic Studies L/2.

Dresher, Bezalel Elan. 1994. The Prosodic Basis of the Tiberian Hebrew System of Accents, Linguistic Society of America, Language, Vol. 70, No. 1.

Dotan, A. 1967. The Diqduqé Hatt’amim of Aharon ben Moshe ben Asher. Jerusalem, Masorah, EJ 16, 1401-82.

Haïk-Vantoura, Suzanne. 1976. The Music of the Bible Revealed: The Deciphering of a Millenary Notation (in French).

– 1991. The Music of the Bible Revealed: The Deciphering of a Millenary Notation. John Wheeler (Editor), Denis Weber (Translator).

General synod of the Anglican Church of Canada. 1963. The Canadian Psalter.

Jacobson, Joshua R. 2002. Chanting the Hebrew Bible, The Complete Guide to the Art of Cantillation, The Jewish Publication Society.

Kugel, James L. 1981. The Idea of Biblical Poetry, Parallelism and its history. Yale University Press.

Levin, Saul. 1994. The מתג according to the practice of the early vocalizers. State University of New York at Binghampton.

– 1998. The Masoretic Chant of the Hebrew Bible. AJS Review 23 (1). [Cambridge University Press, Association for Jewish Studies]: 112–16. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1486738.

Levy, Elizabeth and Robinson, David. 2002. The Masoretes and the Punctuation of Biblical Hebrew, British and Foreign Bible Society. To be continued – reference this http://lc.bfbs.org.uk/e107_files/downloads/masoretes.pdf

MacDonald, Bob. 2013. Seeing the Psalter, Patterns of Recurrence in the Poetry of the Psalms, Energion Publications.

Margolis, Max L. 1911. The Place of the Word-Accent in Hebrew, Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 30, No. 1. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3259030.

Martín-Contreras, Elvira and Miralles-Maciá, Lorena. 2014. The text of the Hebrew Bible: From the Rabbis to the Masoretes, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

Mitchell, David. 2012. http://home.scarlet.be/~tsf07148/theo/Resinging.pdf, published in the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 36/3.

– 2013. How can we sing the Lord’s Song? Deciphering the Masoretic Cantillation in Jewish and Christian Approaches to the Psalms: Conflict and Convergence, ed. Susan Gillingham, OUP.

– 2015. The Songs of Ascents: Psalms 120 to 134 in the Worship of Jerusalem's Temples, Campbell Publications.

Mulder, Martin Jan and Sysling, Harry (ed.). 2004. Mikra, Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity. Hendrickson.

Reuchlin, Johann. 1518. De accentibus, et orthographia, lingua Hebraicae, à Iohanne Reuchlin Phorcensi ... libri tres cardinali Adriano dicati, available here https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_vCxCn36grhYC.


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Revell, E.J. 1971. The Oldest Evidence for the Hebrew Accent System. Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, Volume 54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/416739.

– 1976. Biblical Punctuation and Chant in the Second Temple Period. Journal for the Study of Judaism, Vol. VII, No. 2.

– 2012. The occurrence of Pausal Forms. Journal of Semitic Studies LVIII.2.

Richter, Helmut. http://www.mechon-mamre.org/c/hr/intro.htm#purp.

Rubin, Emmanuel. http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=music_faculty_pubs.

The Hebrew Student 2 (5/6). 1883. Antiquity and Authority of the Hebrew Accents. University of Chicago Press: 164–69. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3156048.

Tomalin, Marcus. 2009. Contextualising Accents And Alphabets In The Work Of Christopher Smart, The Review of English Studies, 11/2009, Volume 60, Issue 247. http://www.jstor.org/stable/405771.

Weil, Daniel Meir. 1995. The Masoretic Chant of the Hebrew Bible. Jerusalem: Rubin Mass.

Wickes, William. 1881. A treatise on the accentuation of the three so-called poetical books on the Old Testament, Psalms, Proverbs, and Job, with an appendix containing the treatise, assigned to R. Jehuda Ben-Bil'am, on the same subject, in the original Arabic.

– 1970. Two treatises on the accentuation of the Old Testament. Ed. Orlinsky, with a prolegomenon by Aron Dotan.

Yarchin, William. 2015. Were the Psalms Collections at Qumran true Psalters? In Journal of Biblical Literature, 134, no. 4.

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Seeing, Hearing and Performing the Hebrew Scriptures

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