The Canon as Musical Memory: Thematic Recollection in the Teʿamim

 Now here's an idea I hadn't yet thought about exactly. The key will be finding the right set of differences in the use of the te'amim across the books of the canon.

Abstract:

This paper will propose that the teʿamim—the cantillation signs of the Hebrew Bible—encode an intentional network of musical memory that links the canonical books through recurrent motifs and tonal gestures. Statistical analysis of verse openings across all biblical books shows that passages beginning on a pitch different from the default tonic e, or with an ornament on the initial syllable, show differences in patterns in Deuteronomy, the Latter Prophets, and parts of the Writings e.g. Qohelet, that differ significantly from earlier and later narrative prose. These sections of the 21 prose books written in and around the years of exile use this technique as frequently as it is used in the three poetry books. Selected case studies will reveal some deliberate musical echoes forming a chain of tonal recollection across the canon. These findings will suggest that the composers who applied the accentual system acted as musical exegetes, using melody to preserve theological continuity and to invite interpretive listening. The Hebrew Bible thus emerges as a polyphonic composition. Its books converse not only through words but through remembered sound.

Well, phew, that's generated and edited after 'months of effort' in my spare time of course, training my LLM assistant with multiple props, prompts, and examples. The excessively flowery outline of the paper is too much to share and a bit more effusive than my style allows. However, I am looking for bridges from the te'amim to textual criticism, musicology, and theology in ways that could change how we traditionally view the accentual tradition — not as a punctuation and syntactic system, but as a living musical architecture of memory. I know that we need to change on many fronts.

The outline, of course, has to address all the possible objections to such a study -- but here's some raw data that seems to me to support the effort required to do this. (Not that this particular swan could have the time to do it... but we'll see -- I just night restart some blogging.)

I have finished my 18 volumes. None of them is available for purchase yet. Perhaps they will only be available as gifts. But my initial essays briefly describing the music of each volume have led me to the conclusion that if I could show that the techniques as they have been transmitted to us in the 10th century contain variations in usage that point to different composers and different times, then we could theorize that they are more ancient than an imposition onto the Masoretic text.

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Nice chart generated by my assistant.
At least it lets you know a breakdown of early, transitional, and late texts in the canon.

I have used a breakdown of early compared to late books largely on canonical order, but as can be seen in the following analysis of contours (shape based on the sequence of accents under the text), my categorization does not collect together the compositional techniques used in the different books. On this one measure, they are strikingly different.

Ezekiel and other books from the exilic period with notes beginning a verse that are not the default tonic (e) are below compared to the percentages in other books. What emerges may define a division in the usage of the accent system within the 21 books, one that is conservative and the other that is more like the musical techniques used in the poetry.

What stands out in the first group is the book of Deuteronomy. Clearly, this was written by a different composer from the earlier books of Torah. What if new compositional techniques were developed during the exile? Perhaps Deuteronomy, only found at this time used these new techniques of recitation. Deuteronomy is certainly an outlier in the first 11 books. It is clear that the later prophets use a different technique also, even if their language has fewer Aramaic influences.

Books dated to before the exile Torah
Book	Total Verses	Starting pitch<>e	%
GENESIS	1533	78	5.1
EXODUS	1213	81	6.7
LEVITICUS	859	87	10.1
NUMBERS	1289	140	10.9
DEUTERONOMY	959	140	14.6
Books dated to before the exile Former Prophets
JOSHUA	658	65	9.9
JUDGES	618	17	2.8
1 SAMUEL	810	19	2.3
2 SAMUEL	695	30	4.3
1 KINGS	817	45	5.5
2 KINGS	719	47	6.5
Books dated to before the exile Later Prophets
ISAIAH 1-39	766	126	16.4
JEREMIAH	1364	210	15.4
HOSEA	197	32	16.2
AMOS	146	26	17.8
OBADIAH	21	1	4.8
MICAH	105	17	16.2
NAHUM	47	12	25.5
HABAKKUK	56	12	21.4
ZEPHANIAH	53	8	15.1

For books dated to the transitional period between early and late Biblical Hebrew, the average number of verses with a starting pitch different from the tonic is 12%. Drop Ezekiel from this list and the average becomes 18%. Some averages without the outliers are called for. If we confine ourselves to three periods, and group the books by the characteristic of allowing a different starting pitch from the default tonic, we can ask additional questions related to composition style. The questions are tempered by other considerations like the setting of larger thoughts in groups of verses. These are expressed in stanzas in the poetry and their equivalent, sections and paragraphs, in the prose of the later prophetic books.

Books dated to the years of the exile
ISAIAH 40-66	525	100	19.0
EZEKIEL	1273	104	8.2
JOEL	73	10	13.7
JOB (Prose Sections)	72	12	16.7
LAMENTATIONS	154	26	16.9

A scan of the following table shows a few of these books are outliers, particularly Qohelet on the high side.

Books dated to after the exile
JONAH	48	2	4.2
HAGGAI	38	8	21.1
ZECHARIAH	211	34	16.1
MALACHI	55	5	9.1
SONG	117	19	16.2
RUTH	85	3	3.5
QOHELET	222	66	29.7
ESTHER	167	14	8.4
DANIEL	357	25	7
EZRA	280	16	5.7
NEHEMIAH	405	17	4.2
1 CHRONICLES	928	59	6.4
2 CHRONICLES	822	50	6.1

It is very clear that the poetry stands apart with respect to the use of the opening pitch of a verse differing from the tonic. Most of the later prophets and some of the writings share this technique.

PSALMS	2527	680	26.9
PROVERBS	915	316	34.5
JOB (Poetry)	998	292	29.3

Continuing on

 I have decided not to pursue any further sales of my current 18 volumes of the Bible. I am working on each of the volumes and have discovered things I want to put in the general introduction so if you’re interested, let me know but nothing is available at the moment apart from what is mentioned in the previous post. 

A gift to anyone who asks

I have all 929 mscz files available individually in directories for anyone who would like them. If you would like them please let me know: drobertmacd at gmail dot com or message me on Twitter @drmacdonald or threads @bob.macdonald.9063. Let me know why you are interested and any questions you may have.

To use them you need to have MuseScore 4 (download here). When you have these scores, you can see a final product for cantillation in Hebrew, and the raw material for arranging the music in other languages or for other translations than mine, for many instruments, and with chorus, and cantor etc. 

They are a part of the results of 15 years of study and an elapsed year of creation and revision. Each score is derived from the text of the Bible (an eclectic text initially based on the Westminster Leningrad codex with corrections from earlier sources) using a fixed deciphering key as inferred by Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura in the last century for the accents in the text called te'amim. It's a brilliant deciphering. Controversial maybe, but don't take my word for it. Try them out. Biblical Hebrew has never seemed so easy to learn. The scores are verse by verse. You can change that by altering the page length.

There is also a set of batch files. These are used only if you want to update the book with changes to the music. The batch file renames the exported individual SVG files to match the image tags in the html for the books. But if you don't have the books, no matter, because the music files are self-explanatory (if you know how to read them). And if you have the books, you may not want to update them anyway. 

I have also included some xlsx files which show patterns of ornament usage by reciting note among other graphs and data tables.

I will have my books available soon somewhere or other place or two. Some people have the generic link already so that it will be unlikely to be lost, even if I never get around to listing them all.

A review of a new Sherlock Holmes Mystery

 It's not every day you get to read a new Sherlock Holmes mystery. The book Sherlock Holmes and the Mistress of History is a delightful tale set in the retirement years of Watson and Sherlock in England,  Egypt, and the Sinai. It is a read that made me smile and laugh out loud. The tension and the denouement is delightfully handled. It is thoroughly realistic in the style of Conan Doyle and plausibly historical.

Jonathan Orr-Stav, author of Alef through the Looking Glass has a deep expertise on the the origins of alphabets. This little story -- 100 to 150 pages depending on your choice of type size -- makes excellent use of his familiarity with alphabets and Middle East languages. The result is a well written tale of suspense and a real respite for those of us who like a good mystery and some positive news about the human beast. 

The swan is still singing

 My computer lives for another 12 months. I have paid. It was easy and free to sign up. I am a Microsoft customer. I tried Windows 11 and was appalled at the conversion process. Microsoft wants me to use its communications tools. It doesn't respect the apps that are not MS. So I ended up with Skype and Teams in startup and ancient conversations that were inactive years ago and no easy way to eliminate them -- three clicks per conversation or dig into the file structure. I returned the new PC. I also tried unsuccessfully to reset the computer. Apple is easy to install and resets for transfer to another owner without any trouble.

Enough said. I don't have time to learn Windows 11 and neither does anyone else in my family.

Cover for Ezekiel

This swan is singing a dirge. Stop.

On the positive side, my project has reached a stability point. All volumes have complete music and text (including legarmeh). The covers are all complete. 18 sketches with my prompts to chatgpt. Ezekiel to the left.

The 'brief notes on the music' will have a table of ornament frequency by reciting note for each book, an example where the music points out shape in prose or stanzas in poetry, and a few examples of rare phrases in the music.

I think I will finish some day and retire to the garden finally. I think I can guarantee that it will undermine a reader's assumptions and reveal some of mine.

Status report on the Swan Song

 Still alive and kicking, said the Swan.

Here's the current status on all fronts:

All volumes complete verse by verse with the music -- like this. 

This image contains: 

• 5 syllables (middle of last line)  in the score 
• over three words (top line Hebrew) of the first verse of 1 Chronicles
• a transcription (lyrics) based on a simple mapping of consonants and vowels
• a translation with verse number and harmonic progression in parentheses
• the Hebrew accents from which the score is derived
• the SimHebrew equivalent with verse number (bottom right).

There are about 34,400 separate images for the 23,196 verses. Their production and merge with the html was controlled by several procedures from my database. So they are an accurate representation of my translation and the automated music process, but of course open to textual and linguistic criticism.

Here's a more complex example. See if the syllable counts agree with the column of numbers in the bottom centre of the image. There is an occasional discrepancy +/- 1 difference between the syllable count and the notes in the score. I have found it impossible to find this bug. I'm not the only software developer with this problem. I suspect there are other bugs that I have not noticed.

Tasks to do: 

• for 7 volumes, update the html to include legarmeh (routine process, takes maybe a few hours of interrupted work to do -- probably unimportant).
• 10 more covers to design -- really fun to do. 10 days (not contiguous) and it will be done.
• 17 more ISBN's to get. Routine.
• 10 + brief introductions to the music of the volume. Very challenging. In this area my work has converged with another student of cantillation history. My data formats may be very useful to him and I have to think carefully to get good query design from my database to see the potential patterns.

Future work: to anyone who is interested, the data that is generally available now online in various places in Unicode can be coded for the questions we want to ask. It's a very large undertaking to consider the relationships in the Scripture itself and to reconcile the history of cantillation with the theoretical discovery that has been demonstrated by Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura. By the way, a large number of video recordings of her work done by John Wheeler are now available (again) here. (Very slow start but they are there.)

My computer apparently has only a few months till its expiry date. The folks who make Windows do not consider it worthy to support. I have routinely 30 to 35 windows active on it. It is very fast and has adequate memory. This sin from Microsoft is duly noted for the heavenly assizes. I can certainly buy another computer but whether I can still install Oracle and the last working copy of my complex software and all the other things I need for this unique environment is moot. Maybe I will just maintain it off the web and go back to sneaker net to get any words out. But my expiry date is also approaching -- who knows when!

The Mysterious Decalogue

I have examined an alternate solution to the many te-amim in the two decalogues. The data is taken from here. It's been a good exercise not without difficulty. 

בטעם העליון

אָֽנֹכִ֖י יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ אֲשֶׁ֧ר הוֹצֵאתִ֛יךָ מֵאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרַ֖יִם מִבֵּ֥ית עֲבָדִֽים׃
לֹ֣א יִהְיֶֽה־לְךָ֩ אֱלֹהִ֨ים אֲחֵרִ֜ים עַל־פָּנַ֗י לֹ֣א תַעֲשֶֽׂה־לְךָ֣ פֶ֣סֶל ׀ וְכׇל־תְּמוּנָ֡ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר בַּשָּׁמַ֣יִם ׀ מִמַּ֡עַל וַֽאֲשֶׁר֩ בָּאָ֨רֶץ מִתַּ֜חַת וַאֲשֶׁ֥ר בַּמַּ֣יִם ׀ מִתַּ֣חַת לָאָ֗רֶץ לֹֽא־תִשְׁתַּחֲוֶ֣ה לָהֶם֮ וְלֹ֣א תׇעׇבְדֵם֒ כִּ֣י אָֽנֹכִ֞י יְהֹוָ֤ה אֱלֹהֶ֙יךָ֙ אֵ֣ל קַנָּ֔א פֹּ֠קֵ֠ד עֲוֺ֨ן אָבֹ֧ת עַל־בָּנִ֛ים עַל־שִׁלֵּשִׁ֥ים וְעַל־רִבֵּעִ֖ים לְשֹׂנְאָ֑י וְעֹ֤שֶׂה חֶ֙סֶד֙ לַאֲלָפִ֔ים לְאֹהֲבַ֖י וּלְשֹׁמְרֵ֥י מִצְוֺתָֽי׃

Music according to the deciphering key for the first separation in Exodus 20

Note the verse structure. The first image above has only two verses. The atnah (on the word coloured brown in the Hebrew text) appears only twice and the music comes to a possible end only twice. The Aleppo verses 3 4 and 5 and 6 have the mid-verse rest on לְשֹׂנְאָ֑י, seven words before the end. The second image and text below combines verses 2 and 3 and preserves 4, 5, and 6 as separate verses.

This raises the question, of course, as to what is a verse. It is clear that the te'amim define verses. 

1. They begin on several different notes with frequency varying by book but they always (100% in mgketer.org) end with the tonic, unless there has been a copying error and there are a few in WLC. The big colon is a marker, but not a note. In all the cases above where there is a big colon, a silluq appears in a prior word to bring the music to the tonic.
2. And often, (92.5% of verses) they have an internal cadence on the subdominant (atnah). 

בטעם התחתון

אָֽנֹכִי֙ יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ אֲשֶׁ֧ר הוֹצֵאתִ֛יךָ מֵאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרַ֖יִם מִבֵּ֣ית עֲבָדִ֑ים לֹֽא־יִהְיֶ֥ה לְךָ֛ אֱלֹהִ֥ים אֲחֵרִ֖ים עַל־פָּנָֽי׃
לֹֽא־תַעֲשֶׂ֨ה לְךָ֥ פֶ֙סֶל֙ וְכׇל־תְּמוּנָ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֤ר בַּשָּׁמַ֙יִם֙ מִמַּ֔עַל וַֽאֲשֶׁ֥ר בָּאָ֖רֶץ מִתָּ֑חַת וַאֲשֶׁ֥ר בַּמַּ֖יִם מִתַּ֥חַת לָאָֽרֶץ׃
לֹֽא־תִשְׁתַּחֲוֶ֥ה לָהֶ֖ם וְלֹ֣א תׇעׇבְדֵ֑ם כִּ֣י אָֽנֹכִ֞י יְהֹוָ֤ה אֱלֹהֶ֙יךָ֙ אֵ֣ל קַנָּ֔א פֹּ֠קֵ֠ד עֲוֺ֨ן אָבֹ֧ת עַל־בָּנִ֛ים עַל־שִׁלֵּשִׁ֥ים וְעַל־רִבֵּעִ֖ים לְשֹׂנְאָֽי׃
וְעֹ֥שֶׂה חֶ֖סֶד לַאֲלָפִ֑ים לְאֹהֲבַ֖י וּלְשֹׁמְרֵ֥י מִצְוֺתָֽי׃

Music according to the deciphering key for the second separation in Exodus 20

Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura did her work with the Letteris Edition (19th century). Here is one of her manuscripts from the library collected by Jonathan Wheeler, her American Editor. Jonathan sent me the DVD of this library before he disappeared from the Web. He was a stern taskmaster but I did not interact with him very much. You will find this in the pdfs under articles on page 18 of a file called resume_key_english.pdf. You can see how different the accents are in that edition but the piece is recognizable.

Exodus 20 handwritten by Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura

Haïk-Vantoura's deciphering key applies (she says) without difficulty to the existing verse structure and the sometimes multiple accents per syllable. There are questions, however. How would one decide what sequence to apply two accents on one syllable? My program probably used the sequence in which the accents are coded if they are below the text. I don't know if such a decision is possible with a manuscript or a font image. Suzanne may have made a musical decision different from the ones I have let stand in my automated work. You can see her decisions if you read the whole PDF. When she speaks of first and second sign on a single syllable, I would assume she is reading right to left. That does not seem to be the case in the examples she gives above.

Automation would not have been possible for her. She died before MusicXML was invented. (And lucky her, she was not trained as a programmer but first as a musician, composer, and performer.) My solution using her approach is below. It is workable but I do admit, the split solution is also workable. I am grateful to have been introduced to it. There are other minor instances of two sublinear te'amim on a single syllable. Suzanne's solution applies there with good effect. It's as if the accent pair are a different sort of rhythmic ornamentation.

Haïk-Vantoura's solution. The deciphering key allows for all the existing accents without difficulty.

Doing mercy for thousands is more important for our character development than chasing te'amim. Maybe the music will help us read and act more truly.