Monday 19 May 2014

Patterns of music, the law of requisite variety

Does the pattern of the first phrase in the previous post recur in the Bible?

There is at present no way to search for a musical phrase, i.e. a sequence of notes, or a sequence of te’amim without intervening notes. 

1 Samuel 2:6
However, I have found similarly shaped phrases in Hannah’s song in 1 Samuel 2, and within the Psalms the pattern of the first phrase of Genesis 1:1 occurs in Psalm 5, verse 4 (with an intervening ornament). 
Psalm 5:4

This was the search: find E-G-B-A (with or without the G#) where the position of B is greater than the position of the G and the position of the A is greater than the position of the B. [Turns out there are two Unicode elements for the G - so this is not so easy. When I get my data better setup for searching, I will try again. In fact I hope I will be able to look for patterns in a far more complete fashion some day.]

Are there a sufficient number of patterns of music to determine patterns of meaning? This is a question for operations research and the law of requisite variety.

From the point of view of the musical phrase, do you think there is a theological reflection in 1 Samuel 2:6 on Genesis 1:1?


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