Friday 18 September 2015

Sequences of ornaments

You might have guessed I would try this. What sequences do the ornaments appear in when they are used? It is one thing to count them by type, but it is how they are used together as well as how they are used rarely that will mark their effect on the music. This exercise has also uncovered a dozen or two verses where my data needed adjusting and the music needed updating and I have done this at the shared public locations.

Here is a first table for before the mid point of a verse.
Ornaments  Occurs Gen Ex Lev Num Deut Josh Judg 1Sam 2Sam 1Kng 2Kng Is Je Ezek
none 3231 420 343 199 329 236 115 114 146 181 144 137 377 255 235
qad, 139 18 11 9 18 8 5 4 6 4 14 5 16 12 9
qad,ger-rev,qad,z-q, 139 13 10 7 18 6 11 8 12 9 9 5 5 12 14
qad,qad,z-q, 614 69 36 28 40 19 30 18 43 27 48 31 92 66 67
qad,z-q, 2028 194 179 131 175 120 59 89 124 91 80 83 319 202 182
qad,z-q,qad,z-q, 214 24 15 18 10 11 9 19 15 8 18 10 10 17 30
qad,z-q,z-q, 165 21 18 12 10 11 5 9 12 8 8 4 10 19 18
rev, 202 20 13 15 21 19 13 9 10 15 16 5 14 16 16
rev,qad,qad,z-q, 210 31 16 12 12 17 13 6 8 10 13 12 17 16 27
rev,qad,z-q, 662 80 51 35 50 44 34 22 40 38 34 35 56 67 76
rev,qad,z-q,qad,z-q, 101 7 6 3 5 5 2 5 6 1 10 8 8 17 18
z-g, 274 49 14 15 24 18 9 7 13 14 15 17 20 26 33
z-q, 844 105 60 48 86 71 30 49 49 39 38 38 78 86 67

Sorry no music. Notation is hard to manage in a table. I have abbreviated all the ornament traditional names. And I have not translated them to musical names.

The traditional names in the above are qadma, geresh, revia, zaqef-qatan, zaqef-gadol. Only these five appear as frequently in sequence - in more than 100 verses in the first 15 books.

  • qadma sounds the note above the reciting note and returns to the reciting note, 
  • geresh sounds the note a third above the reciting note and returns to the reciting note, 
  • revia may be a trill or a mordent starting on the reciting note,
  • zaqef qatan is a mordent - sounding the note below the reciting note and returning to the reciting note,
  • zaqef gadol goes down the first note and then the second note below the zaqef qatan.
These are how I interpret Suzanne Haik-Vantoura's work. I feel the work on the ornaments is less certain than her work on the signs below the text.

Still - we learn something from this exercise: qadma + zaqef-qatan is a very frequent combination. 

Here are the stats for after the cadence. All the same patterns appear. Note the frequency with which there are no supra-linear signs. This was one of the main reasons that SHV determined that the sublinear signs were more significant than the signs above the text.

Ornaments  Occurs Gen Ex Lev Num Deut Josh Judg 1Sam 2Sam 1Kng 2Kng Is Je Ezek
none 5177 667 485 414 534 305 220 222 254 218 275 252 434 458 439
qad, 139 6 15 15 10 10 9 7 9 10 6 10 7 18 7
qad,qad,z-q, 671 68 55 34 44 44 28 30 34 36 40 26 103 59 70
qad,z-q, 2249 188 167 116 174 174 75 84 139 88 113 77 355 266 233
qad,z-q,qad,z-q, 116 18 8 6 12 7 3 0 8 9 5 8 11 15 6
qad,z-q,z-q, 114 16 12 6 7 10 3 9 8 6 5 5 7 11 9
rev, 286 18 27 16 29 23 10 5 14 17 33 38 15 27 14
rev,qad,qad,z-q, 167 17 12 7 28 15 6 9 7 8 9 9 15 13 12
rev,qad,z-q, 494 54 44 16 43 31 22 21 32 39 28 29 44 47 44
z-g, 312 49 32 14 43 15 10 14 22 13 11 15 20 25 29
z-q, 1228 161 111 67 82 76 41 59 93 57 79 72 112 117 101
What about the less frequently used ornaments. I have noted in the past how particular words and concepts in a passage are annotated with musical flourishes. The passages highlighting the weapons (sword and stone) with the talsha in the David-Philistine battle are a good case in point. These rarer accents will follow in a subsequent post when I figure out how to present their rarity.


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