It is difficult to put into a few words the extensive testing she did to arrive at her synthesis. That one should require a musical mind to do this is hardly surprising. She herself testifies of a long manual process of testing possibilities. In my own book, I have done a thorough statistical analysis of accent patterns and also have explained her approach against the opinions of the last 1000 years and its vastly superior explanatory and acoustic power.
Humans are slow to respond and slow to change when they are sure they have an answer that can make them feel right and defend against any arguments against their established opinion.
You can see her careful approach in this image of Psalm 96. She always sang the Hebrew. In the case of the Psalms it is a strict syllabic rhythm.
An extract from SHV Psalm 96 ms - You can hear a performance at this link. |
You can note some differences in the reciting note because SHV was using the Letteris Edition (c. 1890s) of the text whereas I have used the Leningrad codex directly. And it happens that scribes, not understanding what the signs meant, over the centuries have added methegs to some words (for reasons of pronunciation) and they (methegs) looks the same as the silluq, which is the tonic (according to her inferred key). My programming attempts to distinguish these two signs, but it is a soft logic. The Aleppo Codex is our best source, but it is not available by web service or even in a Unicode form.
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