How to explain music

Satchmo is reported somewhere as saying, 'Man, if I gotta tell you that, you'll never know.'

Well Satchmo, we have a problem. The music got lost, and the grammarians have been trying to explain it for 1000 years. What can we do?

We have the text. We have the signs. People agree that these are hand signals. We have musicologists who have studied the signs, decoded their names and come up with explanations. We have tradition! And we have a language implying function: conjunctive, disjunctive, master, slave, hierarchy, and other terms like impositive, prepositive, and postpositive. These last three are a mystery. But there is no murderer yet.

I am not going to redo the research of others. And I will try and refrain from too much criticism in this post. What I want to do is to take a piece of music and use these terms to explain it, then use musical terms to interpret the explanation.

Here is the piece. How about Psalm 3. Here it is two musical lines at a time.

מִזְמ֥וֹר לְדָוִ֑ד

בְּ֝בָרְח֗וֹ מִפְּנֵ֤י ׀ אַבְשָׁל֬וֹם בְּנֽוֹ

The music is based on the signs over and under the Hebrew text. We will explain  verse 1 with the accent names and then dispense with this language since it is difficult to fathom and remember: 

• under the second syllable of mizmor, a psalm מ֥וֹר is the merkha, a line from the lower left to the upper right under the mem.
• under the second syllable of the second word (the vid וִ֑ד of David) is the atnach an upside down v.
• the next word (when he ran away) has two accents over the text, a revia following a geresh, a very common double sign in the three books at the beginning of the second half of a verse, called revia mugrash.
• the following word (from the face of) has a little greater than (less than if you read left to right) sign under the last syllable נֵ֤י called a mahpakh.
• The next word Absalom, has a sign called illuy, a little angle bracket, above its last syllable ל֬וֹם
• The last word, has a short vertical stroke under the nun, a silluq. Metheg has the same shape and the same Unicode character but has nothing to do with the music. This is a fundamental coding error for Unicode.

The phrase may then be described as merkha (conjunctive), atnach (disjunctive), revia mugrash, mapakh, illuy, silluq (disjunctive). These signs are said form a hierarchy. The emperors (atnach and silluq) govern the others. There is no hierarchy in music. Strike this term from the language.

How would you describe this musical phrase? The first half leads to the subdominant from the tonic. It is a phrase that can be sung as one, much as it is said as one, A psalm of David. The subdominant is a resting point. The singer may breathe and reflect on what has been sung. The rest of the phrase moves from the rest back to the tonic. Again it is sung in one breath. The sign that looks like a full vertical stroke is not part of the music.

There is no specified starting note, so the tonic is assumed, the note that is signaled by silluq.

Now let's put that into English musical abbreviations. 

The shape of the verse is e f# ^A ger-rev,C ill,e 5

The opening e is implied, the f# is merkha, the A is atnach, the ger-rev is an ornament, interpreted as a turn of sorts, the C is mapakh, the ill is an ornament, interpreted as the drop of a fourth, the e is silluq. I have retained the Hebrew names for the ornaments.

The 5 indicates that there are 5 occurrences of this sequence of accents in the whole of the Hebrew Bible, 23 thousand and a few verses. The number following the list indicates the frequency of the sequence.

To summarize, 

• The accents below the text determine the current reciting note. 
• The accents above the text are ornaments relative to the current reciting note.
• Every verse comes to an end on the tonic and begins on the tonic unless there is a defining accent on the first syllable.
• An accent always applies to the syllable it is attached to.

Look at verse 2 above: g e B ^A ger-rev,f# e 7

The first note of the verse is g because of the tifha under the text. If one reads the text: Yahweh, how multiplied my straits! Many arise over me, one sees that there is a need for a slight pause after the invocation of Adonai. A singer can figure this out. There is no need for the accent to do it. Yet the silluq is appropriate and the resulting leap of the 5th to a B via the munah (same angle bracket as the illuy but illuy is above the text) and thence to the atenach, A, where we rest again, gives a suitable shape to the question. Note that the silluq here has no pausal value. It is not an emperor but just another note in the phrase.

Psalms 3: 3-4

verse 3 e zar,d ole,f# C e shl,ill,e ill,e 1

רַבִּים֮ אֹמְרִ֪ים לְנַ֫פְשִׁ֥י

אֵ֤ין יְֽשׁוּעָ֓תָה לּ֬וֹ בֵֽאלֹהִ֬ים סֶֽלָה

Many say of me,
There is no salvation for him in God. Selah.
Perhaps you would rephrase my too terse translation to 'There be many who say of my soul.' That would give you more syllables to match the Hebrew.

This is a verse in two sections without the use of an atnach. The first section ends on the cadence on the supertonic f#. This is the same f#, same accent as in verse 1 but it is preceded by the ole (unique to the three books) and prepared in this case by a zarqa (turn) as Burns has taught us to observe. A zarqa or a revia (a mordent) may prepare an ole, and each can be used on its own as well.

The second phrase moves from C back to the tonic with a number of accents ornamenting the descent from the C (signaled by the same accent that signaled it in verse 1). Note that both g's in the descent are not changes in reciting note, but repetition of the illuy. Note also that there are spurious e's in my abbreviated text. These are not silluq but pronunciation assists. My program has fuzzy logic to distinguish silluq from metheg. (I am glad to see it worked here. The vocal line would be the poorer by changing the reciting note to an e.)

Note that verse 3 is unique in its form. But verse 4 has 68 verses with the same form.

verse 4 e B g B ^A ger-rev,f# e 68
But you, Yahweh, a shield about me,
my glory, and lifting high my head.
I think verse 4 is pretty straightforward. We move from silluq, our starting position via a number of accents, none of which is primarily conjunctive or disjunctive - I expect we can discard this language now - to the atnach, a rest point. Then we have the common revia-mugrash on the rest note, then a smooth movement back to the tonic.

Psalms 3: 5-6

Verse 5 g B ^A e pas,g B e 2
My voice, to Yahweh I call,
and he answers me from his holy hill. Selah.
This verse starts again with an accent that sets the reciting note before any voice is heard. This may be simply that the word is accented on the first syllable and no upbeat is required. It often signifies, however, that the verse is connected to the prior verse. There are many possible reasons for such a connection as I have noted in other posts.
Again, the verse is in two parts to the rest on the subdominant A. And it returns after a recitation on the rest note back to the tonic by way of B (munah, same note, same accent, no surprises).

Verse 6 e f# rev,e ole,f# ^A g B e 1
I lie down and I sleep.
I awake,
for Yahweh supports me.
This verse is in three parts. Note the cadence on the second syllable of shanah. Without the recognition of this cadence, we would lose the gap between I sleep and I awake. The second phrase is one word. The return via a phrase similar to verse 5 expresses confidence. There are no disjunctives or conjunctives here - simply musical lines and cadences. And they always fit admirably. I have looked at thousands of verses in detail. There is no conflict between their sense, their parallels, their grammar, and their music. The music is often surprising. Long melismas will not replace such consistent simplicity.

Psalms 3: 7-8a

Verse 7 e g f# ^A f# ger-rev,B e 2
I will not fear the multiplicity of people,
that surround set over me.
In contrast to verses 1, 3, and 5, the recitative in verse 7 beginning the second part of the verse is not on the rest note but on the supertonic, f#. You can see that ornaments relative to the reciting note allow them to be much more expressive than ornaments at a fixed pitch.

Verse 8 zar,C pas,zar,C rev,e B B ^A g B e 1
Arise Yahweh. Save me my God for you strike all my enemies on the cheek.
The teeth of the wicked you break.
The pashta and revia expect a pause as part of the ornament. It comes out of the music and its match to the words. The zarqa is disjunctive in this usage only as it applies to the whole word and not to the syllable it is on. Hence the words prepositive, postpositive, and impositive. Singers do not need to be told that there could be a pause between Arise and Yahweh. A slight pause, not necessarily a breath. It's in the music.

Have we solved the mystery? Not all of it, but we can certainly incarcerate those words. They are guilty of murdering our understanding.

Verse 9 e f# ^A e g B e 11
Of Yahweh is the salvation.
On your people your blessing. Selah.

Psalms 3: 8b-9

Why do some ornaments only occur in some places? Why are phrases shaped the way they are shaped?  

They fit the words well. They conform to the grammatical expression without needing to be explained. The music of a cantor will express both sense and tone of voice.

I think it is curious that the cadence on the supertonic (f#) is prepared by revia or zarqa. Perhaps this is why they are used: to let the singer manage the pace and warn the listener. There are many other usages of the ornaments in the vocal line. Sometimes they highlight specific words in a passage. One simply has to study examples and perform them to be alerted to them. In the Psalms, the music is often used to show the strophic structure of a whole Psalm. These shapes are really made clear using Haïk-Vantoura's key.

As William Byrd once said, Since singing is so good a thing, I think that all should learn to sing. 

And to read music. And to sing with the spirit and the understanding also.