The ladder, part 1/5, Introduction

I continue to look at Burns' work¹ for clues as to what he discovers from sequences of accents. I remain convinced that an approach that fails to deal with the separation of accents under the text from those above the text is missing a major component of the music, but I know Haïk-Vantoura did similar analysis to Burns and was very discouraged. (Listen to this recording from NPR Morning Edition from 1986) Her breakthrough came with recognizing the presence of a modal scale in the accents under the text.

I have suggested we need a ladder to get out of the pit we are in when we see only sequences of accents. Describing the ladder is a long process, so I have divided it into five parts. They will appear each day until the first of February.

• Introduction, 
• Going up to the subdominant, 
• Going down from the subdominant, 
• Verses without a rest on the subdominant,
• and further subdivisions for long verses. 

The ladder that will take us from sequences to notes would be a first trial mapping of notes to the accents under the text. I don't have to do this trial because Haïk-Vantoura has done one for me, so let us explore its capacity to 'explain' the music.

Perhaps the first question about this subset of the accents (those below the text) is: which accents are most frequent, and where? Silluq terminates 99.99% of the verses. Atnah is in 93% of the verses and always at a particular hiatus in the thought. Here is complete agreement among all parties. Now translate the two accents known to be the emperors to tonic and subdominant, and for a musician, the immediate result is a creative response. Aha - this I understand.

Starting off with the 'base' of the ladder. The individual accents below the text occur as follows in this many verses. (Some of course will occur more than once per verse, of which much more detail later).

Note	Accent Name	Count of Verses
c	darga	3,063
d	galgal, (tevir)	7,186
e	silluq	23,195	(2 missing, but there are several where silluq is not the final.)
f	merkha	19,411
g	tifha, (d'khi)	21,894
A	atnah	21,559
B	munah	19,087
C	mahpakh, (yetiv)	10,639

Now consider the first combinations. Musically, I would expect a number of common sequences of approach to the subdominant and back to the tonic.

Here is the list showing how often the sequence of a pair of notes occurs by itself on the way to the atnah:

Sequence	Accents	Freq	(Ref)
e A	e-sil A-atn	48	...
g A	g-tif A-atn	34	...
B A	B-mun A-atn	20	...
f A	f-mer A-atn	14	...
C A	C-mph A-atn	1	Proverbs 1:9

Notice that c A and d A never occur as a phrase on their own to the mid-point of the verse.

Similarly there may be just a pair of notes returning from the atnah.

Sequence	Accents	Freq	(Ref)
A e	A-atn e-sil	670	53 in the 21 books, the rest in the 3 books
A f	A-atn f-mer	4	the 3 books only
A B	A-atn B-mun	1	Psalms 31:20
A d	A-atn d-gal	1	Judges 13:18

There are two verses that lack any accent after the atnah: Numbers 25:19 and Psalms 37:32. In the sequences above, emperor touches emperor directly (A - e) in 670 verses. And it is remarkable that an outlier or two stand out. The six exceptions are unexpected. The music is still workable.

Psalm 74:17, example of an unusual ending to the verse.
This example was an error in the WLC -- correction is אַתָּ֣ה הִ֭צַּבְתָּ כָּל־גְּבוּל֣וֹת אָ֑רֶץ קַ֥יִץ וָ֝חֹ֗רֶף אַתָּ֥ה יְצַרְתָּֽם which allows a return to the tonic on the last syllable. ( noted 24-07-12)

And we should realize that there may be as few as 2 or 3 syllables in these examples (e.g. Genesis 15:8), or there may be a recitation on the tonic as in Proverbs 1:9.

Genesis 15:8 - A short first part of the verse

Proverbs 1:9 - a 2 note phrase C A with ornaments, followed by a 2 note phrase with ornaments.

This shows us that there is no fixed hierarchy or fixed set of servants, or fixed task for these so-called servants. Two emperors may exist without any servants. And servants or masters may begin a phrase, initiate a verse, even connecting to something that has gone before. Servants can even begin whole books. The connotation of subordinate to master is imposing a misleading metaphor.

To be continued ...

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(1) Jeffrey Burns, The Music of Psalms, Proverbs and Job in the Hebrew Bible: With an
Audio CD. Jüdische Musik 9. XIII + 169 pp. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 2011. Initial post here.