Jeremiah 28:1-2 - first view of the music

Having got to the library lobby here and scrolled through the bookshelves to the one I want here, then scrolling the shelf to download the two files I wanted, one for the previous post and the XML to load into my music editor, I am faced with reading a musical score and a Hebrew underlay derived directly from the text of the Hebrew Bible.

Opening the page of music for Jeremiah 28

How this is done is the subject of my book, The Song in the Night. For the sake of brevity, there is a key to the accents that simply works. It is too little known. It is a master key with a few variations. Every variation fits the lock, but not all variations are the best for every chapter.

What will I do to approach this music? It is a natural recitative. The dotted bar lines show where the major phrases are. They are marked by a change in the recitation note. This first bar is on the dominant. 

I have suggested in the past that 

recitation notes have an emotional character:

• The tonic (e) for the sense of home, 

• the subdominant (A) for the sense of rest, 

• the supertonic (f) for a briefer rest, (in the 3 books only) and always prior to the subdominant if both are in the verse,

• the dominant (B) for proclamation, 

• the submediant (C) for emotional appeal.

• It is rare to have much recitation below the tonic (low c, 21 books only, or d, all books).

• Recitation above the submediant is non-existent.

But suppose I don't read Hebrew. Look at a translation and map the verses and if you can, the words to the shape of the music. I have written a 10 volume translation for the music. It is of course an imperfect start but it is a real one. Here is the first verse.

And it happened in that year, in the beginning of the reign of Zedekiah king of Judah, in the fourth year, in the fifth new moon,
Hananiah child of Azur the prophet that was from Gibeon, said to me in the house of Yahweh in the sight of the priests and all the people, saying,

Knowledge of the Hebrew Bible in English is useful - but filled with unknowns. Who are these people? Who is speaking? Zedekiah - he's the king at the time. Hananiah child of Azur, he's the king's press secretary. 'me' is Jeremiah.

So the narrator, the unpopular prophet Jeremiah, is introducing the court prophet Hananiah. We have court prophets today as well.

I have laid out the verse in English with its characteristic pause at the mid-point of the verse. This is shown by the new line in the text above and by a // in the music at the end of bar 5 above.

The shape of the first verse is upbeat, recit on the dominant, shifting to the tonic when the king is addressed. Tonic, at home, is there a little irony here? Home is threatened. Zedekiah is king of Judah, the southern half of Israel. We do come to a pause on the new moon. The g# is characteristic of the default mode. Typically this works well for recitative in the prose books, the general class to which the book of Jeremiah belongs. (There are 3 poetry books and 21 prose books.)

The second half of the verse, bars 6 to 11 is highly ornamented for the beginning of a story. 

Chapter 27 gives the context and already warns the king and the reader by implication not to trust the court prophets:

And you, do not hear your prophets or your soothsayers or your dreamers or your fortune-tellers or your sorcerers,
when they say to you, saying, You will not serve the king of Babel.

Jeremiah specifically tells Zedekiah to: "Bring your necks into the shackle of the king of Babel and serve him and his people and live."

What are we to learn from this? Will the music help us understand the story and take a sensible approach to domineering powers?

Here are the first two verses with an English underlay. I note a different motif for the words of the court prophet compared to Jonah. I wonder how 'Thus says Yahweh' plays in other parts of Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 28:1-2, preliminary sketch

You can see there is a lot of work to be done! Just telling the story is a day's work for the simplest arrangement. If there is a cantata here, it is a week's work, at least, and the singers and dancers and players will need to rehearse.