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Monday, 28 February 2022

Delitzsch - music he was familiar with

I have the tools in my toolshed, now I must continue to pick them up and use them. This music in Delitzsch's Physiology and music in its meaning for grammar, especially the Hebrew, has little similarity to that of Haïk-Vantoura's deciphering key, but I must compare a few notes.

I don't intend to read the whole of this thesis, here's my guesses at some of the German with the help of some Biblical Scholars on FB and Google  - if I were to read through the whole thing I might even become more fluent in German!

It is true that those newly discovered means of physical observation are of greater importance to music than to grammar. But music engages with the grammar of Hebrew as it does with the grammar of no other language. (Aber in die hebräische Grammatik greift auch die Musik ein wie in die Grammatik keiner andern Sprache.)

The Hebrew grammar has the Old Testament scripture as its next challenge, (Vorwurf) and the text of this is verse by verse provided with musical signs which indicate the note value of the individual words for the singing performance; every verse of the OT.

The text forms a musical period regulated by these tones and consisting of antecedents and consequents with their cadenzas.

These tones are called accents. They are at the same time punctuation marks in that, breaking down into separators and connectors, bisect the verse, its two halves, and this sound and meaning ful sign-writing consists of about 30 different small figures and configurations (according to one count); that the accentuation of the 3 books, which are distinguished by their particularly melodic manner of delivery: Psalms, Job and Proverbs, follows a system which differs from that of the other books and that the sequence of accents in both systems is determined down to the last detail by fixed laws and is entirely arbitrary: so it is clear that it is no easy task to familiarize oneself with the subtleties of this character writing...

I allow myself, to cite but two examples, to doubt that even one of the greatest living grammarians, sitting here before me, could give an immediate answer to the question under what conditions a metheg in a connecting accent and especially in a Meajla [No idea what this word means] is transformed, or to the question according to which rules in the 21 and especially the 3 books Gaia is added to the Sheba at the beginning of the word i.e. the shortest vowel sound, with which the first part of the word is to be spoken, is given a tone length that enables it to carry the melody of the word.

Here we learn something of Hupfeld who "possessed the musical ability and inclination and knowledge to spend most of his time at the piano in the afternoon with spiritual music to refresh."

But who would have given an answer to questions such as why Mercha Patchta takes the place where Mehupnck Pashta should stand, and why Mercha Tebir should stand where Darga Tebir should stand, and why no Zakef should follow Pazer or Telisha — these are questions , to which the most shrewd mind, by logical standards, cannot answer; here such insight into the theory of composition as that Westphal was so fortunate to bring to classical metrics is the indispensable prerequisite

These are interesting questions for those who attempt to describe music in words without knowing the music! Perhaps they have to do with musical line, instrumental possibilities, and conventional cadences in the first and second temple periods. But how to decode the signs? Here an example comparative image of the music he knows based on these common but circular questions without end. Whether I attempt to solve the OCR German problems or not remains to be seen. But I have a good solution to the musical issue.

Lam 1:1-3 from Franz. Delitzsch ; Physiologie Und Musik in Ihrer Bedeutung Für Die GrammatikBesonders Die Hebräische

Compare with the version using the Haïk-Vantoura deciphering key. (I could not have developed the above music into a choral piece as I have done here with the music below.)

My starting point was this raw material:
Lam 1:1-3 Raw material derived from the Hebrew text


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