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Thursday, 16 February 2023

Music of Amos chapters 5 and 6

This process, at the current rate, will take a long time. 2 weeks for 6 chapters -- 100 verses. So for roughly 232 times that gives 464 weeks or about 9 to 10 years. Mind you I am not at home - we are in a hotel while the extension to the house is being built. I haven't reported on this project yet. It is somewhat difficult dealing with the regulatory issues from city, province and the federal government as well. So I can work on the music and translation only in odd hours. Still it would be nice for it to take even longer - if I got any feedback and criticism. And it would be much shorter if I had a serious volunteer or two.

I have made changes to 25+ verses in the last two weeks. Mostly to Amos. Mostly word order in the English. I looked to see the concordance changes that should perhaps be considered for similar phrases in other books. It's curious that the several word pairs that I checked were hapaxes (e.g. cawr preceded by the divine name, or yxmim preceded by ixa) in Amos. Another suggested a change in Jeremiah (house of autumn) - and the phrase I used there (autumn-house) would have had similar problems with the lyric underlay. Several changes were improvements in sense and concordance when compared with an equivalent phrase (house of ivory) in 1 Kings. Concordance on individual words is controlled - but on pairs of words I need to do some searching. And it could be that some books deserves some stylistic uniqueness. Also I think I understand the first 6 chapters better. The work is worth the time. Oh, and I also corrected a few mistakes.

So if you want to, please do comment on the translation - but do it as you see it in the music - after all, that's the point, to read for and with the music. It will, of course, demand more of your time than speed-reading and that trickster of associating verses that you shouldn't. If you would like to do some underlay, let me know which book or chapters you would like to do. I can produce the music with the English embedded by half verse. That makes the work quite focused.

Now - for the analysis: chapter 6 continues chapter 5. They are joined by the opening note, the sixth tone of the reciting note, that begins chapter 6. It is worth hearing this pitch for its sense of appeal - and it may indicate some emotion. In this case, the sense of longing that Yahweh expresses in these chapters is reflected directly in the words ascribed (see chapter 6 bar 56) and in the human dialogue (bars 65-81 - I struggle to find the right word for אָ֑פֶס on the rest note - in a sense that would parallel the 'Hush' of the following bar). Let us hear what else you discover. If you have some thoughts, do not remain silent.

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