A final note on tuning the strings

Yesterday I gave ChatGPT a copy of the spreadsheet for all the psalms. And this large language model attempted to analyze books two, three, and four all at once. It thought for a long time and then I got a message that I had used my daily processing limit.

I really should not have allowed it to start that possibly insoluble problem. But I have to admit I had not thought about analyzing major and minor intervals. That assumes the mode before you have it. Multiple recitation pitches means that we will have intervals besides those that are created by the ornaments. We would have to decide whether these intervals are the 'right' mode depending on the nature of the text.

The reciting notes themselves have their own characteristics. I have noted these before:

• 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.

I now add to the supertonic (f# in the 3 books) based on psalm 1, that recitation on this pitch has a sense of warning. And the frequent use of g in the three books for recitation will perhaps determine the use of g# in the psalms that do not have this pitch heavily used.

But the mode itself is the sharpening or not of the third (g#), the fourth (A#) or the sixth (C#) or the subtonic (d#). Nothing that I have yet found explicitly dictates one or more of these tuning adjustments. Therefor determining it seems to be subjective.

For example, I took a look at psalms 44 and 45 (Using the Hebrew numbering). 44 is a national lament, but 45 is a royal wedding song. There is a sudden change from misery to hope. Yet Haïk-Vantoura in her original handwritten score uses her major-minor mode for both. I chose the mode with the sharpened fourth (A#) for psalm 44 - a mode that befits a Jeremiah and essentially destroys the sense of rest on the mid verse cadence. This mode has consecutive semitones A# to B and B to C. It's the weird mode - and I think it should be avoided when the ambitus reaches to the C.

Today I asked Chat GPT this question and it just reflected my conclusion. This leaves me with the feeling that modes -- the way that Haïk-Vantoura defines them -- are indeed chosen by subjective means -- the musical idea of the arranging musician.

Even within the constraints of her deciphering key, we have scope for real musical interpretation. The words do not determine the mode. The music lets us escape from our reasoning about the words alone.