Tuesday 10 September 2024

Analysis of recitation in the psalms

Some time in the past, around about 2012, I wrote a program that converts the Unicode of the Scripture available from tanach.us through its web service, into its musical score according to the deciphering key of Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura. 

I have examined this program and surprised myself as to how much data was present in the trace I used to debug the program. The program puts out a trace of every recitation, syllable by syllable. So I have created a table of recitation by book, chapter and verse, measure, transcription, pitch, ornament, syllable type, and count for each syllable and reciting notes.

It allow us to see but not divide the psalms by frequency of use of recitation notes to see if there are any patterns that might point to hints of the mode used. 

The overall result is that the most frequently used reciting pitch is -- strangely -- the mercha. f# is used for the recitation of 9,308 syllables in the psalms. The next most common is the munach, B, the fifth note of the scale, 8,496 syllables are sung on B. Then the third note of the scale, g, tifha, 7,377 syllables, and then atnah, A, 6,837 syllables, then the tonic e, silluq, 6,695 syllables, and then the sixth note of the scale, C, 2,714 syllables, and then last and least the subtonic, d, 617 syllables.

This doesn't tell us too much. I need to sort the psalms by frequency of use of the reciting notes. Is it possible that Korah, Asaph, and David could be distinguished by such a method? I don't yet know. 

Here are the 150 lines of the table in psalm sequence of the usage of each reciting pitch in its diatonic sequence. What patterns do you see?  This is of course lacking other clues, like attribution or other snippet of data in the inscription. I also have had to adjust the absolute counts to a percentage of the total syllables in the psalm. Here are the percentages of the use of each reciting note for each psalm. Are there significant correlations? That's a question I can't answer at the moment.





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