Can we get to know these accents from the Hebrew Bible as old friends? Then we might learn how they interact together and with the words and other gadgets - rhythm, silence, and ornamentation. Then we might see into the mind of the composer(s), interpreter(s) and their usage of the musical motifs they had at their disposal.
In a previous post, I looked at recitation pitches, c d and C. I hope to be able to develop a way of describing the music embedded in the Bible. Now I move to the five middle notes, e - tonic, f# - supertonic, g - mediant, A - subdominant, and B - dominant and a bit more of C, and their roles in the creation of the story.
We have some knowledge of the tonic e (silluq) already through previous posts so let's see if I can summarize it: The first note of a verse is the tonic unless it is overridden. Every verse ends on the tonic. If you find a verse in any copy of the Bible that fails to close with a silluq, check it against the Aleppo codex and you will find it does end with a silluq. This post on Psalm 2 from 2021 shows how the presence or absence of the tonic on the first note of a verse illustrates one of the ways in which the music follows and reveals structural relationships in the text. A more recent introductory post here shows the overall harmonic structures of verses. These are all background to the next part of the search for the rationale behind the process of composition.
So imagine you are going to compose the story of the book of Ruth. That is your entire libretto. You are limited to the notes and ornaments that are part of a tradition that you have been trained in. What is your approach?
With the analysis of just a few verses, some patterns emerge that show the opening interval reveals narrative structure in Ruth 1.
Verses 1, 2, and 4 begin with silluq-munah. I read this as an opening interval of a fifth. Perhaps you remember the opening of the Lamentations, e B. And that the opening of a fifth is the first natural harmonic of the shofar. Munah seems to be the note of announcement and narrative whether of good or ill and the recitation note for story. If indeed it corresponds to B as Haïk-Vantoura has in her deciphering key, this harmonic dominant is very suitable for such a purpose in general.
Verse 1 begins with a relatively common first phrase shape: e revia, pashta B zaqef-qatan. 171 verses begin like this. If I drop the z-q and the B it only adds 100 or so to this total, so the beginning is not unique, but only accounts for 1.4% of the verses outside of the poetry books. Revia, followed by pashta is common, occurring 2,247 times only in the prose books, 13 times in Ruth, five of them imitating Ruth 1, verse 1.
Verse 2 begins with e B but immediately returns to the home base of e for a long recitative with ornaments describing the family. Why does the narrative rise for the description of the sons? Is it in anticipation of trouble coming?
Verse 3 introduces the first death, a lower brief recitation on the supertonic, f-natural (mercha) in this mode. Verse 3 is without ornamentation.
Verse 4 announces their life over 10 years in Moab. Note the move to the tonic for the word Moabite. This drop will recur in a similar context in chapter 2.
Verse 5, beginning with e f, like verse 3, reveals the death of her two sons.
Verse 6 is the first of several verses to begin e C. The high C has been used already in the previous verses, but not at the beginning. This verse reflects Naomi's resolve after hearing of relief from the famine.
Verse 7 reverts to e B, moving the story forward.
Verses 8 and 9 also begin with e C, continuing to reflect the turmoil that three deaths have brought to the three women. Did Naomi know that Moabite widows would find life difficult in Israel, bread or no bread?
You will have noted the poignancy of the g#-f interval as part of the default mode for the prose. Tifha, g#, figures frequently in the last two or three notes of a verse. Typically these are short recitations as part of the final approach to the tonic, or as a leading tone to or away from the atnah. An opening interval of e g# begins the whole story in Genesis 1, a verse that is mimicked in Job verse 1, and in other places we have seen, like the antiphon in my setting of Isaiah 12 (verse 3).
In Ruth 1, we find this beginning e g# in this chapter only in verse 10. In the narrator's voice, it continues the conversation between Naomi and her daughters-in-law. There will be additional uses of this opening two notes silluq tifha, in chapters 2 and 3.
The tenor of the section through verses 11 and 12 remains the high C, the note of Naomi's initial appeal to the women in verses 8 and 9.
In verse 13, Naomi continues her speech beginning with the interval e B.
In verse 14 the narrator continues with the same opening interval, Naomi announcing her desire for her daughters-in-law and the narrator moving the story along. The high C in the narrator's part highlights the emotion of the decision of Orpah.
In verse 15, Naomi continues her instruction to Ruth.
And Ruth responds in verses 16 and 17 with the highest density of ornamentation in the chapter, and a long recitation on the subdominant rest note, A.
Note that verse 18 uses e f as the initial notes, reflecting that even those deaths would not deter Ruth from her intent.
The narrator in verse 19 continues with the story interval e B, and briefly reflects the implicit acceptance of this agreement for the two of them, with a recitation on A, then moves on to a recitation on C to highlight the emotional response of the city.
Naomi's speech in verses 20 to 21 reminds me of Job, an honest complaint about trouble. What question was being answered in bar 211? The narrator closes the chapter with a verse beginning on e B, which seems to allow for narrative continuation.
These notes and note pairs are not confined to a single role or sense, but they do conform to some general senses to which we can almost assign descriptors. And we might consider if they teach us a sense of what the original architects of the music thought as they applied the scheme to the text, in whatever form it had been delivered to them.
