Interim interruptions

What did Haïk-Vantoura ignore or miss in the patterns of the te'amim? 

This negative question -- what did she miss -- is a brief post rather than a chapter in a monograph (I was going to say monologue since public interest may be low). Whether I will write a monograph is moot in any case since I am much more interested in getting the music out to the world in an updatable form. But every question makes me look a little deeper into the mechanisms of the Hebrew Bible and its cantillation tradition.

There are patterns in the copying practice from generation to generation that are causing me some more thinking time. Ten years ago I put out all the music in a raw form, directly mapped from Unicode to MusicXML and published by a Musescore 2 addon that allowed me to make PDF's and MIDI files from the XML without any intervention.

Years later I collected the PDF's into book length PDFs again just available for anyone who wanted to have them. But I can't recommend these copies any more without encouraging the user to check the melodic shape against the Aleppo codex. These copies represent the data that I have from tanach.us but that data has 1000's of additional silluq accents as discussed on this blog in previous posts and  most recently with a scholarly data expert who has some detailed knowledge that questions some aspects of my approach. The questioning is great. 

The questions that have been raised for me are these:

1. What is the usage of silluq, or metheg aka ga'ya? (U-1469). Can it be clarified? Can the changes in the manuscripts over the last 1000 years be decoded? I.e. what is the rationale? I need to start with a documentation of what words and accents are involved in the changes I have made. Are there predictable changes on words where we would not have an explanation to hand? Are there patterns to changes? Are there unnecessary and complex explanations?
2. Are there additional pairs of diacritics that always appear together? It has been suggested to me that legarmeh is sometimes significant in its impact on an earlier accent. I have not included legarmeh in my extracts. I have not paid attention to it. Separation is potentially a function that music would support. Rhythm is fundamental to music. I have never seen a legarmeh that I would have associated exclusively with one or other presumably adjacent accent. I need at least one verse where I can see if there are identifiable clues that predict similar structures in other verses.
3. What is the significance of pre or post positioning of an accent under the text? SHV preserves differences in ornaments over the text for similar accents: e.g. tsinnor and zarqa, qadma and pashta, geresh and azla (a name that SHV does not use -- she calls it geresh as does my Unicode guide). But she makes no distinction between tifha and its slightly displaced pair, d'khi. These being below the text, they each define the same reciting pitch. Possibly,if it were ambiguous, the pre-positioned d'khi would override a presumed continuation of the previous reciting note.
4. What significance is allocated to tifha vs tarha? Tarha is a new name for the accent to me. Tifha and tarha are both the same Unicode value and both the same shape. It makes no sense to give two separate functions to the same accent under a different name. A sign is always a sign of the same thing or who knows what to sing! "the signs always retain the same meaning" (p 30).

There are many names for these signs. SHV used as far as possible the names in the earliest documents, as noted by her American translator from the English book page 496:
 The attentive reader, familiar with synagogue chant or the grammatical rules used by Hebraists, will notice that the list of names given by Haik-Vantoura for the signs (cf. pp. 97-100) lacks several names found in every modern list of names given by Hebraists or cantors: azla, legarmeh, yetiv, debir, gaya or metheg, and so on. This includes the list given by Mayer Lambert in his treatise (cited by Haik-Vantoura as her source). Those graphical signs which have more than one name in the modern lists are precisely those which are found in more than one grammatical placement relative to the verbal text. In effect, modern specialists have chosen certain names (among the 80 or so found in the ancient treatises) which are found in all the early sources; their lists assign one of these names to each "grammatical accent" used in the text. Haik-Vantoura’s key assigns (from the same group of names) one name for each graphical form used; the names she rejects can be accounted for as later, secondary names added to distinguish between the different grammatical placements of certain signs. Since (as is acknowledged) the grammatical rules of the Masoretes are an arbitrary imposition upon the syntax of the verbal text, only a decipherment of the te‘amim independent of the names given to various signs could clearly demonstrate which names are ancestral and which were added by the Masoretes and later scribes. 

It will be clear that I am approaching this text with a very different perspective from traditional cantors and Hebrew students. There are undoubtedly things which I will not see given the music. I am skeptical of some of the modern explanations even when clearly stated now that I have seen the impact on transparency of the text of the music as deciphered. Yet, just as Copernicus and Galileo were talking about the same solar system, it is simpler to hear the music of the spheres thinking heliocentric rather than earth-centric. But perhaps I am just being eccentric.

Still I am curious as to why these changes were made. I will have to develop a form to see the differences and report on them in greater detail. I have a complete 'before image' of my current data. I will figure out a way to isolate the change to the accents and the position of this change in the text and to each affected word.  Many words repeat. 

For instance, לֹא is frequently (but not always) marked with a silluq in the WLC that is not in the Aleppo codex. E.g. in 2 Samuel 2 verse 19: There doesn't seem to me to be any rationale for the insertion of this silluq in the WLC. I can only assume that it was entered for a reason that is unconnected to music. Both are legitimate but the tone of voice changes if the music descends prematurely to the tonic. 

Before: וַיִּרְדֹּ֥ף עֲשָׂהאֵ֖ל אַחֲרֵ֣י אַבְנֵ֑ר וְלֹֽא־נָטָ֣ה לָלֶ֗כֶת עַל־הַיָּמִין֙ וְעַֽל־הַשְּׂמֹ֔אול מֵאַחֲרֵ֖י אַבְנֵֽר

After:   וַיִּרְדֹּ֥ף עֲשָׂהאֵ֖ל אַחֲרֵ֣י אַבְנֵ֑ר וְלֹא־נָטָ֣ה לָלֶ֗כֶת עַל־הַיָּמִין֙ וְעַֽל־הַשְּׂמֹ֔אול מֵאַחֲרֵ֖י אַבְנֵֽר

Similarly כִּי often appears with a silluq in WLC when it is without in Aleppo. Occasionally I have had to add a missing silluq - maybe a half-dozen times. My work has not been exhaustive. I checked for extra silluqs not for missing ones. 

So far I have changed 3,452 verses since 2023, the last time I exported my data for the file in question. Some of these are translation changes. Most of them are simply removal of extra silluqs. All I need to do is figure out how to sort and present this data with word and location context. I'm not set up for this problem at present. While this is a significant number of verses changed, it is a very small percentage of the accents themselves.

 (I feel like I am going through another final exam in my Hebrew journey. I'm nearly finished my project though, 88%. 111 107 chapters to go, 2 Samuel, and Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles. These volumes will supplement courses in Hebrew by giving learners the option of singing the text with underlying harmonic structures defined by the accents under the text. At the same time, they can compare several different ways of seeing and hearing the letters. Reminder, the first volume of 18 is available here.)