The Hebrew Bible is not an easy task to learn for a non-Hebrew speaker who was not raised in the Hebrew tradition. This is not my 'excuse'. But it is important to know. Because there is a tendency that English readers have to think we know what is there in the Bible even in our ignorance, and when you think you know already, it certainly inhibits learning. (The risk is there for everyone.)
I have checked out all the so-called zarqa accents in the prose books in the Leningrad codex. It turns out that there should not be any. The accent called zarqa does not occur in the prose books in mgketer.org. I corrected all of them to tsinnor. It's a minor change in the melody using Haïk-Vantoura's deciphering key but it does reinforce the separation of the two sets of accents a little more. (Alas, if we eliminate zarqa, what becomes of the zarqa table!)
I have also experimented with inserting the legarmeh into the text in Calibre. Hebrew typing has many problems in that environment. I could define three bugs at least -- can't type inline, can't use the onscreen keyboard, and there are some problems with marking the text and pasting when words are connected by a makaf. I have workarounds. But legarmeh is ignored in the SHV deciphering key. I think of it as an editorial suggestion of a pause -- maybe in some cases a pause of a few billion years of imaginary time. I could illustrate this with Genesis.
Legarmeh in Genesis 2. Let the performer add an editorial tick where there is a dramatic separation. |
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And legarmeh is also seen as contextual for some other accents. I understand that sequences can be contextual, but how much context, how much read-ahead, how many sequences of accents are there that would have such an effect? And why would anyone have developed a musical notation in this way? I don't know. The appeal of the SHV deciphering key is that it is immediately transparent to a musician. It is her thesis that there are no accents that require the reader to change their mind after reading the next accent. Appeals to context are obvious from the musical line. Nonetheless, legarmeh could be a useful sign and I should probably not have omitted it in the section of my tables with consonants and cantillation accents only. [adding it I will as I write a little about each volume -- the more I see it the better I like it -- Legarmeh is like Talmud in a stroke -- I could use some proof readers if anyone is interested... not that I'm expecting much for nothing but love.]