A few examples of tsinnor and tsinnorit

Tsinnorit is a new name for an accent to me. I have always found the usage of the accent names inconsistent in all the books I have read (or seen and not read). The name is probably in some of the books I have looked at but I may not have noted it. Nonetheless, confusion or not, there is a pattern here, and it may lead to some insight into the mind of the ancient designer. Definitely the sign  ֮seen above as a sideways s often leads to a particular note. (But its not quite that simple).

Here's a collection of tsinnorit resolving to the supertonic.

Job 20:27 - tsinnorit (on the recitation pitch A) to mercha (f# in the poetry mode -- bars 29-30) preceding the final cadence on the tonic e

Psalms 118:25 - tsinnorit to f# twice: first from the reciting note on the third of the scale (bar 148) and before the subdominant A and again from reciting note f# before the final cadence on e

I see 17 additional examples in the poetry and that's all for the sequence tsinnorit-mercha. Mercha occurs independently also. The ornament preceding the f# may come on the reciting pitch A, g, or f# as seen above, and also on e and even from C (once) as in the following image.

Psalms 72:3 - shalshelet (bar 13) lifts up to tsinnorit on the reciting note C
before the subdominant (bar 15)

The following is an example of tsinnorit joined to the high C. This combination occurs 168 times in my data at present. and the sequence is often tsinnorit followed by C at the beginning of the verse. I had noticed these in previous years (even when I was following Unicode and miscalling it zarqa) because this ornament is often a help to the singer to get to the high note.

Proverbs 8:29 - getting to the high note by way of a tsinnorit.

There are 12 other instances in the poetry of tsinnor (not tsinnorit) preceding f#. There are 180 examples of tsinnor preceding d (galgal), 31 examples preceding e, and 22 preceding C, see Psalms 49:15 below. 

Psalms 49:15 containing both tsinnor and tsinnorit prior to C (mahpakh)

These are clearly different in WLC and its font. Not so clear in mgketer. There are an additional 22 instances of tsinnor with mahpakh following. I don't think the music is significantly different to try to verify these details. Here are the two in copy and paste form -- just highlighting the different placements over the letters.
mgketer.org  שַׁתּוּ֮  וַיִּרְדּ֮וּ 

tanach.us   שַׁתּוּ֮  וַיִּרְדּ֘וּ 

Anyway: I can see that this turn wherever it is placed on the letter often immediately precedes mahpakh which Haïk-Vantoura deciphers as the 6th above the tonic, C in her renderings of the pitches. It makes musical sense no matter which turn is sung. And the similar turn called zarqa and tsinnor may also resolve to d or e in the poetry books.

One more example.

Psalms 16:11 tsinnor preceding C (bar 64)

In the prose, I find 34 tsinnor resolving to e, 563 resolving to B, and 2 resolving to g (both in the 10 words -- special cases). Others may be followed by another ornament. I didn't find any leading to C or f.

It's hard to describe music this way, but one does ask why the designers of this system did not find easier ways to represent these hand signals. Maybe that's the clue -- music notation had not been invented, and the notation we have is limited to what the hands could signify. 

All this sort of detail is not my intent but I am glad I have been forced to pay a little more attention to it. My intent is limited to presentation -- so that the history of the Hebrew Bible that we have may be seen and heard in a musical form that is consistent with what could have been known at the time.