The Canon as Musical Memory: Thematic Recollection in the Teʿamim

 Now here's an idea I hadn't yet thought about exactly. The key will be finding the right set of differences in the use of the te'amim across the books of the canon.

Abstract:

This paper will propose that the teʿamim—the cantillation signs of the Hebrew Bible—encode an intentional network of musical memory that links the canonical books through recurrent motifs and tonal gestures. Statistical analysis of verse openings across all biblical books shows that passages beginning on a pitch different from the default tonic e, or with an ornament on the initial syllable, show differences in patterns in Deuteronomy, the Latter Prophets, and parts of the Writings e.g. Qohelet, that differ significantly from earlier and later narrative prose. These sections of the 21 prose books written in and around the years of exile use this technique as frequently as it is used in the three poetry books. Selected case studies will reveal some deliberate musical echoes forming a chain of tonal recollection across the canon. These findings will suggest that the composers who applied the accentual system acted as musical exegetes, using melody to preserve theological continuity and to invite interpretive listening. The Hebrew Bible thus emerges as a polyphonic composition. Its books converse not only through words but through remembered sound.

Well, phew, that's generated and edited after 'months of effort' in my spare time of course, training my LLM assistant with multiple props, prompts, and examples. The excessively flowery outline of the paper is too much to share and a bit more effusive than my style allows. However, I am looking for bridges from the te'amim to textual criticism, musicology, and theology in ways that could change how we traditionally view the accentual tradition — not as a punctuation and syntactic system, but as a living musical architecture of memory. I know that we need to change on many fronts.

The outline, of course, has to address all the possible objections to such a study -- but here's some raw data that seems to me to support the effort required to do this. (Not that this particular swan could have the time to do it... but we'll see -- I just night restart some blogging.)

I have finished my 18 volumes. None of them is available for purchase yet. Perhaps they will only be available as gifts. But my initial essays briefly describing the music of each volume have led me to the conclusion that if I could show that the techniques as they have been transmitted to us in the 10th century contain variations in usage that point to different composers and different times, then we could theorize that they are more ancient than an imposition onto the Masoretic text.

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Nice chart generated by my assistant.
At least it lets you know a breakdown of early, transitional, and late texts in the canon.

I have used a breakdown of early compared to late books largely on canonical order, but as can be seen in the following analysis of contours (shape based on the sequence of accents under the text), my categorization does not collect together the compositional techniques used in the different books. On this one measure, they are strikingly different.

Ezekiel and other books from the exilic period with notes beginning a verse that are not the default tonic (e) are below compared to the percentages in other books. What emerges may define a division in the usage of the accent system within the 21 books, one that is conservative and the other that is more like the musical techniques used in the poetry.

What stands out in the first group is the book of Deuteronomy. Clearly, this was written by a different composer from the earlier books of Torah. What if new compositional techniques were developed during the exile? Perhaps Deuteronomy, only found at this time used these new techniques of recitation. Deuteronomy is certainly an outlier in the first 11 books. It is clear that the later prophets use a different technique also, even if their language has fewer Aramaic influences.

Books dated to before the exile Torah
Book	Total Verses	Starting pitch<>e	%
GENESIS	1533	78	5.1
EXODUS	1213	81	6.7
LEVITICUS	859	87	10.1
NUMBERS	1289	140	10.9
DEUTERONOMY	959	140	14.6
Books dated to before the exile Former Prophets
JOSHUA	658	65	9.9
JUDGES	618	17	2.8
1 SAMUEL	810	19	2.3
2 SAMUEL	695	30	4.3
1 KINGS	817	45	5.5
2 KINGS	719	47	6.5
Books dated to before the exile Later Prophets
ISAIAH 1-39	766	126	16.4
JEREMIAH	1364	210	15.4
HOSEA	197	32	16.2
AMOS	146	26	17.8
OBADIAH	21	1	4.8
MICAH	105	17	16.2
NAHUM	47	12	25.5
HABAKKUK	56	12	21.4
ZEPHANIAH	53	8	15.1

For books dated to the transitional period between early and late Biblical Hebrew, the average number of verses with a starting pitch different from the tonic is 12%. Drop Ezekiel from this list and the average becomes 18%. Some averages without the outliers are called for. If we confine ourselves to three periods, and group the books by the characteristic of allowing a different starting pitch from the default tonic, we can ask additional questions related to composition style. The questions are tempered by other considerations like the setting of larger thoughts in groups of verses. These are expressed in stanzas in the poetry and their equivalent, sections and paragraphs, in the prose of the later prophetic books.

Books dated to the years of the exile
ISAIAH 40-66	525	100	19.0
EZEKIEL	1273	104	8.2
JOEL	73	10	13.7
JOB (Prose Sections)	72	12	16.7
LAMENTATIONS	154	26	16.9

A scan of the following table shows a few of these books are outliers, particularly Qohelet on the high side.

Books dated to after the exile
JONAH	48	2	4.2
HAGGAI	38	8	21.1
ZECHARIAH	211	34	16.1
MALACHI	55	5	9.1
SONG	117	19	16.2
RUTH	85	3	3.5
QOHELET	222	66	29.7
ESTHER	167	14	8.4
DANIEL	357	25	7
EZRA	280	16	5.7
NEHEMIAH	405	17	4.2
1 CHRONICLES	928	59	6.4
2 CHRONICLES	822	50	6.1

It is very clear that the poetry stands apart with respect to the use of the opening pitch of a verse differing from the tonic. Most of the later prophets and some of the writings share this technique.

PSALMS	2527	680	26.9
PROVERBS	915	316	34.5
JOB (Poetry)	998	292	29.3