Some explanation of Zarqa and Tsinnorit - The Unicode History

This is one of the most famous, notorious mix-ups in the history of the Unicode Hebrew block, and biblicists, typographers, and software engineers have been wrestling with it for nearly three decades.

1. The Unicode Inversion Trap

In traditional Masoretic grammar and manuscripts:

1. In the 21 Prose Books: The accent called Zarqa (זַרְקָא) is strictly postpositive. Because Hebrew reads right-to-left, "postpositive" means it must appear at the end of the word—hanging over the far left edge of the final consonant (or off its left shoulder).
2. In the 3 Poetic Books (Sifrei Emet): The mark called Tsinnor (צִנּוֹר) or Tsinnorit (צִנּוֹרִית)—sometimes called poetic zarqa—is centered directly over the consonant of the accented syllable.

When the Unicode Consortium originally encoded Hebrew cantillation in the 1990s, they swapped the behavior and names:

• U+0598 was given the name HEBREW ACCENT ZARQA, but Unicode assigned it Canonical Combining Class 230 (Above—centered over the letter).
• U+05AE was given the name HEBREW ACCENT ZINOR, but Unicode assigned it Canonical Combining Class 228 (Above_Left—postpositive on the left).
• Because the Unicode Consortium operates under a strict Character Name Stability Policy, once a character name is published, it can never be changed or renamed. As a result:

• U+0598 is permanently stuck with the name ZARQA, even though typographically and historically its centered glyph belongs to poetic tsinnorit.
• U+05AE is permanently stuck with the name ZINOR, even though typographically its left-aligned postpositive placement is what prose zarqa actually requires.

The Unicode standard eventually added alias annotations to the specification (acknowledging 0598 = tsinorit, zinor), but digital databases (including the Westminster Leningrad Codex, Michigan-Claremont, and tanach.us) had to make tricky engineering choices about which code point to store for which accent.

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2. Why It Is not Easily Reproducible in a Dialogue

The reason it is impossible to see the difference in a standard browser text box or chat input comes down to font engines:

• Standard operating system UI fonts (Segoe UI on Windows, SF Pro on macOS, Roboto on Android) only have basic Hebrew alphabet support. They lack the advanced OpenType GPOS (Glyph Positioning) anchor tables needed for biblical diacritics.
• In a plain dialogue box, the browser's text shaper treats both U+0598 and U+05AE as generic non-spacing combining marks. It simply averages their bounding boxes and dumps both glyphs smack in the center of the letter (or awkwardly collides them with the consonant), erasing the distinction between centered and postpositive-left.

Only specialized biblical fonts with full Masoretic OpenType kerning—like SBL Hebrew, Ezra SIL, or Taamey Frank CL—will actually shift U+05AE over to the far left shoulder of the Alef while keeping U+0598 dead-center.

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3. How This Does Not Impact the Music

In my Genesis publication (Brief Notes on the Music, pp. 272–273, 275), I documented this anomaly:

• זַרְקָא zarqa** (U+0598 / 1432): a turn over the centre of the letter, with musical contour formula (-1+1-0), confined to poetry. In Aleppo, the prose occurrences drop to zero.
• צִנּוֹר tsinnor (U+05AE / 1454): a turn over the left side of the letter, with musical contour formula (-0-1+1).

Because the deciphering key assigns different melodic ornaments to the centered turn versus the postpositive left turn, this is one of the rare places where Unicode’s swapped naming could cause genuine musical confusion if someone trusts the character names rather than the actual manuscript placement

In my HTML table for ornament_usage_by_pitch.html, maintaining them as two distinct rows:

• TSINNOR (U+05AE / א֮) — dominant across the canon (1,204 occurrences)
• ZARQA (U+0598 / א֘) — poetic centered turn (144 occurrences)

...preserves the exact distinction that Unicode's naming convention confused. But in the new site for the exploration of The Hebrew Bible as Music, I have clarified the terminology somewhat even if under the covers there may remain some strings that are never read but do the right task anyway.

Can a bot answer this question?

Prompt: You are a Unicode expert -- please reference Unicode values in decimal.

You cannot distinguish metheg from silluq in Unicode. This is a severe problem for the music. A metheg will force the reciting note to the tonic (for convenience I name this note as e). But a metheg is a rather vague marking on a vowel. It has nothing to do with music.

Recently I identified about 20 errors in the Westminster Leningrad codex, all of them in the Hebrew word formed by this string אֵֽשֶׁת for the word for wife / woman aleph-shin-taf in its construct form. This string should not contain the code ֽ . This is not in the Aleppo codex in the Genesis 11 verse 29. And without checking I am sure all the others I have found are not in the Aleppo codex either.

I would like to know how to identify a metheg from its sequence in Unicode so I can correct the copyist errors that were made in the Westminster Leningrad Codex. I have corrected the error אֵֽשֶׁת to אֵשֶׁת in 20 verses.

One clue that the 'accent' is wrong is that it occurs on an unaccented syllable. How would a blind program know the grammar (construct) or that the 'accent' is on the wrong syllable. <End Prompt>

This was a long question. The bot went into a long loop trying to answer this prompt.

We then conversed through the several errors in the response. The bot may have been trained on errors, like confusing the sof pasuk with silluq and not realizing the failure of Unicode to distinguish silluq from metheg. But at the end of our conversation, perhaps when I finally asked the 'right' question, it came up with several reasons why a metheg might be included in a word. Rather good guesses I think, but all of them needing confirmation. Interestingly enough, I reread the paragraph in Lambdin, and contrary to my confused memory, it is actually quite clear and gives several specific examples. I wonder if I check them out in the data, will I see a spurious drop to the tonic, and will I see that they are lacking in the Aleppo codex? 

My final clarification: I just noted that your response is incorrect. The sof pasuq is 1475. This is not the silluq. Silluq is not a synonym for sof pasuq. The silluq is code 1469 -- it is confused in the Unicode system with metheg. Metheg is for pronunciation and silluq is for music -- pronunciation and music are non-overlapping domains. So perhaps my question should be - what are the conditions under which a linguist copying the Hebrew text would add a metheg to a syllable? We have seen one example in that word for wife / woman. <End Prompt>

This was a long question. The bot went into a long loop trying to answer this prompt.

ChatGPT's response follows. Note the underline -- my emphasis. The use of this symbol for silluq, a musical symbol, as an aid to phonetics is a contradiction. I need to run the guesses by an authority to see if the suggested uses are legitimate. But I'm not much closer to finding a way to eliminate them.

ChatGPT: The metheg (מֶתֶג) in Hebrew manuscripts is a cantillation mark used primarily for phonetic purposes, to ensure proper pronunciation and rhythm in recitation. It can indicate various linguistic features such as a secondary stress, a slight pause, or the elongation of a vowel. Here are some conditions under which a metheg might be added:

1. Phonetic Emphasis:

   • To provide a secondary stress within a word, especially when a syllable needs to be pronounced distinctly. This helps in clear and proper articulation.

2. Distinguishing Between Similar Words:

   • To differentiate between words that are spelled similarly but have different meanings or grammatical forms. For example, it may be used to distinguish between homographs.

3. Preventing Mispronunciation:

   • To prevent the reduction or elision of a vowel sound, ensuring that it is pronounced fully and clearly, especially in liturgical or formal recitation.

4. Syllabic Structure:

   • To mark a syllable that should be pronounced separately from the preceding syllable, particularly in complex or less familiar words.

5. Morpheme Boundaries:

   • To indicate the boundaries between morphemes, helping to clarify the grammatical structure of a word.

Specific Examples and Rules

1. In Certain Consonant-Vowel Combinations:

   • Metheg is often found in words with long vowels (qamatz, tsere, etc.) to ensure they are pronounced as long vowels rather than being shortened.

2. In Construct States:

   • When two nouns are in a construct state (smikhut), the first noun might receive a metheg to maintain its phonetic integrity despite the close connection with the second noun.

3. In Certain Grammatical Forms:

   • In some verb forms, particularly in the imperfect tense, a metheg might be added to emphasize the vowel sound in the prefix or in the root of the verb.

Besides this response, it outlined a program that I probably could make work in PL/SQL that would scan the text for methegs to see what the linguistic context is and whether there are patterns. Possible idea, perhaps? Not appealing to me at present -- too much uncertainty. I won't pursue the conversation because these statements lack a specific example. But I may follow up Lambdin -- even though it is a bit of a distraction from the music. I do have some code to eliminate spurious methegs from the music, but it is not specific enough. I'm not sure I can follow my own logic 12 years later!

Successions of Shem continued -- Genesis 11

 It's curious that we have a second recital of the children of Shem. And this part of the song has a pattern like the one in chapter 5, but a little different. The genealogy of Shem begins at verse 10. The genealogy of Terah begins at verse 27 and continues to the end of the chapter.

Verse 10, as we noted in a prior post links to something that has gone before--in this case to the genealogy in chapter 10. The dependency on the prior pattern in chapter 5 is to be heard in the phrase, 'and he had sons and daughters', 'viold bnim ubnot' a phrase of music that repeats exactly as in chapter 5, here in chapter 11, verses 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, and 25.

The refrain every two verses from 11 to 25 in chapter 11 of Genesis reflecting the same words and music from chapter 5.

It's not that the same words would necessarily have the same music -- this can be widely illustrated. Music is not like punctuation and the accents are not punctuation. Accents are music and music phrases the words, forwards and backwards, and provides refrains and other structural forms, but primarily, melodies expressing story and emotion and highlights. In this case, the setting of the number of years of each of the patriarchs is a varied musical phrase. Not too varied, as can be seen from the shapes. Verses 15 and 17 have the same shape. The first four, 11, 15, 17, 19, lack a B immediately preceding the subdominant ^A (atnah).

Verse	Approach to the rest on the 4th degree of the scale
11	e rev,e qad,B z-q,f g# ^A
13	e B rev,e qad,B z-q,B z-q,f g# ^A
15	e rev,qad,B z-q,B z-q,f g# ^A
17	e rev,qad,B z-q,B z-q,f g# ^A
19	e rev,qad,B z-q,f g# B ^A
21	e B rev,qad,B z-q,f g# B ^A
23	e B rev,d f g# B ^A
25	e B rev,qad,B z-q,e f g# B ^A

Yet this piecemeal approach to the music will limit the potential aural impact of the minstrel. The four sections with the lower timbre will be sung perhaps with a different emphasis -- more mysterious than proclamation. One of the even verses (18 Peleg) hase the same shape as the opening of Genesis 1:1 -- perhaps this indicates a new beginning for the families described. This true for Terah also (verse 26).

Verse 27 focusses on Lot. Then we hear that his father died before his grandfather. This prepares us for the complex relationship of Abram and his nephew Lot.

The music of verse 29 strikingly highlights the word wife, each time on a high C with an immediate descent of a sixth to the tonic. I have noted the accents above the text highlighting similar words and concepts in a passage. I had not seen an accent under the text highlighting paired words until this example. In fact the return to the tonic is an error in the text. The Aleppo codex does not have it in either name (wm / vwm). This kind of decision must be reviewed for all the spurious methegs that have entered the text through copying over the years. As even an introductory text like Lambdin will tell you, the use of metheg (same Unicode as silluq) is a problem. Metheg is an aid to some pronunciation issues (and not a very useful one), but it is not a silluq. My program makes a guess as to whether the silluq should be observed. In this case, it makes the wrong guess. I will now change the database to the Aleppo marking. So the tone of the verse is joyful rather than subdued.

Genesis 11:29 with the text of awt corrected to remove the spurious methegs.

Successions -- Genesis 10

We have something to see from Genesis 10 that will confirm the thesis of the role of the opening note of a verse.

Genesis is about births -- and here are a host of them to populate the storied earth. What sort of music does it make. It's odd to be describing music. These are not my favorite sections of the Bible. I don't know the stories or the names or what memories they might have carried for the people who wrote them. But if I was around a fire, listening to the minstrel, and hearing the recitation, I expect I might have been enthralled.

We have already heard some of this music. We began with toldot, which I have rendered as 'successions', now we are seeing a synonym, mwpkot, [in SimHebrew, w is sh, k is a strong h] which I have rendered as 'families'. But neither is 'generations', the word used in the KJV -- these are dorot, the plural of dor, as in the phrase ldor vdor - from generation to generation. 

This song is at times, a concatenation of names. So verses 2-4. Then verse 5 beginning with the qarne ornament explains what the prior list accomplished. verses 6-7 and a slight variation on Nimrod verse 8-10. Verses 5 and 10 each close a section and each one rises to a recitation on the 6th degree of the scale. Perhaps 11-12 would also be included by the minstrel in that section, a temporary culmination of the impact of Nimrod.

Let Nimrod, the mighty hunter,
Bind a leopard to the altar
And consecrate his spear to the Lord. (Christopher Smart liked this passage).

The list of tribes and children continues through verses 13-18 on low reciting notes c, d, e. In verse 19 we again hear the high C, bringing to an end the list of Ham's children. Verse 20 concludes the section with its backward looking colon (a role that can be played by any ta'am saying to us: remember what we have sung about). Opening on a proclamation on the dominant, it announces that you have heard the catalogue of the children of Ham. JB uses a past tense verb here "These were the generation of ..." -- reasonable but definitely biased to a reading sequence rather than a wholistic memory of the sound of the song. And the past tense in this translation is applicable to the act of reading, not the issue of the history or the form of the verb which remains present even though it refers to past times.

The text deals with the list of the three sons of Noah in reverse order. Shem is the last beginning in verse 21 and continuing to the end of the chapter. The high C on verse 25 highlights the children of Eber, Peleg and Joktan.

וּלְעֵ֥בֶר יֻלַּ֖ד שְׁנֵ֣י בָנִ֑ים שֵׁ֣ם הָֽאֶחָ֞ד פֶּ֗לֶג כִּ֤י בְיָמָיו֙ נִפְלְגָ֣ה הָאָ֔רֶץ וְשֵׁ֥ם אָחִ֖יו יָקְטָֽן		25 And to Eiver were born two sons, the name of the first Peleg, because in his days the earth was entangled, and the name of his brother, Joktan.
ch ulybr iuld wni bnim wm hakd plg ci bimiv nplgh harx vwm akiv ioqTn	9 22	vl/ybr ild wn\i bn\im wm h/akd plg ci b/im\iv n/plg\h h/arx v/wm ak\iv iqTn

The closing explanation of this section is a matter-of-fact low verse 30. Where the musical phrase sequence e f g# B ^A B e tar,rev,C qad,B z-q,f g# e is unique for verse 25, the phrase, e f g# ^A f g# f e, in verse 30 occurs 42 times in the Scripture. I doubt that there is a real significance to this count apart from the use of a lower timbre of the tone of voice. Verses 31 and 32 both begin on the dominant B, thus connecting themselves to the prior verses. Check out the comments on verse 32 in the earlier post of this series on the song of the genealogies in Genesis.

Sample chapter of a book?

This book may not be written by me. But it's there for anyone to do it if you have the impulse. I may be in a place to write it, but I'm in no hurry and I may not last long enough. The book I'm thinking of is on the impact of the idea of a deciphering key for the te'amim. Think the Mind of the Maker and communicating with ancient designers of musical notation. Creator to creator -- Performance to performance -- Energy to energy -- i.e. trinity and incarnation. You could even provide probabilities. Why did those engineers put a golden CD in the Voyager?

Oh well, this is a blog -- not a book. But there is a lot of data in it. My tags are fair but limited, but the search blog is comprehensive -- if a little too much at times.

Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura and I are not entirely in agreement about the interpretation and resolution of ornaments. She, for instance, allows her musical judgment to let an ornament just be a dip or a rise on a single note. Maybe. She also (sometimes) allows for placement of the accent to make a difference. Also maybe. Some aspects of design are more highly prone to copying error than others.

Here's her appendix note on Lamentations 1:1.

From The Music of the Bible Revealed

She and I disagree here. Her musical intuitions on a note by note basis are not programmable, at least by me.

I programmed my interpretation of the Unicode so my e-brain is not always fully attuned to the nuances of placement in a sign or identity of shape in the 2 cases where signs are the same above and below the text. This may be an error in my thinking and programming. Unicode, (see the coding here) even though deficient in managing little short strokes like silluq, has been more careful in distinguishing Geresh from Geresh Muqdam and Pashta from Qadma than I have been in my programming.

The above is slightly unreadable and somewhat out of its context - i.e. lacking in explanation. But this brief chapter is totally comprehensible - please let me know if you disagree. Especially if you would like to collaborate on a book. Anyway, at the time of pushing the publish button, I am still quite alive -- if more silent than usual. Onedrive embed is however quite unreliable. This chapter has been rewritten as a blog post. Please see the October 2024 replacement.

Double Merkha

One sign is interpreted by Haïk-Vantoura as both a change in reciting note and an ornament. This is the thin edge of the wedge to obscure the clarity of the design and lead to all sorts of off the wall melismas. I think it is an unsupportable move on her part.

I have not interpreted the double merkha ֦ as anything except a typo for a galgal ֛ . It almost looks to me like a bug in my program! I recall thinking it was a typo for a merkha ֥  - but that's not what is in my rather obscurely written code from 10 years ago. The difference is a d following the c - rather than an f. I know better than to claim my program was is or will be bug free. Creation is not bug free either.

It affects the interpretation of only 14 verses: 1 Kings (twice) - 10:3, 20:29, 2 Chronicles (twice) - 9:2, 20:30, Exodus 5.15, Ezekiel 14.4, Ezra 7.25, Genesis 27.25, Habakkuk 1.3, Leviticus, 10.1, Nehemiah 3.38, Numbers (twice) 14:3, 32:42) and Zechariah 3.2.

Here is her explanation of her interpretation:

Archive version of The Music of the Bible Revealed  (SHV p278)

Well - maybe she's got a point. Though I would challenge anyone to sing the mode she has used for this example. The idea that it is a change in hand-signal is obscure to me.

If in these 14 instances, you want to compromise the design of the system, feel free to introduce a note above the change in reciting note - but be warned - it is a compromise and not a necessary one. My automated rendering is as follows:

Hab 1.3 interpreting the double merkha as a galgal 
Just move the d to f to interpret as a merkha

Spec for translating Unicode to MusicXML part 3

The remaining ornaments (accents above the text) are a series of notes relative to the reciting note. 

In principle any melisma could be coded. Those for the Haïk-Vantoura deciphering key never require more than triplets and eighth notes.

Slur numbers cycling from '1' to '5' for this single line of music conform to the MusicXML spec.

Note that ornaments do not have any absolute pitches. They are all relative to the current reciting note.

Examples are in the music support files here. Also there are many of Haïk-Vantoura's original documents and books available here. There are other parts to my implementation defined several years ago, e.g. mode here. 

This is a difficult process because the ornaments are varied in names, hard to remember in Unicode, and not easily identifiable in the MusicXML. Triplets can be identified by searching for <time-modification>. Other eighth notes by <duration>3. Note that the note class is not a fixed duration when performing. All the performances in their raw form are recitative - though there will be strong rhythmic identities depending on the syllable pulses or narrative word rhythms in the language itself.

There are additional issues for an automated transcription app in the data that may be provided in a copy and paste from various sites: e.g. the coding sequence of vowels and cantillation, (these can be done wrongly) and various characters that are irrelevant to the music that may need to be replaced before parsing. It is possible to identify and display ketiv and qere but not really useful for the music. I coded this but eventually suppressed the feature.

Input requires at minimum, a line of text in Hebrew, a mode (can be determined from the book, one of the 21, or one of the 3, and for Job only, chapter, and for the narrator, verse#.) The mode can default or can be specified in some form. These could be handled with user settings.

	Ornament	Full name
֙	qad	qadma
<note><pitch><step>[reciting note]</step> <octave>[reciting note]</octave></pitch> <duration>3</duration> <voice>1</voice> <type>eighth</type> <notations><slur type="start" number="1"/></notations> <lyric number="1"><syllabic>[begin|middle|end]</syllabic><text>him</text></lyric> </note> <note><pitch><step>[reciting note + 1]</step> <octave>[of reciting note + 1]</octave></pitch> <duration>3</duration> <voice>1</voice> <type>eighth</type> <notations><slur type="stop" number="1"/></notations> </note>
֨	pas	pashta
<note><pitch><step>[reciting note] + 1</step> <octave>[of reciting note + 1]</octave></pitch> <duration>3</duration> <voice>1</voice> <type>eighth</type> <notations><slur type="start" number="1"/></notations> <lyric number="1"><syllabic>[begin|middle|end]</syllabic><text>[text]</text></lyric> </note> <note><pitch><step>[reciting note]</step> <octave>[reciting note]</octave></pitch> <duration>3</duration> <voice>1</voice> <type>eighth</type> <notations><slur type="stop" number="1"/></notations> </note>
֜	ger	geresh
<note><pitch><step>[reciting note]</step> <octave>4</octave></pitch><duration>3</duration> <voice>1</voice><type>eighth</type> <notations><slur type="start" number="4"/></notations> <lyric number="1"><syllabic>[begin|middle|end]</syllabic> <text>[text]</text></lyric> </note> <note><pitch><step>[reciting note]+2</step> <octave>5</octave></pitch><duration>3</duration> <voice>1</voice><type>eighth</type> <notations><slur type="stop" number="4"/></notations> </note>
֝֗	ger-rev	revia-mugrash
Example from psalm 1 measure 10 <direction placement="above"><direction-type> <words font-size="12"> &#1500;&#1461;&#1437;&#1510;&#1460;&#1431;&#1497;&#1501; </words></direction-type></direction> <note><pitch><step>A</step> <octave>4</octave></pitch><duration>3</duration> <voice>1</voice><type>eighth</type> <notations><slur type="start" number="4"/></notations> <lyric number="1"><syllabic>begin</syllabic> <text>lei</text></lyric> </note> <note><pitch><step>F</step> <alter>1</alter><octave>4</octave></pitch><duration>3</duration> <voice>1</voice><type>eighth</type> <notations><slur type="stop" number="4"/></notations> </note> <note><pitch><step>E</step> <octave>4</octave></pitch><duration>3</duration> <voice>1</voice><type>eighth</type> <notations><slur type="start" number="5"/></notations> <lyric number="1"><syllabic>end</syllabic> <text>tsim</text></lyric> </note> <note><pitch><step>F</step> <alter>1</alter><octave>4</octave></pitch><duration>3</duration> <voice>1</voice><type>eighth</type> <notations><slur type="stop" number="5"/></notations> </note>
֗	rev	revia
Example from Genesis 2:5 (prose -0-1; in poetry -1-0) <note><pitch><step>B</step> <octave>4</octave></pitch><duration>3</duration> <voice>1</voice><type>eighth</type> <notations><slur type="start" number="5"/></notations> <lyric number="1"><syllabic>end</syllabic><text>deh</text></lyric> </note> <note><pitch><step>A</step> <octave>4</octave></pitch><duration>3</duration> <voice>1</voice><type>eighth</type> <notations><slur type="stop" number="5"/></notations> </note>
֞	tar	tarsin
+2+0+2 example of a triplet (Gen 2:8) - reciting note is e - all other triplets are similarly coded. Given the mode, e.g. 'C4 D4 E4 F4 G4#A4 B4 C5 D5 E5 F5 ' ascend and descend the scale to get note and octave with a loop. <note><pitch><step>G</step> <alter>1</alter><octave>4</octave></pitch><duration>2</duration> <voice>1</voice><type>eighth</type> <time-modification><actual-notes>3</actual-notes> <normal-notes>2</normal-notes></time-modification> <notations><slur type="start" number="4"/> <tuplet number="4" type = "start" bracket="no" show-number="none" /></notations> <lyric number="1"><syllabic>end</syllabic><text>ta</text></lyric> </note> <note><pitch><step>E</step> <octave>4</octave></pitch><duration>2</duration> <voice>1</voice><type>eighth</type> <time-modification><actual-notes>3</actual-notes> <normal-notes>2</normal-notes></time-modification> </note> <note><pitch><step>G</step> <alter>1</alter><octave>4</octave></pitch><duration>2</duration> <voice>1</voice><type>eighth</type> <time-modification><actual-notes>3</actual-notes> <normal-notes>2</normal-notes></time-modification> <notations><slur type="stop" number="4"/> <tuplet number="4" type = "stop" bracket="no" show-number="none" /></notations> </note>
֡	paz	pazer
+2+1
֔	z-q	zaqef-qatan
-1
֕	z-g	zaqef-gadol
-1-2
֒	seg	segol
-1-0-1
֘	zar	zarqa, tsinnor
-1+1-0 - indicates that the ornament resolves to the original reciting note
֩	t-q	telisha qetana
+1+2+3
֠	t-g	telisha gedolah
+3+2+1
֟	qar	qarne farah
+1+2+3+3+2+1 pair of triplets all on the same syllable
֓	shl	shalshalet
-3-2-1
֬	ill	illuy
+4
֫	ole	ole
+3+0 poetry only. Ole-veyored is a combination of over and under accents - as cadence Two accents in sequence - example from Psalm 1 measure 4-5 רְשָׁ֫עִ֥ים   <measure number="4"> ... <direction placement="above"><direction-type> <words font-size="12"> &#1512;&#1456;&#1513;&#1473;&#1464;&#1451;&#1506;&#1460;&#1445;&#1497;&#1501; </words></direction-type></direction> <note><pitch><step>D</step><alter>1</alter><octave>4</octave> </pitch><duration>6</duration><voice>1</voice> <type>quarter</type> <lyric number="1"><syllabic>begin</syllabic><text>re</text></lyric> </note> <note><pitch><step>G</step> <octave>4</octave></pitch><duration>3</duration> <voice>1</voice><type>eighth</type> <notations><slur type="start" number="3"/></notations> <lyric number="1"><syllabic>middle</syllabic><text>sha</text></lyric> </note> <note><pitch><step>D</step> <alter>1</alter><octave>4</octave></pitch><duration>3</duration> <voice>1</voice><type>eighth</type> <notations><slur type="stop" number="3"/></notations> </note> <barline location="right"> <bar-style>dotted</bar-style> </barline> </measure> <measure number="5"> <note><pitch><step>F</step><alter>1</alter><octave>4</octave> </pitch><duration>6</duration><voice>1</voice> <type>quarter</type> <lyric number="1"><syllabic>end</syllabic><text>im</text></lyric> </note>