Developing a score from the music of the Bible

Here is an example of what I did to get from raw data to musical score. (All the scores in their raw data form, for the complete Bible, all 929 chapters, are available from this location.)

The possibilities are endless. You can hear Jonah (development described below) just less than 20 minutes in total, here on my YouTube channel. The full score is in a printable format in the prior post here. [I put this at the top since many of you won't get to the bottom and you will miss the treat!]

The raw data I have chosen for this example is Jonah 1:1 and Jonah 3:1.

וַֽיְהִי֙ דְּבַר־יְהוָ֔ה אֶל־יוֹנָ֥ה בֶן־אֲמִתַּ֖י לֵאמֹֽר

Jonah 1:1 Note the accents: They translate into the music. e qad,z-q,f g# e (qad = qadma, z-q = zaqef qatan)

Here is the verse in its raw form. (All scores in music XML are available as noted above, so you can import them into any music program like Musescore for your own development. I highly recommend this program.) What will we do to them as arrangers / composers?

Jonah 1:1 interpreted through the deciphering key of Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura

In the transcription, there is no 'time value' to the notes [I could have made them all eighth notes or all quarter notes] and the bar lines are only there to show a change in reciting note.

The accents above the text (two of them above), indicate an ornament. The accents below the text (three of them above) indicate a change in reciting note. There is an accent on the first syllable that is not highlighted. It is the default starting pitch but here represents the emphasis on the first syllable: in English And.

It's the beginning of the book of Jonah, why would one emphasize the first syllable?

וַיְהִ֧י דְבַר־יְהוָ֛ה אֶל־יוֹנָ֖ה שֵׁנִ֥ית לֵאמֹֽר

Jonah 3:1 The accents are different, so the melody is different. There are no ornaments. The notes of the phrase are e c d g# f e.

Jonah 3:1 interpreted through the deciphering key of Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura

I have made a number of choices. First when the Lord speaks or acts, I have signaled it with a trill in the accompaniment. The trill is suggested by the initial ornament. I have also used the 'sound of many waters' or multiple voices for the word of Yahweh. No soloist here.

Jonah 1:1 turns into a grand opening, (noting the accentuation of the first syllable):

Composing to Jonah 1:1

Jonah 3:1 is quite different, though the trill is still there as a signal. 

Jonah 3:1 after some arrangement of the melody.

The wider interval in the harp indicates the movement of the sea as heard in Jonah 2. The harp is an important interpreter. As Psalm 33 instructs, Give thanks to Yahweh on the harp. Here is a part of a chorale I have started to work on.

Psalm 33:2 , Give thanks to Yahweh on the harp.

I see that Wikipedia reports that Haïk-Vantoura's

"reconstruction assumes the signs represent the degrees of various musical scales, that is individual notes, which puts it at odds with all existing traditions where the signs invariably represent melodic motives; it also takes no account of the existence of older systems of notation, such as the Babylonian and Palestinian systems. Musicologists have rejected her results as dubious and her methodology as flawed."

The rejection they note is c 1986. I didn't come across this opinion in my research. It might have turned me off all my consideration of her deciphering key. I will only judge and be judged by the result of the transcriptions. And they are often magnificent. This is not a dubious statement. They are undoubtedly magnificent.

There are issues, but the musicologists I have reviewed dismiss the whole interpretation in a sentence and have not worked within the framework for 10 years as I have. And it takes years to hear what is going on.

There are many ways of interpreting the text through the music. But it will take more encouragement than musicologists are likely to give.

No one knows what the music sounded like, but at least one could use the data that is evident. Haïk-Vantoura's key uses the placement of the accents like no other. She follows the rule of Occam's razor.

Certainly, one of the issues is sameness within the harmonic patterns. How often can you set e-b-a to music and remain interesting? But one only needs to study the Goldberg variations to know how to deal with sameness in composition.

That great tale, Jonah

It only took a few short weeks to get this into a dramatic form based on the deciphering key of Haïk-Vantoura.

Here is a dramatic reading. I read it to a five-year old with automated musical background yesterday. He was captured, perhaps flagging a bit in the last chapter. He asked if the story was 'really true'. And presumptuously, I answered.

• Is your anger true when you are angry? He said, Yes. 
• Is your kindness true? He understood.
• Do ships think they are going to be wrecked? He said, No.

Clearly, for those who have ears, this story is a highly overstuffed fable. The repetition of 'great' is a giveaway. The music is the means I have chosen to un-stuff the fable. The melody and motifs are derived directly from the accents that are in the Hebrew text of the Bible.

You will find some sample automated performances - i.e. rigid and unthinking rather than tested by humans - on my YouTube channel. The whole performance takes just under 20 minutes.

Jonah and the Big Fish

I continue to work on Jonah. I must not be in a hurry. [a month later] Here is the playlist.

An English to Biblical Hebrew alphabet book

The beginning of a list of the animals in the Bible

Have you ever wondered about all the animals, or all the body parts in the Bible?

Bob's Bible: A is for Abandon (and by the way, B is for baboon) is a source for such a journey. This semantic analysis of every word in the Bible is a simple way of thinking about all those words in 7 broad domains and subdivided into 109 distinct sub-domains. So if someone makes a claim about the uniqueness of a word signifying light in the Bible, you can check it out. What are the stems related to light? And if you have the concordance as well, (check it out) where do they occur?

This volume contains a translator's introduction with several examples of the types of decisions I made in the translation process.

Lullaby for an infant humanity

The incarnation role in my oratorio is taken by the harp. Here is a duet for the harp and alto (who must be wisdom) with an optional soprano second part at the end. After hearing yesterday's reading for Trinity, I clearly saw this passage would fill a hole in my design, a hole that I had created by moving Psalm 19 to day 1. So I looked at it and what do you know, it formed itself into a lullaby.

Verse 23 has an astonishingly simple shape. It has no mid-verse rest but is simply g, f#, e. "From everlasting I have offered libation from the beginning, out of the precedents of earth." It shares this phrase with Psalms 76:5. "Light-giving you are more excellent than mountains of prey."

 I have begun a presentation of Jonah based on the music of the accents - we'll see if it turns out. Allow me a few months elapsed time. I am just working on the storm scene. I think chapter 2 will provide some hilarity and at least one moral chorus.

Jonah is ready (July 27)
Unleashing Leviathan here. (unleashed?)

Much more to do when I find performers...

Composers - look here - hundreds of pages of inspirational possibilities - you too could write an oratorio! Or a song - using the melodies that are written into the Biblical text.

Volume 8

Volume 8 of Bob's Bible is my full data base of the Hebrew Bible in its Hebrew to English form, a concordance of every Hebrew word and its full English gloss.

The volume contains every word in the Hebrew Bible. The glosses provided are for a close translation for the Music. The sequence presented is by Hebrew stem, Hebrew word form, Tanakh sequence, chapter, verse, and word sequence. In principle, the entire translation can be reconstructed from this data. (Just under 750,000 words).

This is Bob's Hebrew-English glossary after 8 years of my very human processing. What does a stem indicate in translation? How many differing senses can it have? Does it overlap with other stems? And so on. This glossary reduces the overlap of senses to a minimum. You may know about punishment, that there is no Hebrew stem that has punish as its dominant gloss. That is not true in traditional translations, where several Hebrew stems are rendered punish. They make the Bible read as if it was a book about rules and punishment. It is not such a book. Bob's Bible never uses this gloss. Search. You will not find it. The Bible is a book of instruction in love and a book about the depth of kindness from start to finish. There is no need for the wrong type of fear, a fear of torment. Healthy fear, of course, is quite appropriate. After all, we do not know everything, or even anything, fully.

Volume 9, A is for Abandon, will be out soon (next week!). This is the English-Hebrew equivalent with introduction and semantic analysis. It is a much shorter book (under 55,000 words). Every lemma form is listed with its stem and usage frequency.

Abandon assumptions (not hope).

These volumes reveal all my successes and compromises with concordance. Because no translation I am aware of has been done by a single translator with computer assisted pattern recognition and rules to show all failures of concordance, I suspect my translation has a far higher degree of concordance than any other available.

Volume 9 contains a list of all the stems that are exceptions to the glossing rules in the translation for the music, with their semantic sub-domain. Any single English lemma form that rendered two distinct Hebrew stems was flagged and investigated.

Exceptions were allowed in acrostic poems, word play, and of course for Aramaic. Also for English and Hebrew homonyms, closely related Hebrew stems through derivation or spelling, a few multi-faceted common words, and finally for some prepositions, particles, and conjunctions.

Not writing much

But I got this question from a conversation on Ian Paul's site - https://www.psephizo.com/biblical-studies/is-the-bible-clear-on-marriage-or-anything-at-all/

"Are you sure you are not letting the media narrative of convenience, which allows little dissent, shape your view, rather than science doing so?"

Thanks for the question. I am not sure anyone will find my 'answer' satisfactory. What shapes my view? Certainly not 'the media narrative of convenience'. Nor do I seek 'dissent'. There is enough of that without seeking it. As for science, in this question it is not competent. The data are subjective. I cannot even identify myself without ambiguity. Can I even know if there are people who hate the gay agenda out of their own fears of who they are in themselves?

I was made a musician. I loved the music of Britten. How could I reconcile loving this music with despising its creator? I, a wasp, was made a scientist and a systems engineer. How could I pretend to understand all the stimuli in social structures that let me stay or think or act within an environment that was inherently prejudiced on dozens of fronts.

I found a starting point in Christ some 45 or so years ago. I am nearly 'finished' - on my way to the usual grave solution... but I can hardly say I have come to the end of the riches I have encountered. There is neither gay nor straight in the place which I have entered.

About 13 years ago, a voice in me said, How can you possibly understand the image of the son without learning the scriptures in the tongue I learned them in?

So I learned Hebrew and read the text and wrote it all out in English using my own computer programs to discover and enforce patterns in the source.

There is no substitution for actually reading the text.

I found there a full musical score embedded in hand signals in the text itself. This completely undoes the rigid logic of intellectual right and wrong that governs so much of our thinking.

We seek power. It is sin to take power without permission. I find now I cannot draw conclusions for others - individuals or groups - out of the Bible as if I had power over them because of my knowledge. I have no such power and cannot pretend to have it. "Knowledge puffs up".

Qohelet has a pithy verse that reminds me of the limits of ecclesiastical opinion. 4:17 (5:1 English) Keep your footing as you are walking to the house of God, and approach more to hear than to give an offering among the dullards, for they haven't a clue that what they do is evil (רע).

So here we are in 'the house of God' and we comment furiously regardless of the hurt (רע) that we might cause. We are the sea - we are leviathan, (am I the sea or a dragon that you put a guard over me? Job 7:12) we are brutes, (behemoth I was to you, Psalms 73:22).

Let's stop. Let's love someone who is excluded. We will certainly find the cost of love there.