Suppose we had to compose a verse, one that was missing and had to be reconstructed from the Greek or some other version. Well there is at least one such candidate. In psalm 145 the verse between 13 and 14, Nun, is missing. We know it's missing because the four acrostics in book 4 of the psalms are perfect. So why is one of them missing a verse? (The four acrostics in book 1 are all flawed. Maybe we could find some of those missing verses too. Then we would need to understand the conventions and the customs of this accent system to get something to match.)
Here is a reconstruction based on the Septuagint and the DSS. What sort of errors are in it?
Questions
- Bar 3 has a potential error. What action would you take to fix it?
- Bar 5 is suspicious -- is it wrong?
- Bar 7 -- where is the end of the verse?
- Bar 9 -- where is the caesura?
- What is the ornament in bar 9?
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| Two verses in one -- restoring the music of a missing verse |
Psalms 145: (Verses 13 to 13) Syllables: 35; Longest recitation: 6; Tenor: e
51.43%;
Ornament density: 14.3%; Average phrase length: 8.8.
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13 Making your reign a reign
for every era, and your governance in all generations. Note that faithful is Yahweh in his words, and merciful in all his deeds. (1-4-1) |
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יג מֽלכותך֗ מלכ֥ות כל־עֽלמ֑ים ו֝מֽמשלתך֗ בכל־ד֥ור ודֽור נאמ֗ן יהו֣ה בדבר֑יו וחס֡יד בכ֥ול מעשֽיו |
9 10 8 8 |
ig mlcutç mlcut cl-yolmim
ummwltç bcl-dor vdor namn ihvh bdbriv vksid bcol mywiv |
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Solutions
- Check the silluq against the Aleppo codex. Remove the silluq from עֽלמ֑ים. Bar 5 now bar 4 agrees with Aleppo.
- Check the silluq in bar 5 above against the Aleppo codex. It's there. So no change. But the question still is: how often does this interval occur on the ornament that leads back to the tonic from the subdominant.
- Put in a rest or a break if you can't renumber the verses for historical reasons.
- This is two verses, not one, so mark the caesura between the last syllable of the word that has the atnah and the first syllable of the rest of the verse.
- The ornament is pazer. The pazer is never used after the atnah in the three poetry books, so don't use it. Replace it with revia-mugrash if you want to use that poetic ornament that prepares for the return to the tonic.
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| Corrections |
Questions we've all been thinking about :)
What ornaments occur or not before or after a cadence? The ornaments used in
the poetry are qadma, revia, tsinnor, pazer, zarqa, geresh, shalshelet,
revia-mugrash, illuy, ole.
We know about ole. It occurs exclusively with merkha following and is called
ole veyored. Ole occurs on several reciting notes and is always followed by
its paired merkha which moves the recitation to f#. We know about
revia-mugrash. It occurs only as part of the return to the tonic in a verse.
The amount of data is too large to display with any degree of useful abstraction. I have a query that will
summarize it by verse type but statistics with a summary
for each accent is beyond me to reduce to anything useful. These are the observations for the poetry.
- 1-1 shape: what ornaments and notes are used in verses where there is no internal cadence. All the poetic ornaments occur in this type of verse. There are 68 patterns for the 147 such verses in the psalms.
- 1-2-1 shape: leading to the ole-veyored and returning to the tonic where there is no atnah. There are 45 such verses with 32 patterns leading to the mid-verse cadence and 30 distinct patterns returning to the tonic. Pazer occurs in the second part but tsinnor does not.
- 1-4-1 is the most common verse-type (2,037 occurrences): All ornaments can appear in the first part of a verse except the combination revia-mugrash which if it is used, appears only in the last phrase of a verse. All ornaments appear in one or other of these verses following the atnah except tsinnor and pazer.
- 1-2-4-1 the tricolon, occurs 298 times in the psalms. There are 131 distinct patterns leading to the ole veyored, 46 distinct patterns leading from the cadence on the supertonic to the cadence on the subdominant, and 34 distinct patterns leading to the tonic.
There is overlap between the opening frames of the 1-2-1 and the 1-2-4-1 and the closing frames of 1-4-1 and the 1-2-4-1. See the data details in the next post.
