Cantillation Marks
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
http://www.sagreiss.org [email protected] CCaannttiilllliizzeerr Distributional Analysis of Cantillation Marks Author: Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss Developers: Music Editors: Susan Owen, John Wheeler, John McMurtery What imagination the scrupulous originators manifested in these creative pictographical representations. It is paramount to translate with precision this message transmitted with so much love.1 Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura Cover Page Cantillizer is copyright © protected under the LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License). This text is copyright © protected under the FDL (GNU Free Documentation License). Cover Page 1 http://www.sagreiss.org [email protected] Table of Contents Cover Page ...................................................................................... 1 Table of Contents ............................................................................ 2 Table of Figures .............................................................................. 3 1 Cantillation .................................................................................. 5 1.1 Vocalization ............................................................................................... 5 1.2 Semiotics ................................................................................................... 6 1.3 Versification ............................................................................................... 8 1.4 Hermeneutics ............................................................................................ 8 2 Architecture .............................................................................. 14 2.1 System .................................................................................................... 14 2.2 Database ................................................................................................. 14 2.3 Server ...................................................................................................... 14 2.4 Client ....................................................................................................... 14 3 Database.................................................................................... 15 3.1 Specifications, Requirements & Constraints ............................................ 15 3.2 Raw Data Input ........................................................................................ 16 3.3 Data Processing ...................................................................................... 17 3.4 Data Structure ......................................................................................... 20 4 Application ................................................................................ 33 4.1 Graphical User Interface .......................................................................... 33 4.2 Menus ...................................................................................................... 35 4.3 Configuration ........................................................................................... 36 4.4 Database Query ...................................................................................... 37 4.5 Syntactic Analysis .................................................................................... 41 4.6 Syntactic Pattern Recognition.................................................................. 45 4.7 Musical Analysis ...................................................................................... 47 4.8 Freeform Analysis .................................................................................... 63 4.9 Graphics .................................................................................................. 64 Appendix A .................................................................................... 68 Table of Contents 2 http://www.sagreiss.org [email protected] List of Emendations ............................................................................................ 68 Appendix B .................................................................................... 69 Tools & Libraries ................................................................................................ 69 Appendix C .................................................................................... 70 Abbreviations ..................................................................................................... 70 Endnotes ........................................................................................ 71 Table of Figures Figure 1-1 Cantillation Chironomy .................................................................... 7 Figure 1-2 Hierarchy of Disjunctive Signs ........................................................ 9 Figure 1-3 Hierarchy of Prosodic Signs .......................................................... 10 Figure 1-4 Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura................................................................ 11 Figure 1-5 Syntactic Structure of Cantillation Marks (A) ................................. 11 Figure 1-6 Syntactic Structure of Cantillation Marks (B) ................................. 12 Figure 2-1 System Diagram ........................................................................... 14 Figure 3-1 Aleppo Codex, Isaiah 9:6 .............................................................. 17 Figure 4-1 Cantillizer Main Screen (next page) .............................................. 33 Figure 4-2 Configuration Dialog Box .............................................................. 36 Figure 4-3 Search for Signs Dialog Box ......................................................... 39 Figure 4-4 Phrygian Mode Scale in C Major .................................................. 48 Figure 4-5 Other Prosodic Sublinear Signs .................................................... 49 Figure 4-6 Prosodic Appoggiature.................................................................. 51 Figure 4-7 Prosodic Melismata ...................................................................... 51 Figure 4-8 Harmonic Mode Scale in E Minor ................................................. 52 Figure 4-9 Other Psalmodic Sublinear Signs ................................................. 52 Figure 4-10 Psalmodic Appoggiature ............................................................... 54 Figure 4-11 Psalmodic Melismata .................................................................... 54 Figure 4-12 Blowing the Shofar on Rosh Hashanah ........................................ 55 Figure 4-13 Salomon Helperin Blowing the Yemenite Shofar (2006) ............... 56 Figure 4-14 Marc Chagall, The Capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar (1956) ............................................................... 57 Figure 4-15 Psalm 137 “By the Rivers of Babylon” in E Minor ......................... 58 Table of Figures 3 http://www.sagreiss.org [email protected] Figure 4-16 Synagogue at Gaza, Mosaic of King David Strumming the Harp (6th century CE) .................................................................... 59 Figure 4-17 Cadence of Psalm 137 with Ornament Resolution ....................... 62 Figure 4-18 Psalm 137, Verse 1, Syllabified .................................................... 63 Figure 4-19 Structure of Psalms 120, 124, 129, 130 ........................................ 66 Figure 4-20 Tree Diagram ................................................................................ 67 Table of Figures 4 http://www.sagreiss.org [email protected] 1 Cantillation The goal of the Cantillizer project is to extract and process cantillation data from the Hebrew Bible for the purpose of studying the order in which cantillation marks occur. The database holds cantillation information and provides display and statistics showing the patterns or structure of cantillation marks. 1.1 Vocalization Hebrew (like other Semitic languages) was originally and is still written without most vowels.2 Sometime between Jerome (c. 347-420), the Dalmatian theologian and author of the Latin translation of the Bible, and Saadia ben Joseph (892-942), aka Gaon, the Jewish Egyptian philosopher and author of the Arabic translation, who testify respectively to the absence and presence of vowels, three rival schools of vocalization arose, the Babylonian, the Palestinian, and the Tiberian, with the last (and latest) eventually prevailing.3 As the Jerusalem Talmud (written in Tiberias, 4th century CE) and the Babylonian Talmud (written in Sura, 5th century CE) collected and organized different oral traditions of biblical commentary, the three pointing systems synthesized diverse local phonetic and musical phenomena. Moreover, beginning in the second half of the eighth century amid political turmoil in the caliphate of Baghdad, the Karaites, a schismatic Jewish sect, posed a grave threat to rabbinical authority by opposing traditional biblical commentary in a back-to-the-text movement. The besieged Tiberian rabbis fought back by creating a textual standard that the Masorah or ―tradition‖. The Palestinian school under ben Naphtali ,מסורה they called (flourished c. 890-940, given name either Jacob or Moses), the Jewish scribe and philologist, produced its own standard, but it has not survived, although many of its readings are known through secondary sources. Tradition attributes the vowels either to Sinaic origin or to Ezra, a priest and legal scribe in the Great Synagogue (established under his jurisdiction c. 444 BCE). None however is attested until the High Middle Ages, more than five hundred years