Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Rochelle Altman <willaa AT netvision.net.il>]

At 05:19 AM 1/10/2006, B. M. Rocine wrote:

>Hi Rochelle,

>Could you point me to some literature that argues for such tightly
>constructed rhythms of chanties and Davidic psalms.

>Thanks a bunch!

>Bryan

Hi Bryan,

Be careful what you ask for; you might get it. <G> This material has been, 
the main focus of my work for the past 17 years -- ever since I stumbled on 
a translation of the Psalms that not only musically tried to follow the 
syllabic divisions of the Hebrew and tried to match phonemes from source to 
target language whenever possible, but matched ta'amim -- tifcha for 
tifcha, merka for merka, even an occasional gershai'im shows up. <1> 
Eventually, this translation proved to have been made from a variant 
consonantal MT vorlage of, at the latest, the second temple period... 
certainly prior to 70 CE. It also turned out to be our urgently needed 
bilingual.

On the musical side, I'll be happy to send bibliography if you can give me 
some idea of what level to send. I do not want to insult you.

Point is lit on the musical side depends upon familiarity with folk music, 
certain aspects of linguistics, and musical training. Do I send you, for 
instance, Robertus de Handlo and Sunyol? Opie and Child? or elementary 
textbooks on Music Theory? So, questions on musical training: <2>

1. Do you hear the melody in your head when you read a score?
2. Can you state a time-frame when you hear a melody played?
3. Can you state what language a composition is in from the melody?
4. Are you familiar with chironomic, ekphonetic, alphabetic, neumatic, and 
other early musical notation systems?
5. Can you tell when a melody has been re-used and modified for textual 
reasons?
6. Can you determine the beat of a song from reading the song as text?

All of this is relevant to what I send you as bibliography on the musical 
side.

Now, on the Davidic Psalms side:

John Wheeler (David's Harp) insists that Davidic Psalms can be recognized 
because they are so lyrical. (Unfortunately John conflates musical notation 
with grammatical notation... but so did Haik-Ventura.) The Davidic voice is 
as easily recognized as Enheduanna's voice. Both are marked by tight 
construction; in addition, the Davidic voice is marked by a strong agonal 
sense of serious play (Huizinga), intricately linked sound to sense, plays 
on words, multivocality, and, yes, a lyric quality that stems from careful 
and tight construction.

So, on the Davidic side I'd start with:

Korpel, Marjo C. A.  and Johannes C. de Moor. "Fundamentals of Ugaritic and 
Hebrew Poetry." In The Structural Analysis of Biblical and Canaanite 
Poetry. Willem van der Meer & Johannes C. de Moor, eds. JSOT. Supp. Ser. 
No. 74. Sheffield: UP, 1988.

Wilson, Gerald Henry . The Editing of the Hebrew Psalter. Chico, CA: 
Scholars Press, 1985.

Goulder, Michael D. The Psalms of the Sons of Korah. Journal for the Study 
of the Old Testament. Suppl. 20. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1982.

- - -. The Prayers of David (Psalms 51-72): Studies in the Psalter, II. 
JSOT, Supplement Series 102. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1990

Hallo, William W.  and J.J. Van Dijk. The Exaltation of Inanna. New Haven: 
Yale
University Press. 1968.

d'Etaples, Jacques Lefevre. Quincuplex Psalterium. Facsimile de l'€dition 
de 1513. Paris: Librairie Droz, 1979

McCreesh, Thomas P.  Biblical Sound and Sense: Poetic Sound Patterns in 
Proverbs 10-29. Sheffield: JSOT, 1991.

Howlett, David R. British Books in Biblical Style. Dublin: Four Courts 
Press, 1997.
- - -. Pillars of wisdom in Ireland and England.  Dublin : Four Courts, 1996.
- - -. "Israelite Learning in Insular Latin," Peritia: The Journal of the 
Medieval Academy of Ireland, No. 11 (1997). 117-152.
- - - . The Celtic Latin Tradition of Biblical Style. Dublin: Four Courts 
Press, 1995.

Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: Vom Ursprung der Kultur im Spiel. Rprt. 
Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1956. English: Homo Ludens. Rprt. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955.

Jonsson, Bengt R. "Oral Literature: Written Literature." In The Ballad and 
Oral Literature. Joseph Harris, ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1991. 139-170.

Julian, John. "Psalms; Metrical Translations," in A Dictionary of 
Hymnology. Vol. II. New York: Dover, 2nd Edition, rev., 1907

Kittel, Bonnie Pedrotti. The Hymns of Qumran: Translation and Commentary. 
Society of Biblical Literature: Dissertation Series. 1981

Lakoff, George and Mark Turner. More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to 
Poetic Metaphor. Chicago and London: UC Press, 1989.
- - -. and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago and London: UC 
Press, 1980.

La Molette, Phillipe 1737-1793. Traite sur la poesie et la musique des 
Hebreux, pour servir d'introductionaux Psaumes explique. Paris: Moutard, 1781

Laurian, Anne-Marie. "Humour et traduction au contact des cultures." META, 
34:1. (Mars/March 1989): 5-14.

Levine, Samuel R. The Semantics of Metaphor. Baltimore & London: Johns 
Hopkins UP, 1977.

Newmark, Peter. "The Translation of Metaphor." Paprott‚ and Dirven, 
Ubiquity. 295-326.

Palmer, F. R. Semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976, 1981.

Paprott‚ Wolf, and Rene Dirven, eds. The Ubiquity of Metaphor: Metaphor in 
Language and Thought. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1985

Quine, W(illard) V(an Orman). Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical 
Dictionary. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1987.

Rapp, Albert. The Origins of Wit and Humor. New York: Dutton, 1951.

Raskin, Victor. Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Dordrecht and Boston: D. 
Reidel, 1985.

Simon, John. Paradigms Lost: Reflections on Literacy and Its Decline. New 
York:
Clarkson N. Potter, inc., 1908.

Simon, Uriel. Four Approaches to the Book of Psalms: From Saadiah Gaon to 
Abraham Ibn Ezra. Trans. Lenn J. Schramm. Albany: State University of New 
York Press, 1991.

Van Dijk, Teun A. Some Aspects of Text Grammars: A Study in Theoretical 
Linguistics and Poetics. The Hague: Mouton, 1972.

Walton, Brian. Biblia sacra polyglotta, complectentia textus originales, 
Hebraicum cum Pentateuch Samaritano, Chaldaicum, Graecum, versionumque 
antiquarum, Samaritanae, Graecae LXXII interpretum, Chaldaicae, Syriacae, 
Arabicae, Aethiopicae, Persicae, Vulgatae Latinae. 1657. Facsimile: Graz, 
Austria: Druck, 1964

Then, to understand the importance of the spacing of the texts - whether on 
9th-BCE Samalian stele, 2nd BCE Hebrew Exodus fragment, 4th CE Greek 
sung-line-by-sung-line Codex, or 9th CE Medieval Psalter --, we have to 
look at the tremendous amount of work done on this subject in other fields. 
I'd recommend starting with:

Kelly, Rev. Columba, O.S.B. The Cursive Torculus Design in the Codex St. 
Gall 359 and its Rhythmical Significance: A Paleographical and Semiological 
Study. St. Meinrad, Indiana: Abbey, 1964.

O'Keeffe, Katherine O'Brien. Visible Song: Transitional Literacy in Old 
English Verse. Cambridge: CUP, 1990.

DeFrancis, John. Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems. 
Honolulu: Hawaii UP, 1989.

De Poli, Giovanni, Aldo Piccialli, and Curtis Roads. Representations of 
Musical Signals. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991.

Fauvel, John, Raymond Flood and Robin Wilson. Music and Mathematics: From
Pythagoras to Fractals. Oxford: OUP, 2004

Barker, Andrew. Scientific Method in Ptolemy's Harmonics. Cambridge. CUP, 
2000.

Stevick, Robert D. Suprasegmentals, Meter and the Manuscript of Beowulf. 
The Hague: Mouton (1968).

Huppe, Bernard F. The Web of Words: structural analyses of the old english 
poems vainglory, the wonder of creation, the dream of the rood, and judith. 
Albany, New York: SUNY Press, 1970.

And for a discussion and a table demonstrating the sophisticated and very 
tight construction of a typical Davidic Psalm, see Chapter 10 of my book 
(Absent Voices), pages 168-175. The table (page 174) shows the tight 
structure and intricate linkage between lines and all 32 word triggers 
between domains.

>
> These pre-monarchial psalms are the closest to folk song in their
> simplicity of vocabulary, but not in their melodic range or structure.
> Rhythmically, Psalm 96 (for instance) is a chanty. (I suppose that some
> will consider it blasphemous to point out that many of the songs of praise
> are "whistle while you work" songs -- meant to be sung when rowing,
> plowing, walking between sites...). You don't mess with the rhythms of a
> work chanty. A change from a bi-syllable to a tri-syllable would stand out.
> It does not occur.
>
> The Davidic Psalms are extremely sophisticated and tightly constructed. Any
> change of syllabic divisions from a bi-syllable to a tri-syllable would
> stand out like the proverbial sore thumb..It does not occur.
>

--
B. M. Rocine
Living Word Church
6101 Court St. Rd.
Syracuse, NY 13026
(W): 315.437.6744
--------------

Hope this helps and please let me know what to send on the music side,

Rochelle
--
Dr.. I. S. Altman, coordinator, IOUDAIOS-L
----
<1>The Psalter is 2/3 early 7th-century and 1/3 late 9th-century Old 
English. And that's how I ended up with a doctorate in a Medieval English 
instead of Jewish studies.

<2> Answers to Questions:

1. Trained musicians literally hear the melody when reading a score.

2  "That was written before the 7th century or within the last 10 years." 
Julliard grad upon hearing the middle of the reconstructed music of Psalm 
96 without knowing what it was: He was right on both counts.

3. Parsing rhythms: there was a study published in New Scientist of 9 July 
2005 (pp. 32-34) on the rhythmic distinctions between French and English 
musical compositions without words.An elementary text on linguistics, such 
as David Crystal's Linguistics, would have told them what the result 
without the study. The article by Philip Ball, "Concerto for Mother 
tongue," nevertheless illustrates the point.

4. 9th-century Tiberian notation is a rendering of a pre-existing 
chironomic notation system. Tiberian notation turns up in 7th-century and 
earlier translations. It also shows up in some of the DSS.

5. Melodies get re-used. Because the melodic line tightly constrains 
additions, people trained in composition theoriy can tell when a melodic 
line has been modified for textual reasons Modification for textual reasons 
can be identified by melisma -- a series of more than five or six added 
notes -- used to cover gaps in fitting word-to-music. Examples from folk 
music: The well-known "Cherry Song" [I gave my love a cherry] is full of 
melisma; the original 13th-century song, "I have a swester," has held notes 
but no melisma. The same is true of Simon & Garfunkel's borrowing of  the 
Andean folk melody "El Condor Paso"  for their "I'd rather be...." Post 
Neo-Platonism chants and church music use the ancient melodies, but fit the 
music to the words instead of fitting the words to the music.. Chants are 
full of melisma.

NOTE: This point is relevant to determining whether a song has been 
modified by some editor or another down the centuries. No melisma means 
that the probability of any changes to the original melodic line and the 
distribution of the accompanying text are roughly zero . To be sure, there 
are textual variants in the Hebrew Psalms, nevertheless, the Hebrew Psalms 
do not display melisma.

6. Parsing rhythms again. Other names for these rhythms are the "music of a 
language," suprasegmentals, and supersegmentals.