>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
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.
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.