Inspired Psalmody Tunes?

[Coram Deo]

It has been understood that the Original Psalm Tunes have been lost and since they do not appear in scripture we can compose tunes to fit our times and culture.. It aleast has been understood that the Psalms were inspired by the Spirit of God but that the Music was not inspired because they were not preserved and so musical tunes has become a circumstance in the worship of God..

What if a scholar found those musical renditions of the Psalms and they were in front of us the entire time in the masoretic text preserved for every generation and this scholar found the deciphering key on how to interpret the notations which bring out a distinct way of singing the Psalms? They are complete and non lacking for all 150 psalms. Reformers of the Past have had suspicions regarding these notations in the masoretic text but had no way to deciphering them.

What would be the logical conclusions to these findings?

How would this fit into our thinking of worship and would we be required to use those tunes that were inspired?

I can post more about it but I wanted to stir conversation first....

 

[ChristopherPaul]

I believe the Book of Psalms for Singing states that the Temple worship Psalms were chanted - no tunes.

 

[Coram Deo]

I believe the Book of Psalms for Singing states that the Temple worship Psalms were chanted - no tunes.

According to this scholar and what the music experts who have put some of this scholars work to real music, it is very much like Gregorian Chant in many ways.....

 

[jaybird0827]

Since we're also required to sing in the tongue that we know, I think that the best you could do would be to try to refit such music to a translation that is recognized by the church, e.g. the Authorized Version.

But since the music is not preserved under inspiration as are the Psalms, it would not be binding on the church to sing the Psalms that way. I could easily go with the idea of chanting the Psalms out of the Authorized Version if we could learn how to do it.

 

[Coram Deo]

Jaybird,

But according to this scholar it was preserved under inspiration all along in the Hebrew Scriptures under the lyrics in notations and has been there for 2000 years....

Since we're also required to sing in the tongue that we know, I think that the best you could do would be to try to refit such music to a translation that is recognized by the church, e.g. the Authorized Version.

But since the music is not preserved under inspiration as are the Psalms, it would not be binding on the church to sing the Psalms that way. I could easily go with the idea of chanting the Psalms out of the Authorized Version if we could learn how to do it.

 

[Coram Deo]

I understand the problem with "We must sing with understanding", but I wonder if they (the tunes) could be adapted to our English...

 

[ChristopherPaul]

I understand the problem with "We must sing with understanding", but I wonder if they (the tunes) could be adapted to our English...

If the tunes are allowed to be adapted then they already have been, no?

If the tunes to the Hebrew text was preserved under inspiration all along under the lyrics in notations then those tunes must be married to the inspired language i.e. the original Hebrew.

If the English words are uninspired then the tunes must follow suit or else we will have a Hebrew tune designed to match a Hebrew order and language but instead force fed into English. Does that make sense? The inspired tune matches the inspired text. We must use both uninspired translation's along with uninspired tunes to fit the translation or sing/chant in the original Hebrew to the original tunes.

 

[NaphtaliPress]

What scholar are we talking about?

 

[JBaldwin]

Musicians have been trying for a very long time to decipher the notations in the Psalms and set them to music. Some have gone so far as to attempt to recreate the music of the Psalms. I have one such recording in my CD collection. (I can't put my hands on it right now, but I will see if I can find it later.) It is an interesting work, but even these folks admit that all they are doing is guessing.

 

[AV1611]

What if a scholar found

I will cross that bridge if we come to it

 

[Coram Deo]

The Scholars name is Haik-Vantoura and is a french scholar...

Here is some of the research...



1) The te`amim are both musical and exegetical, but the musical function is primary;
2) The syntax of the te`amim as a notational system is parallel to and shares information in common with the syntax of the Hebrew verbal text.

As analyzed under these premises, the first thing that one notices is the sublinear and superlinear placement of the graphemes. Entire verses, half-verses and phrases of the Bible are annotated with sublinear graphemes, which means that their function predominates musically over that of the superlinear graphemes. The sublinear graphemes may therefore be deciphered first as a set.

As it happens, there are eight common sublinear graphemes, three of which are found most commonly on or near cadences (the ends of verses and phrases: the major "disjunctive" points). One of these (the most common grapheme of all) is found at the end of every verse, but also in combination with every other grapheme in places all over the verse. It is also found repeated several times on a word, especially at the ends of verses. A grapheme that has so many different placements and associations in a musical verse can only represent a single note: by definition, the tonic or final degree of a musical scale. This suggests that all the other sublinear graphemes are likewise notes of a scale. Yet there are eight common sublinear graphemes in prosody and seven of them in psalmody. This too is strongly suggestive. Eight is the number of degrees in a normal octave. Seven is an octave minus one degree, significant of itself. Does the Hebrew verbal syntax support the idea that the eight common sublinear graphemes of prosody are degrees of a scale?

As it turns out, indeed it does. Upon testing thousands of verses, Haïk-Vantoura determined that silluq (the vertical and most common grapheme), atnah (found at the half-cadences) and munah (found at the suspensive cadences and also within phrases) are the 1st, 4th and 5th degrees of a tonal scale, respectively. Their placement and function within a verse or phrase fit the natural proclivities of those degrees as the human ear perceives them. We already know that the 1st or tonic is where the verse ends (and often begins); this is only natural. Yet it is equally natural for the melody to return to the tonic again and again in order to "bridle" its flow on a word or syllable, or to repeat the tonic note two or three times on a word for emphasis. Likewise the 4th degree is naturally suited to divide a verse, or to define the antecedent of what follows in a verse. Whereas the 5th degree indicates either a suspension (at the cadence) or a continuation (within a phrase), acting musically as a "dominant" in either case.

Thanks to the use of interminable statistical tables and to rigorous comparison of hypotheses with the Hebrew verbal syntax, Haïk-Vantoura was able to eliminate one possible meaning after another for each sublinear grapheme in prosody and to put them in proper order within the scale. With that additional framework in mind, we are able to decipher the superlinear graphemes one by one, still against the Hebrew verbal syntax. The psalmodic system was deciphered in this manner. The resulting deciphering key (first published in 1976 in book and LP form) correlates the written form, the ancestral name and the musical meaning of each ta`am as defined by the melodic paradigm. Upon examination, I discovered that the existing descriptions of the hand-gestures behind the graphemes also correlated with the graphemes' names, forms and musical meanings, giving me enough information to reconstruct the entire original chironomy.

SUMMARY OF THE MECHANICS OF THE MUSICAL SYSTEM

1) The sublinear graphemes represent degrees of the scale. When one is written, its value is sustained on that syllable and all the following syllables until another sublinear sign appears.
2) The superlinear graphemes represent melodic ornaments of one to three notes on the syllables they mark. Their pitch is always relative to that of the preceding sublinear sign. For example, zaqef qaton always means "go down one note from that indicated by the preceding sublinear grapheme". If it follows munah (5th degree), it means "go down to the 4th degree". If it follows silluq , it means "go down to the 7th degree below the 1st degree."

SUMMARY OF THE DECIPHERING KEY IN PSALMODIA

SUMMARY OF THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE PARADIGM

1) The melodies preserved by the te`amim (in the Letteris Edition, Haïk-Vantoura's base text) are structurally interwoven with the words they support in such a way that they form a syntactical whole: what the ancient Greeks called a melos (a "gestalt" of music and words).
2) The existence of such a melos indicates that the melodies and words were written by the same authors at the same time and transmitted together accurately. In addition, the accentual system itself formed part of the "fence around the Torah" that kept it from becoming seriously corrupted by scribal errors.
3) The melos found in various books reflects not only the personalities of their various authors, but the historical circumstances in which they live, as their own works and those of others describe them. As with any poet-composer at any time, the various biblical authors (especially Moses and David) had certain idiosyncratic preferences in their musical and lyrical styles.
4) The rediscovered melodies enable us to address exegetical questions that have hitherto remained debatable, even insoluble (some simple examples being the technical musical terms of the Psalms, the validity of their titles, and selah, a sung exclamation which is now definable as "Weigh this!").
5) The rediscovered melodic system fits not only what we know of the conducting systems of antiquity, but the harp and lyre tuning and playing techniques of antiquity.
6) The rediscovered melodic system shows that there was indeed an indirect link between Temple music, certain examples of the most ancient forms of synagogue music and certain early Christian music. Pilgrims to the Temple heard, remembered, and took with them fragments of the Temple music to their local synagogues, and the early Christians picked up those fragments either there or on their own visits to the Temple.
7) The rediscovered melodic system allows us to discuss common threads between the various forms of art music of antiquity and later periods leading to the present. (In particular, the rediscovered music contains compositional techniques apparently lost at the end of classical antiquity and not rediscovered in the West until the Renaissance and Baroque periods.) It also allows us to address afresh the question of ethos or "moral force" in music, as important for the practicing sacred or secular musician as it is for the philosopher or historian.

For those trained in the Masoretic paradigm, is especially important to note this: in Haïk-Vantoura's melodic paradigm, no ta`am is strictly "disjunctive" or "conjunctive". This definition is actually far too simplistic, for one may indeed find the same ta`am used in different places with different functions without losing its particular identity. For example, there are fairly frequent cases where the sequence of te`amim leading up to a particular ta`am would lead you to expect (from examples elsewhere) that the last ta`am would be "conjunctive", yet the ta`am actually acts as a "disjunctive". Reverse cases are also known to exist.

Rather than being a hierarchy of "disjunctives" and "conjunctives" as such, the musical system preserved by the te`amim is a complex of four (defined another way, five) interacting tonal factors which are parallel to and interwoven with four (or five) interacting factors in the verbal syntax. For example, the degree of the scale that marks the cadence of a verse, half-verse or phrase marks the punctuation point of that cadence. Yet the sequence of degrees leading up to that cadence (the melodic texture, parallel to the verbal state of action) influences how one is to understand that punctuation point (as a comma, period, semicolon, question mark, exclamation point, etc.).

What scholar are we talking about?

 

[Nse007]

I feel as if I can weigh in....Michael, this is amazing research but I have one problem. The emphasis on the scale degrees of 1, 4 and 5 are emblematic of contemporary Western harmony that traces back no earlier than the 16th century. I can possibly succeed the idea of a modal chant, but if what this scholar is proposing is correct (and if I'm understanding the argument) this style of music would have been a precursur to what we now know has traditional Western harmony with its emphasis on tonic, sub-dominant and dominant scale degrees.

 

[Coram Deo]

Nse, It won't be the first time we have had to rethink our understanding of the past whether art, music, history of a nation, history of a civilization, etc....

It is very amazing stuff....

Also, if one was to hear the music that they have gathered from the Psalm scriptures it does in fact sound very Ancient Hebraic in sound...

but if what this scholar is proposing is correct (and if I'm understanding the argument) this style of music would have been a precursor to what we now know has traditional Western harmony with its emphasis on tonic, sub-dominant and dominant scale degrees.

 

[Coram Deo]

Also, Western harmony and understanding has been molded by 2000 years of Christianity... Apparently there is a link between Gregorian Chants which our contemporary western harmony is based upon which has a small traceable link to the synagogue and temple worship... So our western music could be based from the inspired musical notations of the psalter...

Which Western music tends to have an interesting connection and arrangement with its diatonic scales which seem to match the planetary alignment...

The emphasis on the scale degrees of 1, 4 and 5 are emblematic of contemporary Western harmony that traces back no earlier than the 16th century.