Saturday 5 April 2014

Returning to the Song of Songs - the ornamentation

So - is this combination of double pashta and zaqef qatan in the Song - as if it were 'prophetic'? (which of course it is - and an allegory? - and a reality underlying that allegory? All these -  but not to be entered lightly. As I said in my earlier posts and translation of the Song in 2010 against verse 1
Perhaps in the spirit of the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, we should read the charge of Song 2:7 first. This charge ends four of the five parts of the Song. To read on, we must take on the persona of the daughters of Jerusalem and we are sworn by a hidden name not to rouse love till it please.
I divide the Song into 5 parts,each of the first four ending with the chorus. [See the side bar for my earlier posts.]  Verses are intrinsic to the text and defined by the musical signs, but chapters? - I have no idea why there are 8 chapters in the Song.

In the first part there are 12 occurrences of this motif. When they begin on the tonic there is no zaqef qatan. When they begin on the 6th, there always is. Each of the following snippets should be read in context.
What about part 2? Does this pattern continue? Since I did not include the te'amim when I was first learning Hebrew, I don't know without looking. It turns out there are 6, half the number of the prior part. In Song 2:9, the first is on looking through the windows. In Song 2:14, their is a 20 beat bar containing two of these ornament combinations. Verses 15 is a verse I used for years in my tag line on email - nice to see it represented, and 17 sings of the dawning day. In Song 3:3, the keepers of the city find me, and finally in the chorus, Jerusalem is painted the same way, suggesting that the love the individual finds is not separate from the love that is for Jerusalem. This prophetic motif in the music tells us more than punctuation could.
I suspect parts three, four, and five will be of similar shape. In part 3, the verses are Song 3:5, 4:2, 4:6, 4:9, 4:10, 4:13, 5:3, 5:6.  The ornament does not occur this time on Jerusalem.  (Obviously this is not punctuation and the Wiki comment on double pashta under phonetics is shown to be nonsense. Surely one counter example will do.) Where, O where shall linguists be found (who are also musicians)?

In Parts 4 and 5, the ornaments are on Song 5:15, 6:5, 6:6, 6:8, 7:1, 7:5, 7:6, 7:9, 7:13, 7:14, 8:5, 8:6, 8:8. Perhaps I will continue this by retranslating the Song with the full music - It will be a while. I see that my existing translation is far from well lined up - I have repaired these posts.

But be sure to read this strange poem - really lovely... #bgbg2


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