Wednesday 20 April 2016

Hearing the bard telling the story

It wouldn't be long before I got to 2 Chronicles 25 and what do you know but it's Amaziah again, this time with the story that shows us the absolute miserable state of affairs that the monarchy was. Not much different from today in the same part of the world.

But on the positive side, we have here a pair of parallel passages that are both to be sung. What if the music gives us a taste of what it was like to be the bard, the story teller, with lute in one hand and standardized musical patter in the voice. Look at how different the setting is of the word for Moses. Look at the differences in reciting note: the same text, one recitation on a low note and the other on a high note.

And following the difference, the same sequence of notes is used from bar 53 (avot) in 2 Kings 14:6, and in bar 28 in 2 Chronicles 25:4. Note that the sequence of ornaments is an identical pattern. The sequence in bar 26 is B paz,B tal,pas,ger,rev,pas. This ornament sequence (tal,pas,ger,rev,pas) occurs 42 times in the Leningrad codex. It is spread over 19 books. Drop the second pashta and there are over 400 occurrences - so it is a relatively common trope.

This is much clearer to see when the music is laid out (at least for someone who reads music). There are slight differences in wording that are also clear.
There's not enough information in me yet to hear if there are differing styles among the different books. Here it would only take a stray meteg to disturb the reciting note. But the silluq on torat is in the Aleppo codex.



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