Torah Trope: Intonation Patterns and Punctuation of Hebrew Bible
Torah Trope: Intonation Patterns and Punctuation of Hebrew Bible
Torah Trope conveys emphasis in the Hebrew Bible, and relationships among words in Hebrew Bible verses. Torah Trope (cantillation or te’amim) is a system wherein the natural inflections have been heightened, stylized, and frozen for the sake of a uniform ritual practice. The Torah Trope function as an elaborate punctuation system of stylized inflections that delineate the most subtle nuances of meaning. Torah Trope is a means of parsing the syntax of classical Hebrew. The listener needs to know which words indicate the end of a thought, phrase or idea. For centuries this system of Torah Trope was a purely oral tradition. Only the consonantal text was written down; the inflection had to be memorized. By the seventh century, the rabbis who considered themselves guardians of the sacred text became concerned that the correct melodic inflections (Torah Trope) were in danger of being forgotten. They therefore devised a set of symbols (Torah Trope) that would punctuate the text and indicate the proper motif to which each and every word was to be chanted. These Torah Trope do more than merely indicate which syllable of each word is to be accented. For that function alone, one symbol would have been enough, not thirty.
When speaking or chanting, people indicate the end of a thought by creating a cadence: lowering the pitch (if it is a question the pitch rises at the end of a sentence), slowing the pace, and stopping for a brief pause. If a particular word within a phrase needs emphasis, people elongate it and/or raise the pitch. A Torah Trope phrase is a plurality of words, each word having a cantillation symbol. The Torah Trope phrase starts after a previous cadence within a verse, or at the start of a verse. The end of the Torah Trope phrase is marked by a cadence within a verse or at then end of that verse.
In written English, cadences are indicated by punctuation marks. A comma indicates a low-level cadence, a semicolon a higher-level cadence, a period marks the end of a complete idea, and a period followed by a paragraph division marks the end of a train of thought. Emphasis within a phrase may be indicated by use of italics, underlining or boldface type. In the English language the placement of modifiers can, at times, be ambiguous. On the page people could resolve the ambiguity if people had some form of detailed punctuation indicating which words are connected and which words are separated by a pause.
The Torah Trope accented syllable of each word is sung either on a higher pitch or on a stream of two or more pitches that elongate the syllable. Furthermore, within each sentence, one word may be given greater stress than another by virtue of its being punctuated with a stronger Torah Trope. The purpose of the Torah Trope accents is to indicate where to suspend the breadth, where to distinguish a verse, place a comma, where you ought to put a pause, where a verse ends and begins, what ought to be pronounced slower and what faster.
Torah Trope is natural cadences of speech
The rhythm of Torah Trope is determined by the natural cadences of speech. Its flow is quite flexible: there is no sensation of a regular meter. The opposite of music that may have lyrics but the words are fitted to the music rather than vice versa. When chanting the Torah Trope for a biblical text, the words are considered the most important element. Before attempting to apply the melodies of cantillation, the student practices reading the words with perfect pronunciation, meaningful inflection, and logical syntactic phrasing. Dramatically inflected reading is closely related to effective cantillation.
Torah Trope do not represent absolute pitches
The pitches of Torah Trope do not represent absolute pitches as do the symbols of western notation. A note indicates a pitch (e.g. the sound produced by a string vibrating at the rate of 440 cycles per second), lasting, for example, 250 miliseconds, with for example a moderately soft level of volume. By way of contrast, the cantillation sign “tevir” is ambiguous. It represents not one fixed pitch, but a cluster of notes, the exact identity of which will vary depending on the text to which it is attached, the liturgical occasion on which it is sung, and the background and temperament of the individual who sings it. Any attempt to represent that motif in Western notation will be misleading. The rhythms are more subtle than those that can be depicted, and the pitches of the motif could be sung in any key that is comfortable for the performer. Furthermore, each Jewish community (for example, Lithuanian, German, Iraqi, Dutch, Syrian, Italian, and French) has its own unique melodic tradition.
