Song of Solomon & Shulamite IV

Scott Alexander Gabriel Reiss

7 September 2004

B. Cantillation

Cantillation (Jewish liturgical chant) offers a rich source of metrical data. In synagogue the בעל קריאה “lector” chants from the unvocalized Torah and Hagiographa with the help of a prompter following in a cantillated text. He reads the entire Pentateuch and the five scrolls (Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, and Esther) in an annual rotation of weekly passages on the Sabbath and holidays. The בעל תפילה “precentor” psalmodizes from a vocalized סדור “psalter”. On the Sabbath and holidays he sings psalms and songs from the Bible, as well as other prayers and poems both ancient and modern. In the Middle Ages, and as late as the twentieth century in certain Jewish communities such as those of Rome, Cairo, and Yemen, a signer cued the congregation to cantillation marks by means of chironomy or hand signals. The חזן “cantor” may double as lector or precentor in addition to his role as soloist and/or choirmaster, depending on the size, wealth, individual talents, and cultural traditions of the temple. Innumerable historical and geographical variations in synagogal custom and organization are attested. Sephardic and Jewish Yemenite liturgy includes the recitation of the Song of Songs every Sabbath Eve, but the lay readers often lack formal training in cantillation. Two systems of cantillation marks occur in the Masorah, referred to as psalmody1 (Psalms, Proverbs, body of the book of Job) and prosody (prologue/epilogue of Job, and the rest of the books). Moreover Sephardic, Ashkenazi, and Yemenite cantors interpret cantillation marks differently in their trope (musical phrasing conventions). Large MP3 files of the cantillation of each book of the Bible are available on the following site: http://audioscripture.com/audio/0123-01/OT/OT.htm		Mehupakh     Pashta     Little Zakef   Great Zakef
	Cantillation Chironomy

Cantillation marks belong to a complex system of punctuation or textual annotation (the dots, lines, and curves written above, below, and between Hebrew letters) that convey a huge amount of information with breathtaking economy as pertains to the following:

1. melody, modulation, and rhythm (cantillation)

2. tonic accents, intonation and pauses (cantillation)

3. metrical units (logical)

4. syntactic relationships (logical)

5. vowels (diacritical)

6. homographs and phonetic shifts (diacritical)

Cantillation marks (referred to collectively as טעמים “taste”) perform the first four functions, but are only attested in conjunction with pointing, the diacritical marks (referred to collectively as נקודות “dots”) that perform the last two. All arose at the same time (evolving in three rival schools over a period of five hundred years, c. 400-900), and clear distinctions are seldom drawn among the characters (including digraphs and homographs), their names (including synonyms), and their intertwined roles. Since a thousand years of unrecorded harmonic and phonetic transformations separated the punctuators from the authors of the Bible, cantillation and diacritical marks do not accurately reflect historical phenomena of the biblical period, notes and vowels the rabbis had never heard. They may however reflect the Jewish culture, music, and dialects of the time and places in which they were written, medieval Sura (in Babylonia, modern-day Iraq) and Tiberias (on the shores of the Sea of Galilee). They may also accurately represent logical relationships (grammatical and metrical) actually present in the text.

In his notes to the publication and translation into French of the anonymous Yemenite Hebrew grammar compilation Reader’s Manual (1870) Joseph Derenbourg, the Jewish French Orientalist and philologist, gives this colorful account of cantillation marks: “Accentuation is like the first stuttering of an unconscious grammar, and would perhaps never have undergone this development had it not been destined to compensate for science, which had not yet been formulated. This incomparable punctuation may only be understood as the expression of a tradition that had to materialize, for want of the ability to call to its aid the exact observation of the organism of language.”

Samuel Bohl² (1611-1639), the German Orientalist and philologist, divides cantillation marks into five organizational levels. In the following table of the prosodic signs frequency refers to occurrences in the Song of Songs:

Name	Transliteration3	Psalmodic Homograph	Sign	Example	Reference	Frequency
סלוק	Silluk	Silluk			Song of Songs 1:1	117
אתנח	Atnakh	Atnakh			Song of Songs 3:11	86
סגולתא	Segolta	NA			Song of Songs 5:1	1
שלשלת גדולה	Great Shalshelet	Great Shalshelet			Genesis 19:16	0
זקף קטן	Little Zakef	NA			Song of Songs 1:2	168
זקף גדול	Great Zakef	NA			Song of Songs 5:12	7
טפחא	Tifkha	Tarkha			Song of Songs 1:5	203
רביע	Revia	Revia			Song of Songs 1:4	25
זרקא	Zarka	Tsinor			Song of Songs 5:1	1
פשטא	Pashta	NA			Song of Songs 1:3	146
יתיב	Yetiv	NA			Song of Songs 6:1	5
תביר	Tevir	NA			Song of Songs 2:17	19
גרש	Geresh	NA			Song of Songs 1:4	8
גרשים	Double Geresh	NA			Song of Songs 2:14	4
פזר קטן	Little Pazer	Little Pazer			Genesis 10:13	0
פזר גדול	Great Pazer	NA			Numbers 35:5	0
תלישא גדולה	Great Telisha	NA			Genesis 6:22	0
לגרמיה	Largameh	NA			Genesis 1:21	0
מנח	Munakh	Munakh			Song of Songs 2:12	149
מהפך	Mehupakh	Mehupakh			Song of Songs 1:8	66
מרכא	Merekha	Merekha			Song of Songs 3:1	127
מרכא כפולה	Double Merekha	NA			Genesis 27:25	0
דרגא	Darga	NA			Song of Songs 7:1	7
אזלה	Azla	Azla			Song of Songs 2:7	10
תלישא קטנה	Little Telisha	NA			Song of Songs 2:17	1
גלגל	Galgal	Galgal			Numbers 35:5	0

 

קיסר or Imperator “Emperor”

מלך or Rex “King”

משנה or Dux “Viceroy”

שליש or Comes “Captain”

משרת or Servus “Footman”

The first four groups are disjunctive (indicating syntactic breaks) or pausal, while the last is conjunctive (indicating syntactic links) or non-pausal. The following diagram illustrates the disjunctive system as it applies to half a verse:

In practice, however, and contrary to modern nesting practices, cantillation marks hold cumulative mandates, i.e. the emperor supersedes king 2, viceroy 4, and captain 8, king 1 supersedes viceroy 2 and captain 4, viceroys 1 and 3 supersede captains 2 and 6 respectively. This economy allows for eight signs instead of fifteen. The following table represents their role as implemented in linear order:

Level 4	Level 3	Level 4	Level 2	Level 4	Level 3	Level 4	Level 1
							Emperor
			King		King	King
	Viceroy	Viceroy		Viceroy
Captain

Since the data are arranged sequentially, four members of an inferior rank are promoted to preserve the ascending hierarchy, without respect to level and contrary to modern nesting practices. Thus, level 3 king ≈ viceroy, and level 4 king/viceroys ≈ captain. Priority between two signs of equal value (with no intervening sign of greater value) goes to the first sign, except that priority goes to the last emperor, who governs the whole verse.⁴

In his Treatise on the Accentuation of the Twenty-One So-Called Prose Books of the Old Testament (1887), William Wickes, the British Orientalist and philologist, calls the elaborated classification “fanciful and misleading”⁵, and defends the rabbinical bipartition of disjunctive מלך or dominus “master” and conjunctive משרת or servus “slave”. He nevertheless lists the former in an almost identical hierarchical order (rather than, for example, alphabetically), while quibbling about a few signs that he deems over- or underrated. No one seems to ignore the subordinations. Scholars disagree in their analysis of those subordinations. The present article retains none of these theories, preferring instead to proceed by distributional analysis (used by modern linguists to determine the parts of speech).

Generative grammar, while also repudiating Bohl’s system, sees in cantillation marks evidence of constituent structure analysis.⁶ Tree diagrams represent the syntactic relationships of sentences, as in the following figure illustrating Genesis 6:22,

The cantillation marks are then interpreted and manipulated in much the same way as linguistic concepts such as sentence (S), noun phrase (NP), and verb phrase (VP). This interpretation of cantillation marks, however, gives no structural role to silluk, which does not even appear in the tree diagrams. The considerable refinement and flexibility that cantillation marks bring to bear on grammatical parsing also serves in the scansion of biblical meter.

The cæsura, a rhythmic pause, divides most biblical verses into two or more metrical units called stichs. (The wages of scribes were paid by the stich.) The verse is called a monostich, distich (couplet, the rhetorical unit of biblical parallelism and antithesis), tristich (tercet), etc. according to the number of stichs it contains. A secondary cæsura splits the stich into two hemistichs.

The author of the present article has coined the neologism quarterstich in order to account for the exceptional verse length and minute subdivisions that characterize biblical prosody. The Classical dactylic hexameter counts no more than seventeen syllables (the final foot being a disyllabic trochee or spondee). Nearly half of the verses of the Song of Songs run at least fifty percent longer (fifty-four verses of twenty-six syllables or more). It is highly unlikely, and contrary to the evidence provided by contemporary cantors, that poets could recite long sequences of six-syllable utterances. Unless the Bible was not publicly declaimed, contrary to modern practice, as well as historical and internal⁷ evidence, the quarterstich imposes itself as a necessary metrical unit.

The quarterstich is composed of one or more metrical feet. The foot (generally limited by respiratory factors to four syllables) is a rhythmic group united under a tonic accent. Hebrew is an oxytonic language, whose accent regularly falls on the last syllable of an utterance. The foot is the building block of meter. As in Anglo-Saxon poetry, unstressed syllables (slack) are not counted, keeping in mind that cantillation stress may indicate a secondary accent in polysyllables and may differ from the tonic accent of uncantillated speech.

The following figure illustrates the prosodic structure of the normalized verse of the Song of Songs, a distich each hemistich of which is composed of two quarterstichs, each in turn composed of two feet:

Cantillation marks represent this metrical hierarchy as follows:

1. Silluk governs the verse.

2. Atnakh (representing the cæsura) governs the stich.

3. Little zakef (representing the secondary cæsura) governs the hemistich.

4. Pashta and tifkha govern quarterstichs x.1 and x.3 respectively.

5. Mehupakh, munakh, and merekha govern the foot.

In practice, however, and contrary to modern nesting practices, cantillation marks hold cumulative mandates, i.e. silluk simultaneously governs the whole verse, stich 2, hemistich 2.2, quarterstich 2.4, and foot 2.8, atnakh governs stich 1, hemistich 1.2, quarterstich 1.4, and foot 1.8, little zakef governs hemistichs x.1, quarterstichs x.2, and feet x.4, tifkha governs quarterstichs x.3 and feet x.6, pashta governs quarterstichs x.1 and feet x.2. This economy allows for sixteen signs instead of thirty-one. The following table represents their metrical role as implemented in linear order:

Level 1

Verse

Level 2

Stich 1

Stich 2

Level 3

Hemistich 1.1

Hemistich 1.2

Hemistich 2.1

Hemistich 2.2

Level 4

Quarterstich 1.1

Quarterstich 1.2

Quarterstich 1.3

Quarterstich 1.4

Quarterstich 2.1

Quarterstich 2.2

Quarterstich 2.3

Quarterstich 2.4

Level 5

Foot 1.1

Foot 1.2

Foot 1.3

Foot 1.4

Foot 1.5

Foot 1.6

Foot 1.7

Foot 1.8

Foot 2.1

Foot 2.2

Foot 2.3

Foot 2.4

Foot 2.5

Foot 2.6

Foot 2.7

Foot 2.8

Position

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

Sign

Mehupakh

Pashta

Munakh

Little Zakef

Merekha

Tifkha

Munakh

Atnakh

Mehupakh

Pashta

Munakh

Little Zakef

Merekha

Tifkha

Merekha

Silluk

The Song of Songs is composed of 117 verses, 31 monostichs (lacking atnakh) and 86 distichs. About ninety percent of the 1,253 words carry a cantillation mark (1,150 total), taking into account that some polysyllables carry two signs, and considering makef (similar to a hyphen) as a word separator. The value of the sign governing a hemistich-initial quarterstich depends on the sign governing the hemistich, i.e. pashta precedes little zakef, tifkha precedes atnakh and silluk. The 360 odd-numbered feet occur in free variation, accounting in part for widely unequal verse length. The value of the sign governing these optional feet, however, depends on the sign governing the quarterstich, i.e. mehupakh precedes pashta, munakh precedes little zakef and atnakh, merekha precedes tifkha and silluk. Thirty-three stichs contain only one hemistich, composed of tifkha followed by atnakh or silluk. Nine quarterstichs contain three feet, composed of two conjunctives followed by a disjunctive. The meter must have held a strong hold on both lector and listener alike, as its rhythmic pattern sufficed to organize verses of between fifteen and thirty syllables or more.

All of the above cantillation marks occur in the stressed syllable, including pashta, which is reiterated in the last syllable if the tonic accent falls before it. The verse thus follows a sequential pattern: ‑//‑|‑//‑||‑//‑|‑//‑: (where ‑ represents a stressed syllable, // a quarterstich division, | the secondary cæsura or hemistich division, || the cæsura or stich division, and : a verse division).

Twenty (seventeen percent) of the 117 verses follow this exact eight-sign pattern (pashta, little zakef, tifkha, atnakh, pashta, little zakef, tifkha, silluk).

Ninety-five (forty-seven percent) of the 203 stichs follow this exact four-sign pattern (pashta, little zakef, tifkha, atnakh/silluk), taking into account the regular variation in quarterstichs x.4.

The following table represents the occurrences of each of the five high-frequency disjunctive signs in the 104 stichs of only four disjunctive signs, taking into account the regular variation in quarterstichs x.4:

Quarterstich	x.1	x.2	x.3	x.4
Sign	Pashta	Little Zakef	Tifkha	Atnakh (x)	Silluk (y)
Expected	104	104	104	104 - y	104 - x
Occurrences	95	100	104	42	62
Percent	91%	96%	100%	100%	100%

While constituent structure analysis of syntactic relationships might account for such a regular overall pattern, syntax is indifferent to the one factor (number of disjunctive signs per stich) that intensifies this regularity to the point of quasi-exactitude.

The following table represents the stich distribution of each of the five high-frequency disjunctive signs, disregarding conjunctive signs:

Sign	Pashta		Little Zakef		Tifkha		Atnakh		Silluk
Occurrences	146		168		203		86		117
Environment	Follows	Precedes	Follows	Precedes	Follows	Precedes	Follows	Precedes	Follows	Precedes
Pashta	1	1	143	10	0	0	0	0	0	0
Little Zakef	10	143	8	8	146	0	0	0	0	0
Tifkha	0	0	0	146	0	0	86	0	117	0
Atnakh	0	0	0	0	0	86	0	0	0	0
Silluk	0	0	0	0	0	117	0	0	0	0
Other Disjunctive	27	2	5	4	23	0	0	0	0	0
Stich Division	108	0	12	0	34	0	0	86	0	117

The preceding conclusions⁸ were drawn from a mathematical model of the poem built empirically as follows:

1. Each cantillation mark was assigned a unique identifier.

2. Each instance of a cantillation mark was assigned a position (1 for the first sign in the verse, 2 for the second, 3 for the third, etc.)

3. Distributional analysis of the resulting data was performed in a spreadsheet.

For technical reasons the algorithm was performed on the Unicode (UTF-8) source text based on the Leningrad Codex (written in Cairo c. 1010) available at the following Uniform Resource Locator (URL):

http://www.anastesontai.com/b-cantilee/en-cant.asp?A=31&listeB=1

The data were then checked visually against the comparison text based on the Aleppo Codex (c. 930) available at the following URL:

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/c/ct/c3001.htm

The readings of the latter received preference in case of variants. Fewer than a dozen were found.⁹ All of the variants listed in the text of the Aleppo Codex were retained.

6:1-6:6 serves as an example:

Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women? whither is thy beloved turned aside? that we may seek him with thee. My beloved is gone down into his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed in the gardens, and to gather lilies. I [am] my beloved’s, and my beloved [is] mine: he feedeth among the lilies. Thou [art] beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as [an army] with banners. Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me: thy hair [is] as a flock of goats that appear from Gilead. Thy teeth [are] as a flock of sheep which go up from the washing, whereof every one beareth twins, and [there is] not one barren among them.

Cantillated Masoretic Printed Text in Ezra SIL SR Unicode font

The following text represents the pronunciation of these verses:

a•na ha•lakh do•dekh ha•ya•fa ba•na•shim a•na pa•na do•dekh u•ne•vak•she•nu i•makh

do•di ya•rad l’ga•no la•a•ru•got ha•bo•sem lir•ot ba•ga•nim v’lil•kot sho•sha•nim

a•ni l’do•di v’do•di li ha•ro•e ba•sho•sha•nim

ya•fa at ra•ya•ti k’tir•tsa na•va ki•ru•sha•lam a•yu•ma ka•nid•ga•lot

ha•se•bi ei•na•yikh mi•neg•di she•hem hir•hi•vu•ni sa•rekh k’e•der ha•i•zim she•gal•shu min ha•gil•ad