Hello cyberlearn-ga,
I organized a digest of links to articles and information about Hebrew
tropes. I have included short excerpts from each article but I highly
recommend reading through them completely in order to get a better
understanding of the material.
Trope (al. Trop) (Hebrew - taamei hamikra)
“Cantillation Marks - Yiddish for the special diacritical marks found
in Masoretic editions of the Written Torah which indicates both how
the words are to be sung during communal reading and how the sentences
are to be punctuated.”
http://www.headcoverings-by-devorah.com/HebglossT.html
Cantor Daniel Pincus in the article "Chanting the Torah" explains the
interesting origins of the chanting trope.
“Following the destruction of the Second Temple in the year 70, and
the dispersal of the Jews from the Land of Israel, our leaders felt it
necessary to preserve among us a sense of solidarity through uniform
ritual practice. One of the areas in which they felt the need for
uniformity was the manner of chanting our "national constitution", the
Torah.”
(..)
“Eventually, in the 9th century C.E. (in the "Common Era") a family of
scholars in Tiberias codified a system of printed symbols which would
indicate:
1) the grammatical phrases of each Torah verse,
2) a series of notes for each sign.”
(..)
“When the bar mitzvah ceremony was instituted by Amran Gaon, the
leader of the Babylonian Jewish community in the 10th century, it was
certainly the cantillation symbols, or trope, which the young men of
his time learned as they prepared to lead their community in prayer on
their special Shabbatot.”
Source: The Temple Congregation Shomer Emunim
http://www.uahc.org/oh/oh004/articles/cantor_0900.htm
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An article from The Cantor's Corner dated May 2001:
“The art of chanting the Torah is over two thousand years old and
evolved from a solely oral tradition, to a formalized system of
musical notation that we now call trope, ta’amim, or musical
cantillation.”
“This Biblical cantillation system is made up of 28 signs and each
sign stands for a specific musical pattern or melodic motif. These
signs appear above and below the Hebrew text. The purpose of the
cantillation signs is to punctuate, accentuate, and phrase the text
and thus to enhance our understanding of the text.
(..)
“The cantillation system also adds melody to text, which helps us
remember the text.”
(..)
“In their wanderings and exile, the Jewish people took their
cantillation system wherever they went, but it absorbed some different
musical styles based on their geographic location. Various musical
interpretations of the which included the Ashkenazic, Sephardic,
Moroccan, Syrian, Baghdadian, and Yemenite.”
Temple Sinai: Cantors Corner
http://www.templesinainj.org/Cantor/cantors_corner_0501.htm
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Rabbi Robert Alpert explains the history of Torah trope.
“Torah trope is designed to give emphasis to words/phrases in the
sentence. The system was "composed" in the 7th/8th centuries by the
Ben Asher/Ben Naftali families in Palestine in order to provide
punctuation and fluent reading of the text.
The MUSICAL cantillations can differ - community to community - that
is - the way a SEPHARDI reads Torah is very different than the way an
ASHKENAZI Jew does.
(..)
The cantillation ENHANCES the meaning of the text - and is designed to
fill this function.”
Source: Ask a Rabbi
http://www.jewish.com/askarabbi/askarabbi/askr4384.htm
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Introduction to Chanting Trope
“There is a long tradition of chanting certain parts of Tanakh, dating
back to pre-Talmudic times and perhaps further.”
“For Torah there are two musical systems, one for weekdays and
Shabbat, and another for the High Holidays. High Holiday music is used
for both days of Rosh HaShanah, and for the Shacharit and Musaf
services of Yom Kippur. For the Mincha service on Yom Kippur, the
trope music returns to the weekday/Shabbat music, as an indication
that the Holy Day is nearly over.”
“The oral tradition which helped to preserve Tanakh before it was
written down was a musical tradition as well. The notation that we
have today (the trope marks) is relatively recent, dating from the
ninth century texts of the Masoretes. Prior to the notation there was
in some places a system of hand signals that a "tomech" or helper
would give to the reader.”
Source: Congregation Beth El of the Sudbury River Valley
http://www.bethelsudbury.org/tropeint.htm
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“Trope is a medieval French word used in liturgy. We use the term to
describe a body of traditional melodies used to sing various biblical
selections during our service, together with a system of symbolic
notation to call for specific sequences of notes. The symbols probably
represent hand signals originally given by a prompter to the reader.
The traditional Hebrew trope chant is over 2000 years old.”
Source: Congregation Am Hayam
http://www.amhayam.org/tropes/introd.htm
Congregation Am Hayam provides an index of tropes with their symbols
and sound samples
http://www.amhayam.org/tropes/tr_dspl.htm
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Trope or trop:
2Cantillation marks, a simple system of musical notation used when
chanting aloud from Scripture. The trope marks help to indicate
pronunciation, punctuate, and clarify meaning, and the melodies serve
as an aid to memorization, much in the same way that the lyrics of a
song are easier to recall than the words of a poem.”
Source: Klezmusic Tutor
http://www.klezmusic.com/tutor.html#terms
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Here is more information on the origin of the trope:
“Hebrew has no inherent punctuation and no capital letters. In the
times of both the First and Second Temple in Jerusalem, the Levites
were the musicians (along with their other tasks). They maintained and
taught the tradition regarding "punctuation" and chanting of biblical
texts. During readings, an expert would inform the reader how to chant
text using a system of hand signals called chironomy. Each hand signal
specified a particular musical melody. Some time after the destruction
of the Second Temple in 80 C.E., the hand signals were transcribed
onto parchment using a series of symbols called Ta'amei Hanegina or
Ta'amei Hamikra or the Greek word Trope. In the early 9th century
C.E., Aaron ben Asher systematized and transcribed the trope symbols
in the form we currently know it.”
http://www.kinnor.com/chanting_torah_haftarah.htm
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The Jewish Cantillation of the Bible:
“This page presents the traditional cantillation melodies used in the
synagogue for the chanting of the scriptural readings from the
Pentateuch (Torah, "Five Books of Moses") and the Prophets, a section
from which is chanted as a "conclusion"‚-"Haftarah"‚-of the Torah
reading on Sabbaths and festivals.”
Source: Eliezer Segal
http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/Cantillation/Chanting.html
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What is trope?
http://www.bxscience.edu/~cohenu/trope.html
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Ellie's Torah Tropes has different tropes available for download for
different Jewish holidays.
http://www.ellietorah.com/index2.html
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Other sites you can visit to learn more about chanting from the Torah
http://www.ellietorah.com/relatedn.html
Jewish.com information on tropes
http://jewish.com/page.php?do=search&query=trope&cat_id=
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For further reading offline:
Chanting the Hebrew Bible: The Art of Cantillation by Joshua R.
Jacobson
The most comprehensive guidebook available on the ancient art of
cantillation.
“Cantillation, the public reading of a passage from Scripture, is an
essential element of the Jewish worship service. Chanting the Hebrew
Bible provides a fine history of the tradition and offers a
comprehensive explanation of the practice, an explanation of regional
variations and grammatical rules, and shows how chanting dramatizes
and interprets the meaning within the biblical text. In addition,
Jacobson shares his unique system of notation and supplies extensive
examples of musical notation.”
http://www.jewishpub.org/Store/Shop/thought/ISBN0827606931
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Search Criteria:
Torah Trope origin
Trope chant Torah
history of Torah Trope
History of Hebrew Tropes
Thank you for your question and I hope these links help you in your
research. If anything I have written is not clear, please post a
request for clarification and I will do my best to meet your needs.
Best Regards,
Bobbie7-ga |
