Cantillation

The cantillation is the liturgical way to sing (and not to recite) the texts of the Torah. It is practiced with each reading of the Torah in the offices of the festivals and the week. With this intention, of the signs of cantillation affixed discreetly with the text, guide the Hazzan, the minister-officiant. Several Masters of the Judaism, whose Rachi is leaning on the system of signs and the perenniality of this aspect, considered as crowned. Today, the cantillation varies according to the rites of the communities Juives.

The song is retranscribed by these signs in the version Massorti of the Hebraic Bible (the Tanakh) with the vowels and the signs of cantillation. In Hebrew they are known under the name of טעמיהמקרא, your `améi ha-mikra or simply טעמים, t-piece `amim . Some of these signs are also found in the medieval manuscripts of the Michna.

The musical reasons meant by these marks are named nigoun and טראָפ too in Yiddish. the first function of these signs of cantillation is to guide the song of the texts crowned during the offices. Each word of the text almost is associated with a musical sentence. But actually, it is more complex because certain words have two signs and the cantillation depends on the context.

There are several groups of musical sentences. One chooses them according to the part of Bible which one sings. Moreover, the music varies according to the traditions of the Jewish communities and even according to the individual styles.

The signs of cantillation provide also information on the syntactic structure of the text and they are regarded as comments in themselves, by some, underlining important ideas by the music. They are thus not distributed randomly and follow a specific grammar. The word ta' amndt means " goût" or " sens" , which can clarify a passage.

The current system comes from the Massorah of Tibériade. The characters are integrated in Unicode sign 0591 until 05AF in the play of the Hebrew alphabet.

Functions of the signs

Three functions are distinguished:

Syntax: They divide the biblical verses into smaller units of comprehension (they are thus a sometimes important source of Exégèse). It is thanks to the combination of these signs which one can know if the words belong to the same sentence. A hierarchy of signs of various forces cuts out the verses in sentences. This aspect can point out the function of the modern punctuation with its commas, indents, semicolons and points.

Phonetic: the majority of the signs of cantillation indicate the specific syllable where to place a tonic accent.

Music: the signs have musical values. The Bible is not recited but is sung. The experiment of the text takes care of particular directions.

the Psalms, the Proverbs and the Book of Job : In these three books (poetic), more recent, the cantillation is done by a different system. The majority of the signs seem identical but their function differs completely; moreover, few of these signs preserve the same use that in the remainder of the Tanakh. The short accounts at the beginning and the end of the Livre of Job use the system " " normal" , but the body of book uses another of them. For this reason, these three books are called " Sifrei `Emet" , truth delivers. The word " Emet" meaning the Vérité is an acronym of " `lyov" , " Michlé" and " Téhilim".

Syntactic function

In general, each word of Tanakh has a sign of cantillation.

In general, each word of Tanakh is associated with a sign, which can be " rupture" showing the cut (end of the sentence) with the text which follows, or a " liant" joining two words like a " coulé" in music.

There are four levels of " rupture" , classified by importance.

the first level, named signs " Empereurs" , appeared by the sign sof passouk (literally " end of verset") obviously at the end of verse, and the atnakh (or " etnakhta") marking the medium of the verse.

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