[HANASHIR:5150] Trop and Mode

[JHPlaner <JHPlaner...>]

     Cantor Neil Schwartz has given an excellent explanation of the trop
and ta'amim.  Perhaps I can add a bit of information about the relationship
between the masoretic accents and various Near Eastern and European
repertoires of chant--the "sacred bridge" to which Eric Werner referred in
his excellent study of Jewish and Christian interchange between synagogue
and church.
     The public reading of Torah is of ancient origin--I believe tradition
ascribes it to Ezra.  But what those sounds were--whether read or
chanted--is unknown.  Probably it was chanted, but we have no idea to what
recitation pattern or melodies.  It is probable that the Masoretes based
their grammatical structures on an oral tradition, but we do not know what
that oral tradition was.  It is clear that the ta'amim were primarily
grammatical--and when or how they developed musical equivalents we do not
know. The earliest extant medieval Jewish musical notation is, I believe, a
one-page sheet attributed to Obadiah the Proslete--and as I recall it comes
from the eleventh or twelfth century.  Professor Israel Adler has studied
it, I believe, most recently and a facsimile is published in his excellent
study of Jewish musical sources before 1840 (RISM).  It does not, as I
recall, give musical equivalents from the ta'amim.
     Eduard Birnbaum, Obercantor at Koenigsberg, made an elaborate
(unpublished) study of the various melodies used for chanting the trop and
well as their history.  His studies are in the Birnbaum Collection of the
Klau Library at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.  [I can provide
details upon request.]  The easiest readily-accessible source for these
melodies, though, is Abraham Zevi Idelsohn's Jewish Music in Its Historical
Development--a study dated 1929, as I recall.
     The origins of Gregorian chant too are unclear.  The earliest listing
of chants by mode is from 795-800 CE, a tonary from St. Riquier.  But a
modal system is common to much music of Near Eastern origin.  The ancient
Greeks had an elaborate system of modes, associated with specific moods and
originating from different regions of Greece and Asia Minor.  Arabic,
Persian, and Indian art musics are based on similar melodic motives or
"melody types", which we call "modes."  The Greek Orthodox Church and
Syrian Church classified them into a set of eight--the octoechos--and so
did the Western church.  Rather than a scale, such modes consist of small
motives--like our trop--which serve various textual functions:  beginning a
phrase, a medial pause mid-verse, and concluding patterns.  Baruch Cohon
prepared a superb study of these functional motives in Ashkenazic
liturgical chant--nusach hatefillah (Journal of The American Musicological
Society, 1950), and many similar studies of Gregorian chant exist as well.
     Nor is the origin of Gregorian chant clear.  There are different
rites--Old Roman, Gallican, Beneventan, Ambrosian, as well as Gregorian
(and many more beyond those!).  The oldest sources from Rome date from the
thirteenth century and differ from"Gregorian" chant. The first manuscripts
with musical notation come for the ninth and tenth centuries--and we cannot
read the notes--only trace general melodic contours.  Manuscripts with
clear melodic notation--Aquitantian notation--come from the eleventh and
twelfth centuries.  We think Gregorian chant originated not in Rome with
Pope Gregory by rather in northern France and Germany.  It's mighty
difficult to document Jewish-Christian musical exchange in that region in
the fifth through eighth centuries CE!
     We cannot conclude that because the structures of the chant are
similar--building melodies from small melodic formulae--therefore Gregorian
chant came from the synagogue.  Our own documents from the time of the
formulation of the Mishnah and Gemara provide very few references on the
actual chanting of Torah.  Yes, there are similarities between Jewish and
Christian sacred chant--but that is all we can say with certainty.
Professor Eric Werner's superb study is magnificent scholarship, but when
he compares the melody of the high holiday Aleinu with a Gregorian
Sanctus--both beginning with a descending F-major triad--and concludes that
the Church borrowed from the Synagogue, he is on most shaky ground.  Given
the diatonic nature of Jewish and Christian chant and given the immense
repertoire of preserved Gregorian melodies, many melodic relationships
exist--and most are fortuitous, especially when the texts differ greatly
and when we have no evidence for direct social or political exchange to
support suspected musical exchange.
     I apologize for this long explanation.  The issue is most interesting,
and my summary above does not do the huge topic justice.  Thirty years ago
I read Eric Werner's book footnote by footnote--I need to read it again.
If any reader would like to raise specific questions, I'd be happy to reply
individually.

John Planer

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