[HANASHIR:2569] Re: left to right? right to left?

[Judah Cohen <jcohen...>]

To add my two cents:

There have been attempts to create a "reverse" Western notation for Hebrew
(literally backwards), and I've seen them.  But in my opinion it's
generally a whole lot more trouble than it's worth.  In this case,
conformity to a Western standard is probably the preferable approach
(especially because the music itself is composed in a Western system).
Also, while it's relatively easy just to flip the music around today using
a computer, back in the years before Finale (herein "BF") such a feat would
have been rather work-intensive (especially for a limited audience who
already likely knew Western notation rather well and needed the music so
they could learn and sing it rather than make a political show).

On a side note, it's interesting to see how this dilemma was resolved in
the first major case of Hebrew meeting Western notation:  Salomone de
Rossi's "HaShirim Asher LiShlomo" in 1622-1623.  In this case, the solution
was to set the Hebrew text from left to right while maintaining word
integrity:  that is, each word would appear right-to-left under the note
which started it.  After that, it was up to the singer/oral tradition to
figure out how to partition the syllables among the notes allotted.

Judah.



>Stacey asks:
>>Question: If music is read left to right, and Hebrew right to left, is there
>>any Hebrew music without transliteration and the Hebrew separate at the
>>"bottom"? If the Hebrew is written "under" the notes, is it "backwards"?
>

Judah Cohen
Music Department
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA  02138
jcohen (at) fas(dot)harvard(dot)edu
(617) 628-4783

"...I do not feel that my research suffered unduly from the fact that I
enjoyed it." -- Daniel Miller, "Modernity--an Ethnographic Approach" (p. 6)


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