Re: Quartertones in cantorial music

[Sam Weiss <SamWeiss...>]

I forwarded for comment to one of the presenters at the Milken 
conference,  Boaz Tarsi (Professor of music at J.T.S. specializing in 
cantorial modes), this recently discussed topic.  I believe that he 
addresses very well the issues that we raised in our passionate -- albeit 
Just and Well-Tempered -- discussions.  This is what he had to say:

<< On quartertones in nusach Ashkenaz:

We have to first make the distinction between awareness of their usage and 
lack thereof, and if there is awareness, whether it is conceptualized or 
not.
Then there are three other main issues to consider:

1) Tempered tuning as we know it is itself quite a young system.

2) Regardless of the formal and conceptualized system, in practical
performance no one except for keyboard instruments really plays the exact
frequency of the notes, tempered or not, and definitely not in a consistent
manner.  Furthermore, even the keyboard instruments (and harps) are tuned 
in a variety of systems, so in the reality of the performed sound there is 
a variety of pitch choices in any particular case.

3) What is meant by "quartertones?"  Is it
    A- the less-than-exactly-half-step as the measuring unit
    B- the use of notes that are a quartertone (or anything less than 
half-step) apart, or
    C- the use of a variety of intervals that cannot be measured only by 
the amount of half steps they contain.

Regarding the formal conceptual system in nusach Ashkenaz:
Obviously we have no concrete evidence of the practice much before the 
mid-late eighteenth century, but if we were to accept the earliest 
semi-concrete
evidence in the "Missinai Tunes" as a reflection of the Judeo-Germanic
practices in the beginning of the second millennium, we should assume that
the tuning system was identical to the local systems -- i.e., secular,
folk, and "art" music of the time and place, which was basically the 
Western
common practice of pre-tempered tuning -- which is still not really a
quartertone system; rather, it is based on dividing the octave into the 12
chromatic notes but not precisely evenly.  This is still separate and
fundamentally different from the tuning systems outside of the Western
common practice.

We do not know what Jewish (Hebrew) music in the time of antiquity and even 
later was, nor do we know what really happened to it as it evolved to 
become what is reflected in the 18th-19th century sources and current 
practice.  It is possible, even probable, that it originally consisted of a 
different tuning system; but whatever it was then, it had certainly become
"Westernized" by the time we can start tracing it back to medieval Europe.

What [posters to the J-M list] report hearing in the cantorial recordings 
[i.e. the singing which deviates from "standard Western tuning"], whether 
deliberately sung or not, is not part of a formal system or even a commonly 
accepted performance practice, and is at best (if at all aware) a personal 
style or choice...>>

-Prof. Boaz Tarsi

_____________________________________________________________
Cantor Sam Weiss === Jewish Community Center of Paramus, NJ

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