Re: Quartertones in cantorial music

[I. Oppenheim <i.oppenheim...>]

On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, Boaz Tarsi wrote:

> 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...

It is pretty clear that microtones are not a structural
element of the Ashkenazi cantorial modes.

However, it seems to be an "accepted performance
practice" among Ashkenazi chazzanim, to deliberately
play with their intonation as they lay their soul into
the music. They use such microtonal variations to
colour their performance, to "create a sense of
supplication"  as someone put it.

It would be interesting if someone would investigate in
what way e.g. the Golden Age Cantors actually made use
of such effects on their records. After all, music
theory should be the reflection of decent empirical
research, rather than a corset that excludes phenomena
we do not fully understand.

I posted the interesting observations of David Cheven
in this regard, on my website:
http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/rosenblatt/rosenblatt-notes.html


 Groeten,
 Irwin Oppenheim
 i(dot)oppenheim (at) xs4all(dot)nl
 ~~~*

 Chazzanut Online:
 http://www.joods.nl/~chazzanut/

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