|
|
|
This gesture (reconstructed by me) corresponds to munah ("set, placed"): in prosody, the ta`am which is assigned more nuanced functions by the
early treatises (and the musical "tropes" of many synagogue chant traditions) than any other. Yet one musical value -- the fifth
degree (acting, with the fourth, as one of the two dominant degrees in the biblical tonality) -- suffices to account for all of these functions. The right-angle
form of the written sign, and of the reconstructed gesture as well, suggests the suspensive quality of the fifth degree relative to the tonic. (This gesture is also quasi-identical to
the gesture representing the fifth degree in both the Kodaly Method and Egyptian chironomy.) |
|
|
|
Updated December 27, 2011 |
|
|
