Munach

[Jeremy Rosenbaum Simon]

How many musically distinct munachs do people do, and where do you do
them? (Not including legarmeh.)
Jeremy

[Avram Herzog]

Fun question!

My munach leading into a revi'i, a zarka, a segol, and telisha are all different. And of course the munach leading into a zakef-katon (I was erroneously taught that munach as being the zakef and the ensuing note being the katon--I imagine many B"M students are taught that way).

While we're at it re. munach, does anyone out there pronounce telisha gedolah and telisha ketanah differently? I do not, but realize that since  t. ketanah is a meshareit and t. gedolah is a mafsik, they should be pronounced differently.

KT,

Avi H

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[S. Goldstein]

This is how I learned it.

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[Avram Herzog]

Hi R' Shmuel,

Is this list from a published sefer? If so, which?

Avi H

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[Jeremy Rosenbaum Simon]

What about before etnachta?

On Aug 28, 2022, at 12:24 PM, S. Goldstein <reb...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Jeremy Rosenbaum Simon]

Regarding telisha, i wasn't taught a difference, but at some point I began distinguishing. 

On Aug 28, 2022, at 10:44 AM, Avram Herzog <avhe...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Avram Herzog]

Jeremy,

How do you distinguish? I sometimes sorta do, where the t. ketanah kinda leads into the following word, but I'm not consistent at all.

Avi H

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[Jeremy Rosenbaum Simon]

I’m not musically sophisticated enough to describe it. But TG is up and down, starting sort of like a pazer, TK Is a bit more “flat“

On Aug 28, 2022, at 1:02 PM, Avram Herzog <avhe...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Avram Herzog]

Got it.

Thanks.

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[S. Goldstein]

This is my personal list that I used when teaching. 

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[Avram Herzog]

Thanks. 

On Sunday, August 28, 2022, S. Goldstein <reb...@gmail.com> wrote:

This is my personal list that I used when teaching. 

On Sun, Aug 28, 2022 at 12:30 PM Avram Herzog <avhe...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi R' Shmuel,

Is this list from a published sefer? If so, which?

Avi H

On Sun, Aug 28, 2022 at 7:25 PM S. Goldstein <reb...@gmail.com> wrote:

This is how I learned it.

On Sun, Aug 28, 2022 at 10:45 AM Avram Herzog <avhe...@gmail.com> wrote:

Fun question!

My munach leading into a revi'i, a zarka, a segol, and telisha are all different. And of course the munach leading into a zakef-katon (I was erroneously taught that munach as being the zakef and the ensuing note being the katon--I imagine many B"M students are taught that way).

While we're at it re. munach, does anyone out there pronounce telisha gedolah and telisha ketanah differently? I do not, but realize that since  t. ketanah is a meshareit and t. gedolah is a mafsik, they should be pronounced differently.

KT,

Avi H

On Sun, Aug 28, 2022 at 5:13 PM Jeremy Rosenbaum Simon <jeremy...@nyu.edu> wrote:

How many musically distinct munachs do people do, and where do you do
them? (Not including legarmeh.)
Jeremy

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[Art Roth]

I was taught a different t"q and t"g right from the beginning (at age 12, when being taught for my bar mitzvah).

The t"q ends on a note high enough to lead into the qadma which always follows it.

The t"g repeats the t"q and then adds one additional (lower) note at the end that makes it easy to treat the t"g as a mafsiq.

Thanks for asking the munax question.  It's an interesting one that I've never thought about before, and I spent some time analyzing my leining to try to break it down.  It turns out that my munaxs can have anywhere from 1 to 4 musical notes, as follows:

4 notes: preceding merkha, mahapakh, darga, and a second munax that's followed by z"q.  All of these are sung the same way, so they count as just 1 kind of munax.

3 notes: preceding z"q

2 notes: preceding zarqa, etnaxta, pazeir, t"q, t"g, and azla geiresh.  The last 4 are identical.  The etnaxta and zarqa versions are each unique.  So there are three kinds of munax here.

1 note: preceding segol, r"vi`i, gershayim, and another munax that's followed by anything except z"q.  All of these are identical --- just an exaggerated accent that comes out with slightly more force than a meteg. 

Final answer: 6 kinds of munax (not including legarmeh)

Here's one other observation that came to my mind while analyzing the munaxs.  Even though I don't consciously pronounce metegs, I'm told that my natural pronunciation while leining catches them very nicely.  However, I make one very conscious exception.  When two words are connected by a maqeif and there's a meteg in the first word (i.e., before the maqeif), I purposely do NOT pronounce such a meteg.  The reason is that in that situation, accenting the meteg would sound like a trope (e.g., merkha or munax), and I think it's more important to clearly demonstrate that the word has no trope than to convey the existence of the meteg.  Any thoughts on this point?

Art

[Easton Y.K. Houle]

In the trope that I learnt, there are 8 distinct Munahs:

Munah before Munah before Atnaht
-same as Munah before Munah before Zaqef qaton

Munah before Atnaht


Munah before Mahpak before Pashta

-same as Munah before Merka before Pashta
-same as Munah before Darga before Munah before Rebi'a

Munah before Zaqef qaton


Munah before Zarqa
-same as Munah before Darga before Tebir
-same as Munah before Geresh
-same as Munah before Gereshayim
-same as Munah before Telisha qetana
-same as Munah before Telisha gedola
-same as Munah before Pazer
-same as Munah before Yereah ben-Yomo

Munah before Munah before Segol

Munah before Segol


Munah before Rebi'a

[Easton Y.K. Houle]

I'm sorry to intervene with a correction, here, about Telisha Qetana. But you have it backwards.

For telisha qetana to connect to the following word, it must end in a low note, because Telisha Qetana only ever is followed by Qadma, and Qadma starts with a low note.

This is particularly well-preserved in the melody for Qadma we-Azla, which starts with such a low note in the East-Ashkenazi tradition that I've learnt and others that I've  heard.

The traditions for which Qadma by itself does not start with a low, I believe are mistaken or incorrectly simplified it in the course of its evolution, since in these cases, Qadma no longer connects with the next word in some circumstances.

Trust the rarer trope- it's not as often used and so it's not as often messed with. This is true with memory, and it's true with genes. Much that evolves- the longer the generation-time, the fewer errors.

In any case, all of my learning materials for the Ashkenazic rites, going back to the 16th century have TelishaQetana ending in a low note and TelishaGedola ending more flatly. Look at the end of page 543 and the start of 544 here (though this is far from my only sources for the Ashkenazic rite. I have almost all versions that have ever been published.)

[Easton Y.K. Houle]

In many traditions, Munah is the Zaqef, and the ensuing note is Qaton.

I am studying the tropes going back centuries to get to the bottom of this multiplication of Munahs, to figure out what happened. In the older sources, it seems that things were much simpler. 

I personally think that Munahs have been added to the melody of the main te'amim that they lead to, and that this has been done repeatedly by mistake.

[Easton Y.K. Houle]

But forget that I said that.  I don't want to be sewing seeds of doubt.  Ah, why do I open my mouth before thinking?

I need to be grading exams! Crap, my break has gone on long enough. *runs back to his office*

[bgg1]

A bit late to the party, but I just saw this post now, so thought I would add my experience. I was taught that Zakef 
Katon was two separate notes (i.e., Zakef is the Munach). When I was teaching my son for his Bar Mitzvah (this past Mishpatim) I waffle back and forth about it. But ultimately that's just a naming convention, as it doesn't change how I lein it.

I was taught that each of the Munachs of the standard Trop list are different. 

מנח זרקא מנח סגול מנח | מנח רביעי (מנח) זקף קטן מנח אתנחתא 

Additionally, מנח תביר is different as well. 

Regarding the תלישות, I was taught a difference, mainly that the קטנה is a four step note vs five steps for the גדולה. 

[Easton Houle]

I've since softened my stance on this, haha.  I've done a family-tree search on the accentual melodies and time-calibrated them according to historical migrations as one would do with human DNA and archaeological evidence... and they might -no joke- in fact go back 'to Moses on Sinai',  haha, or if not then, then to the integration of Levites to each of the tribes.

This is a big 'might'!  My model makes many assumptions, like a constant rate of evolution between all time periods and between all trope-families.  I have much more to learn in how to make family trees and how to test such assumptions, or how to build models that account for more complexity.

Anyway, one of the insights gained, besides fanciful historical dating, is that melodies for respective (and unique) Munachs evolved at least in some traditions well-before the Tiberian Masorah was finished in the 10th century.  This matches what we see in earlier manuscripts, though, since some of the other (Ashkenazi/proto-Ashkenazi?) cantillation systems were coming up with different graphemes to pen Munach in different situations.  So it looks like the oral/aural traditions simply had different phrase-contours for different kinds of phrases-  and merely after the fact did the earlier parts of these contours get assigned to the respective graphemes now going by the name of Munach.

This doesn't tell us whether or not Zaqef ought to be Munach or now.  I suppose each tradition keeps track of how it has assigned the parts of its phrase-melody to each of the dyangamiyim, and it should stay that way.

Humourfully,

Easton Houle, B.Sc.; graduate student researcher 

Interdisciplinary statistical methods for Historical Musicology:  

a Phylo-geography of Hebrew Cantillation melodies 

Bell Lab for Evolution ; Hendry Lab for Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics ; Larsson Lab for Palaeontology 

Redpath Museum, McGill University, Canada 

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Subject: Re: [leining] Munach

 

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[Easton Houle]

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