Saul Levin: Traditional Chironomy - Part 3 of 4

Prof. Saul Levy, "The Traditional Chironomy of Hebrew Scripture" (SUNY - Binghampton, 1966). Filmed at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Chironomy is the art of using gestures of the hand and the fingers to represent musical values. In this series of videos (ultimately taken from a VHS that Prof. Levin made for me in 1993), three different synagogal traditions are documented so that they would not be lost to posterity. Allegedly they correspond to the te`amim (טעמים) or musical accents of Hebrew Scripture, but not even the Yemenite tradition documented here matches what was preserved by the 12th-century Yemenite treatise translated in 1870 as the "Manuel du Lecteur" by J. Berenbourg. Those gestures alone correspond independently, consistently and precisely (at least for the gestures given for the right hand) with the deciphering key to the written musical accents proposed by Suzanne Haik-Vantoura in 1976 (see this channel and especially the "teamim" channel for further information).

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Hebrew
• Bible
• Torah
• Tanakh
• music
• chironomy
• Masoretic
• Masorah
• synagogue
• University
• Israel