A.Z. Foreman | Psalm 117 read in Reconstructed Tiberian Hebrew with and without cantillation @a.z.foreman74 | Uploaded 10 months ago | Updated 18 hours ago
This reading includes the same psalm read twice, once in a normal albeit very slow speaking voice, and again with cantillation.
A friend noted to me that the Babylonian Talmud (Sukkah 38b and also Tractate Sofrim believed to be composed in Palestine) and, in a more oblique way, the Jerusalem Talmud (Shabbat 16) inform us as to the specifics of communal participation in the chanting of the hallel psalms. Specifically, it was done as a responsory. The practice is not common today, but of a certainty many users of the Tiberian reading tradition would have done so. So, I figured, why not incorporate that in my cantillated version of the reading of this psalm?
This pronunciation, used by the Masoretes in Early Medieval Galilee, is the one the Hebrew vowel signs we're all familiar with were actually designed to record. I decided to create such recordings because despite the profusion of data about this reading dialect and its importance for the later history of Hebrew (such as in the the development of the vocalization signs), I couldn't find anybody who had actually taken the liberty of making a recording that used all the most recent research on this dialect to give an idea of what it (may have) actually sounded like (for example, we now know that the vav was indeed labiodental in this dialect, and that vowel length was indeed at least somewhat contrastive.) As with all reconstructions, this is at more than one level hypothetical. In listening to this, you are doing something less like watching a documentary than watching a well-researched work of historical fiction.
This reading includes the same psalm read twice, once in a normal albeit very slow speaking voice, and again with cantillation.
A friend noted to me that the Babylonian Talmud (Sukkah 38b and also Tractate Sofrim believed to be composed in Palestine) and, in a more oblique way, the Jerusalem Talmud (Shabbat 16) inform us as to the specifics of communal participation in the chanting of the hallel psalms. Specifically, it was done as a responsory. The practice is not common today, but of a certainty many users of the Tiberian reading tradition would have done so. So, I figured, why not incorporate that in my cantillated version of the reading of this psalm?
This pronunciation, used by the Masoretes in Early Medieval Galilee, is the one the Hebrew vowel signs we're all familiar with were actually designed to record. I decided to create such recordings because despite the profusion of data about this reading dialect and its importance for the later history of Hebrew (such as in the the development of the vocalization signs), I couldn't find anybody who had actually taken the liberty of making a recording that used all the most recent research on this dialect to give an idea of what it (may have) actually sounded like (for example, we now know that the vav was indeed labiodental in this dialect, and that vowel length was indeed at least somewhat contrastive.) As with all reconstructions, this is at more than one level hypothetical. In listening to this, you are doing something less like watching a documentary than watching a well-researched work of historical fiction.
