The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-06-29

miah formed the Levitical singers into two large choruses, which, after hav- ing marched around the city walls in different directions, stood oposite each other at the Temple and sung alter nate hymns of praise to God (Neh. xii |3D Niebuhr ("Risen,' i. 176) calls at tention to the fact that in the Orient it is still the custom for precentor to sing one strophe, which is repeated three, four or five tones lower by the other singers. In this connection mention may be made of the alternat- ing song of the serapthim in the Tenn pie, when called upon by Isaiah (comp. Isa. vi.). The measure must have va ried according to the character of the song; and 1t is not improbable that it changed even in the same song. With out doubt the striking of the cym- bals marked the measure.
 The Arabs spoke of the harmony of the western people as "a wild and un- pleasant noise in which no sensible person can take pleasure When Arabs play on different instruments land sing at the same time almost the same melody is heard from all unless one of them sings or plays as bass one and the same note throughout. This was probably the same with the Is raelites in olden times, who attuned | the stringed instruments to the voices of the singers either on the same note | n fy1 tta at n+hnT~ sonant interval,
 It has been an ancient practice that the Scriptures should be read as indi- cated in Neh. wifi 8 in some sort of musical Reclamation for the passages uttered aloud in the synagogue. The early synagogal music was founded upon the same system and method as prevailed in the orchestra of the Tenn Fple itself.
 Cantillation was the mode of intona- tion used in public recitals of prayers and Holy Scripture. The infinite gradations of tone in ordinary speech serve to bring home to the listener the interrelation and coordination of the words used by the speaker. Even when the listeners do not exceed the small circle that can be reached by the ordinary speaking voice, the deli- cate shade of meaning to be conveyed by the structure adopted for the sen tence will not be appreciated by them unless certain conventionalities of pitch are introduced into utterance, These conventionalities of pitch result in an elementary form of song, and thus became early known as singing \ to speech" But when a larger audi ence is addressed the assistance of a sing-song utterance in marking this acent or prosody, and rendering the precise interdependence of the suc- cessive words unmistakable, has been recognized by all who have ever had to speak in the open air or in a large building, and has been from the earli- est ages adopted for the public recita- tion of sacred texts. Among Jews the desire to read the Scriptures in the manner described in Neh viii. has from time immemorial resulted in the use of, some sort of musical declama- ton. This mode of recitation, de- pending not upon the rhythm and SCI quence of the sounds chanted, but upon the rhythm and sequence of the syllables to which they are chanted, Is known as cantifation.
 From the earlier centuries there has always been the desire among the Jews to enhance the importance of the rtx..-ia,. i,, +h. Z. ev,,, n oo,ot rtt,,aI rTha officiant was required to have a pleas ant voice and a clear enunciation and the voluntary assistance of good vo- calists was regarded as merltorious.
 The women were from the first en- tirely silent in the synagogue. The songs were chanted originally in re- sponsive antiphony but soon 1t de- veloped into general unison. The Hazan became primarily the precen-
 tor He would give in moments of in spiration or emotion utterance to a phrase of unusual beauty or power,
 which caught up by the congregation would be repeated and preserved as a worthy expression of the thought un- deriving the days service, coming at ldSL lillO lllt lOIll Ol 9 NCilIllLC tllAI well recognized musical sentence, and so forming the substance of a prayer motive. There was little need to prompt him to greater energy in this direction; from the first it became more necessary to keep his interest in check.
 Tn the music of the synagogue
 many germs of the practice of western
 Asia which centered in Babylon, have
 left their effects i'll all lands between
 Moorish Spain and Dravidian India.
 Another marked element of later
 origin Is that style of florid melodious
 information which requires the exercise
 of vocal agility. It existed, as the
 cantillation of Scripture shows, ever
 before the recital of the service was
 entrusted to the Hazzan as the speci.
 alists It was introduced in Europe | in the seventh century, then rapidly
 developed and, more than aught else
 led to the complaints against the haz
 zanim. Yet many of the influences tC which this intricate vocalization wa! due lay in the old Jewish tradition a!
 to what was a seemly method of ex
 pressing devotion. Similar influences
 had built up, upon old outlines cominl
 from Asia Minor, the fguration whicl distinguishes also certain sequences 1T l the Catholic plain-song. But tn church plain-song never developed tn, , rapid and florid ornamentation of tn synagogal hazzanut, because of tn early development of choral participa
 ton in the church service. So too il