Hebrew cantillation

Hebrew cantillation, trope, trop, or te'amim is the manner of chanting ritual readings from the Hebrew Bible in synagogue services. The chants are written and notated in accordance with the special signs or marks printed in the Masoretic Text of the Bible, to complement the letters and vowel points.
These marks are known in English as 'accents', 'notes' or trope symbols, and in Hebrew as or just . Some of these signs were also sometimes used in medieval manuscripts of the Mishnah. The musical motifs associated with the signs are known in Hebrew as or and in Yiddish as : the word trope is sometimes used in Jewish English with the same meaning.
There are multiple traditions of cantillation. Within each tradition, there are multiple tropes, typically for different books of the Bible and often for different occasions. For example, different chants may be used for Torah readings on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur than for the same text on a normal Shabbat.

History

Three systems of Hebrew punctuation have been used: the Babylonian, the Jerusalem, and the Tiberian, only the last of which is used today.

Babylonian system

Babylonian Biblical manuscripts from the Geonic period contain no cantillation marks in the current sense, but small Hebrew letters are used to mark significant divisions within a verse. Up to eight different letters are found, depending on the importance of the break and where it occurs in the verse: these correspond roughly to the disjunctives of the Tiberian system. For example, in some manuscripts the letter tav, for tevir, does duty for both Tiberian tevir and zaqef. In general there are no symbols for the conjunctives, though some late manuscripts use the Tiberian symbols for these. There is also no equivalent for low-grade disjunctives such as telisha gedolah: these are generally replaced by the equivalent of zaqef or revia.
Nothing is known of the musical realization of these marks, but it seems likely that they represent breaks or variations in a set melody applied to each verse.
This system is reflected in the cantillation practices of the Yemenite Jews, who now use the Tiberian symbols, but tend to have musical motifs only for the disjunctives and render the conjunctives in a monotone. It is notable that the Yemenite Jews have only eight disjunctive motifs, thus clearly reflecting the Babylonian notation. The same is true of the Karaite mode for the haftarah; while in the Sephardi haftarah modes different disjunctives often have the same or closely similar motifs, reducing the total number of effective motifs to something like the same number.

Jerusalem system

The Babylonian system, as mentioned above, is mainly concerned with showing breaks in the verse. Early manuscripts from Judaea and Galilee, by contrast, are mainly concerned with showing phrases: for example the tifcha-etnachta, zarqa-segolta and pashta-zaqef sequences, with or without intervening unaccented words. These sequences are generally linked by a series of dots, beginning or ending with a dash or a dot in a different place to show which sequence is meant. Unaccented words are generally shown by a dot following the word, as if to link it to the following word. There are separate symbols for more elaborate tropes like pazer and telisha gedolah.
The manuscripts are extremely fragmentary, no two of them following quite the same conventions, and these marks may represent the individual reader's aide-memoire rather than a formal system of punctuation. In one manuscript, presumably of somewhat later date than the others, there are separate marks for different conjunctives, actually outnumbering those in the Tiberian system, and the overall system approaches the Tiberian in comprehensiveness. In some other manuscripts, in particular those containing Targumim rather than original text, the Tiberian symbols have been added by a later hand. In general, it may be observed that the Jerusalem and Tiberian systems are far more closely related to each other than either is to the Babylonian.
This system of phrasing is reflected in the Sephardic cantillation modes, in which the conjunctives are rendered as flourishes leading into the motif of the following disjunctive rather than as motifs in their own right.
The somewhat inconsistent use of dots above and [|below] the words as disjunctives is closely similar to that found in Syriac texts. Kahle also notes some similarity with the punctuation of Samaritan Hebrew.

Tiberian system

By the tenth century CE, the chant in use in medieval Palestine had clearly become more complex, both because of the existence of pazer, geresh and telisha motifs in longer verses and because the realization of a phrase ending with a given type of break varied according to the number of words and syllables in the phrase. The Tiberian Masoretes therefore developed a comprehensive notation with a symbol on each word, to replace the fragmentary systems previously in use. In particular, it was necessary to invent a range of different conjunctive accents to show how to introduce and elaborate the main motif in longer phrases. The system they devised is the one in use today, and is found in Biblical manuscripts such as the Aleppo Codex. A Masoretic treatise called
דִּקְדּוּקֵי־הַטְּעָמִים, Diqduqe ha-teʿamim by Aaron ben Moses ben Asher survives, though both the names and the classification of the accents differ somewhat from those of the present day.
As the accents were not shown on a Torah scroll, it was found necessary to have a person making hand signals to the reader to show the tune, as in the Byzantine system of neumes. This system of cheironomy survives in some communities to the present day, notably in Italy. It is speculated that both the shapes and the names of some of the accents may refer to the hand signals rather than to the syntactical functions or melodies denoted by them. Today in most communities there is no system of hand signals and the reader learns the melody of each reading in advance.
The Tiberian system spread quickly and was accepted in all communities by the 13th century. Each community re-interpreted its reading tradition so as to allocate one short musical motif to each symbol: this process has gone furthest in the Western Ashkenazi and Ottoman traditions. Learning the accents and their musical rendition is now an important part of the preparations for a bar mitzvah, as this is the first occasion on which a person reads from the Torah in public.
In the early period of the Reform movement there was a move to abandon the system of cantillation and give Scriptural readings in normal speech. In recent decades, however, traditional cantillation has been restored in many communities.

Different systems for different sets of books

There are two systems of cantillation marks in the Tanakh. One is used in the twenty-one prose books, while the other appears in the three poetical books of Psalms, Proverbs and Job. Except where otherwise stated, this article describes the "prose" system.

Traditional roots

The current system of cantillation notes has its historical roots in the Tiberian masorah. The cantillation signs are included in Unicode as characters U+0591 through U+05AF in the Hebrew block.

Different naming according to rites

The names of some of the cantillation signs differ in the Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Italian and Yemenite traditions; for example Sephardim use qadma to mean what Ashkenazim call pashta, and azla to mean what Ashkenazim call qadma. In this article, as in almost all Hebrew grammars, the Ashkenazi terminology is used. The names in other traditions are shown in the table below.

Purpose

Synagogue use

A primary purpose of the cantillation signs is to guide the chanting of the sacred texts during public worship. Very roughly speaking, each word of text has a cantillation mark at its primary accent and associated with that mark is a musical phrase that tells how to sing that word. The reality is more complex, with some words having two or no marks and the musical meaning of some marks dependent upon context. There are different sets of musical phrases associated with different sections of the Bible. The music varies with different Jewish traditions and individual cantorial styles.

Explanation to text

The cantillation signs also provide information on the syntactical structure of the text and some say they are a commentary on the text itself, highlighting important ideas musically. The tropes are not random strings but follow a set and describable grammar. The very word ta'am, used in Hebrew to refer to the cantillation marks, literally means "taste" or "sense", the point being that the pauses and intonation denoted by the accents bring out the sense of the passage.

Functions of cantillation signs in explanation of text

The cantillation signs serve three functions:

Function	Description
Syntax	They divide biblical verses into smaller units of meaning, a function which also gives them a limited but sometimes important role as a source for exegesis. This function is accomplished through the use of various conjunctive signs and especially a hierarchy of dividing signs of various strength which divide each verse into smaller phrases. The function of the disjunctive cantillation signs may be roughly compared to modern punctuation signs such as periods, commas, semicolons, etc.
Phonetics	Most of the cantillation signs indicate the specific syllable where the stress falls in the pronunciation of a word.
Music	The cantillation signs have musical value: reading the Hebrew Bible with cantillation becomes a musical chant, where the music itself serves as a tool to emphasise the proper accentuation and syntax.