Steve Reich and Hebrew Cantillation

Author(s): Antonella Puca

Source: The Musical Quarterly , Winter, 1997, Vol. 81, No. 4 (Winter, 1997), pp. 537-555
Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/742285

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The Twentieth Century

Steve Reich and Hebrew Cantillation

Antonella Puca

Among the composers of the American avant-garde, Steve Reich is one

of the most strongly aware of his cultural and ethnic roots. His interest in
Hebrew cantillation dates from the mid-1970s and is accompanied by the
rediscovery of his own Jewish background, by the study of the Hebrew
language and of the Hebrew Bible, and by extended periods of residence
in Israel. My paper considers the influence of Hebrew cantillation on
Reich's compositional techniques and on his approach to the relation
between words and music in his works from the 1980s and early 1990s.
In his early tape pieces from the 1960s, Reich uses speech samples
in such a way that they lose their original linguistic connotation. I argue
that in the works that Reich composed after his studies of Hebrew can-
tillation, the preservation of the semantic meaning of the words
becomes for him a central concern, and that sound aspects of spoken
language, such as intonation, timber, melodic cadences, and metric
accentuation become the defining elements of musical structure.1
During the 1960s, Reich explored the relation of words and music in
a series of works for magnetic tape that make use of recorded speech. By
using recorded speech as a source of electronic tape music, he intended to
present speech-melody as it naturally occurs, keeping the original emo-
tional power that speech has while intensifying its inherent musical prop-
erties through repetition and rhythm.2 It's Gonna Rain, composed in San
Francisco in 1965, gives an example of Reich's early approach to speech
in music. This piece is based on a speech sample that Reich recorded
using the voice of a black Pentecostal preacher, along with the sound of
pigeons and traffic. The piece is in two parts, which are based on the
manipulation of two different speech fragments. Both parts start with the
speech sample presented in its entirety on two channels, as originally
recorded. In the course of the composition, Reich isolates individual
speech fragments, which are repeated, juxtaposed, and combined in vari-
ous ways. In the first part, the two channels start in unison, go gradually
out of phase with each other, and then slowly move back to unison. In
part two, Reich combines the technique of "phase shifting" with that of
the canon. This section starts with two voices (one per channel) that go

537

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538 The Musical Quarterly

gradually out of phase and then proceed in canon. The two-voice canon
is transferred to channel one, while channel two introduces a duplicate of
it. The process of phase shifting is repeated, and eventually the piece
develops into an eight-voice canon at the unison. Come Out (1966) is
composed on the basis of a similar procedure, with a single loop recorded
on two channels. The piece starts with the repetition of the loop, in uni-
son with itself. As it begins to go out of phase, a slowly increasing rever-
beration is heard. The speech fragment gradually develops into a canon
for two, then four, and finally eight voices. In these electronic manipula-
tions, the speech sample loses its original linguistic connotation and is
treated as purely acoustic material.3
Reich's study of Hebrew cantillation and the rediscovery of his Jew-
ish background in the mid-1970s oriented his approach to the musical
setting of words and speech in a new direction, one that aims at preserv-
ing the integrity of speech in terms both of its acoustic quality and of its
semantic meaning. Reich grew up within the tradition of Reform
Judaism, with scant exposure to the Hebrew language and to the Hebrew
Bible.4 Reich's father came from a family of Jewish immigrants from east-
ern Europe (Krakow and Budapest) who had tried their best to become
American. Reich's mother, whose family was originally from Austria
(Vienna) and Germany (Koblenz), had roots in the United States that
dated back three generations.5 After a bar mitzvah where he pointed at
words that he could not read "but said from memory of a transliteration
into the English alphabet," Steve Reich lost interest in Judaism "with
the exception of reading Martin Buber" in his teens.
Through the 1960s and 1970s, Reich's interest in religion and eth-
nic cultures led him to practice Buddhist meditation, read about Mexi-
can mysticism, and study African and Balinese music. In 1974 he felt
the desire to learn more about his own ethnic and religious background,
a desire he shared with Beryl Korot, whom he met the same year. In
1975 Reich decided to attend the adult education program at Lincoln
Square synagogue in New York City, taking courses in Hebrew and in
the reading of the Torah. In 1976 and 1977, the cantor Edward Berman,
of the Jewish Theological Seminary, introduced him to the study of bib-
lical cantillation. Reich worked for some time with Johanna Spector of
the Jewish Theological Seminary and with Israel Adler and Avigdor
Herzog of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In the summer of 1977,
Reich made his first trip to Israel with Korot, with the intention of visit-
ing the National Archives of Recorded Sound in Jerusalem.6 While in
Jerusalem, he pursued fieldwork research in the area of biblical cantilla-
tion, recording the first five verses of Bereshit (Genesis) chanted by

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 Steve Reich and Hebrew Cantillation 539

older Jewish men from Baghdad, Yemen, Kurdistan, and India. His
research confirmed him in the view that, beyond regional differences,
"the structure of the chant is always the same."7 By 1978, the most
intense period of his Jewish studies was over, and he felt that, indeed, he
had "found his spot."8
Reich's interest in the Jewish musical tradition is centered on the
Bible and on biblical cantillation: "For many people, Jewish music
means 'Fiddler on the Roof' or Hasidic folk songs .... I would go back to
the homeland, to the origin, and see what is particular about my tradi-
tion, independently of how it was influenced, in the Askenazic experi-
ence, in Germany, France and England, or, in the Sephardic experience,
in Spain . . .. The center of the tradition is the chanting of the Scrip-
tures."9
The written text of the Hebrew Bible as transmitted since medieval
times comprises three main components: the consonantal letters, the
vowel symbols, and the accentuation signs for cantillation, called
te'amim.o10 The consonantal text of the Torah constitutes the core of the
biblical canon. For the faithful, this text represents the original gift of
God to the Jewish people, which Moses received on Mount Sinai
together with a body of orally transmitted rules for its interpretation.
According to modern Bible historians, the consonantal text of the Torah
represents the crystallization of a critical process that took place with the
contribution of many generations of scholars and scribes.ll This process
predates by several centuries the codification of the Masorah, which led
to the inclusion in the Bible of written signs for the vowels and for the
cantillation accents, which had been transmitted orally for genera-
tions.12
The Hebrew alphabet is composed exclusively of consonantal let-
ters. Hebrew words typically have a root of three consonants, which
assume different meanings in spoken language according to the way in
which they are pronounced. The same root of three consonants gener-
ates a variety of words in speech, according to the vowel sounds that are
added and to the eventual insertion of prefixes, suffixes and ending
desinences. For instance, the three-letter root Samex-Pey-Resh (1i0)
might be pronounced sefer, which means "book," or sipur, which means
"story." With the addition of the prefix Mem (r), it can be pronounced
mesaper, which indicates the present tense of the verb "to narrate," or
mispar, which means "number." The addition of the vowels is necessary
to identify a single meaning and to exclude other possible interpreta-
tions of the same root. In the context of larger syntactical units, the
meaning of every sequence of words depends upon the correct grouping

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540 The Musical Quarterly

of the words, the interrelation of clauses and subclauses within the verse,
and upon "musical" parameters, such as the relative emphasis placed in
individual words in speech, the intonation, and so on.13
In the ritual practice of the synagogue, the text of the Bible is deliv-
ered in a form of heightened reading that stands between reading proper
and singing and is known as cantillation. The Hebrew Bible uses two
sets of cantillation accents, one for the twenty-one so-called prose books
of the Hebrew canon and one for the three poetical books (Job,
Proverbs, and Psalms).
In his article on Hebrew cantillation, Steve Reich explains that the
te'amim or "accents" have three functions in the Hebrew biblical text.14
First, they indicate the syllable on which the phonetic accent falls. In
Hebrew, most words have the accent on the last syllable (milr&, "from
below"), as in the first word of the Bible, Bereshit, and some have it on
the penultimate syllable (mil'el, "from above"). The te'amim also act as a
punctuation system, marking the syntactical structure of the text, the
ending of a complete verse and of its parts, and the distribution of pauses
for oral delivery. Reich distinguishes nineteen "disjunctive" te'amin,
marking separations of varying degrees between parts of a sentence, and
eight "conjunctives."s15 The accents are classified hierarchically accord-
ing to their degree of dependence upon or independence from each
other and according to their relative weakness or strength. Finally, the
te'amim represent the musical notation for the cantillation. Each sign or
group of signs represents a musical motive with a distinct rhythmic
and/or melodic profile. The signs work as reference aids to the evocation
of the motive, which varies in its individual profile according to the tra-
dition of the individual Jewish community in which the cantillation is
practiced.16
Reich studied cantillation with the cantor of the Jewish Theologi-
cal Seminary, Edward Berman, who in turn had learned the Lithuanian
tradition of cantillation from Solomon Rosowsky. Rosowsky spent the
last years of his life in New York City, where he died in 1962. While in
the United States, he published his major studies of the cantillation and
taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary. His activity in New York
City was oriented toward the training of cantors and the establishment
of the principles for a musical and syntactical analysis of the te'amim.
His teaching method fostered the use of transcriptions into Western
notation, along with oral transmission, making the cantillation conform
to the Western metric and tonal system. In The Cantillation of the Bible,
Rosowsky classifies the Lithuanian tradition as the "principal type in the
large Ashkenazic family of cantillations. .... It is by no means confined
to the territorial limits of Lithuania. It is adhered to by Jews in Poland,

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 Steve Reich and Hebrew Cantillation 541

Russia, ... various European countries, North and South America,

South Africa, and by a number of Ashkenazic communities in Israel."17
Within the Lithuanian tradition, there are different melodic patterns
chanted for the te'amim for use with the reading of the Prophets as
opposed to the Torah. There are also particular te'amim for the five
Megillot or Scrolls (Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Kohelet or
Ecclesiastes, and Esther). In the system that Reich learned from Berman,
one of the main differences in the reading of the various books of the
Bible consists in what he defines as the "modality" of the cantillation.
Reich explains that "while the melodic structure of the Torah is basically
in major, the Prophets are basically in minor. In the case of the Song of
Songs, some accents are in major, others in minor and some in the Phri-
gian mode."s18 Example 1 presents a table comparing four of the most
common groupings of accents studied by Reich. The table shows the dif-
ference in "modality" between chanting the Torah, the Prophets, and
the Song of Songs within the Lithuanian tradition. In actual perfor-
mance, an accent can seldom be regarded as a detached, self-contained
unit. The accent groups tend to be matched by motivic groups or
melodic phrases. The study of the motivic interrelations in larger musi-
cal and textual units is an area of research that has attracted consider-
able attention in recent years.19
The divisions marked by the te'amim might follow musical and
poetic criteria that are in contrast with those regulating the logical and
grammatical division of the text. The relation of the musical syntax of
the te'amim to the syntax of the Hebrew language has been a matter of
controversy in biblical scholarship.20 Especially in the so-called poetical
books, the placement of the te'amim might lead to an irregular division
of the text to establish, for instance, parallels among subsections, or to
place emphasis on a particular word.21 Reich's writings attest to his
awareness of the discussion concerning the te'amim both in the musico-
logical literature and in the grammatical studies of the biblical text.22
Reich's interest was directed primarily to the structure of the cantillation,
rather than to the sound, which varies according to the different Jewish
communities in which the cantillation is practiced:

Just as I found it inappropriate to imitate the sound of African or Balinese

music, I found it similarly inappropriate to imitate the sound of Hebrew can-
tillation. It is true that I am Jewish, but I did not grow up with the sound of
cantillation and really discovered it in my late 30s. Even more important,
though, is that the sound of Hebrew cantillation is not perhaps the most
fruitful form of influence, and that by imitating it one could easily end up
with merely a "Jewish sounding piece," much as one could end up with

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542 The Musical Quarterly

TORAH

4321

Mer-cha tip - cha mer- cha sof-pa - suk

PROPHETS

Mer - cha tip - cha mer- cha sof-pa - suk

SONG OF SONGS

Mer- cha tip - cia _ mer - cha sof-pa - suk_

STORAH
4321

mer-cha tip - cha_ m

_ PROPHETS

mer - cha tip - cba mu - nach et - n

9)0
'_ " _r
.. . . . ._-..
_ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ ~SONG OF SONGS
mer-cha

TORAH

9AKEF KA-TON 54321

kad - ma ma - pach_ pash - ta mu - nach_

PROPHETS

ZAKEF KA - TON

kad - ma ma - pach. pash - ta mu - nach ka - ton

fl -~

S2 SONGOFSONGS
ZAKEF KA - TON

kad- ma ma - pach pash - ta mu - nach. ka - ton

TORAH

4321
kad- ma as - la. mu - nach_ re - vi - a__
..J

APROPHETS

kad - ma az - la _mu - nach re-vi - a

SONG OF SONGS

kad - ma az - la _mu - nach re-vi - a

Example 1. Comparative table of te'amim for th

Lithuanian tradition. Steve Reich, "La cantillazio
225. ? Copyright 1994 by E.D.T Edizioni di Tor

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 Steve Reich and Hebrew Cantillation 543

African or Balinese sounding pieces. These are merely up-dated versions of

Chinoiserie-the wearing of colorful clothes on the surface of a piece of
music to make it sound like something exotic. In contrast to this, it seems to
me far more fruitful and certainly more substantial to try and understand the
structure of Hebrew cantillation and apply that to the pitches and timbres
one has grown up with so as to hopefully create something new.23

In Reich's view, the Western tradition of cantillation is based on a

musical system that shares the fundamental premises of the European
tonal system. This system excludes the use of microtonality, which Reich
associates with the cantillation of the Jewish communities of the Middle
East: "In Western Hebrew cantillation, you don't find any microtonality
whatsoever .... I don't think that it is important in Jewish music, except
as you would find it... in the Middle Eastern communities.... As a
musical device in the West, I have always thought it reminded me of a
man who's painting a room and forgets to leave a place for himself to
leave. And he's stuck in the corner with the wet paint."24
In the late 1970s, Reich's attention was directed to the motivic
structure of the cantillation, along the lines of Abraham Idelsohn's stud-
ies, and particularly to the way in which long melodic phrases are built
on the addition of motives with a distinctive melodic and rhythmic pro-
file, each associated with an individual ta'am: "Basically, what goes on in
Hebrew chant is that each word in the Torah has a mark, and the mark
indicates a traditional melodic fragment, and by piecing these fragments
together you chant the weekly reading. The technique therefore consists
of taking pre-existent melodic patterns and stringing them together to
form a longer melody in the service of a holy text. If you take away the
text, you're left with the idea of putting together small motives to make
longer melodies-a technique I had not encountered before."25
The influence of the studies of Hebrew cantillation on Reich's music
can be noticed in Eight Lines, which Reich completed in 1979. This piece
presents long melodic lines, constructed according to a procedure of
"motivic addition" similar to that of Hebrew cantillation as described by
Idelsohn.26 In Example 2, the part of the flute is constructed by joining
motivic fragments from the part of the first piano. Measures 1 and 2 of the
flute double the notes of the right hand in the piano, with a few octave
transpositions. Measures 3 and 4 in the flute part start with the first four
notes in the first piano part, but then the flute diverges for the rest of the
third measure and for the fourth measure. The fifth measure is a repetition
of the first, while the sixth repeats the fourth; the seventh measure repeats
the first, and the eighth measure is a variation of m. 2. The ninth and
tenth measures are repeats of mm. 3 and 4. The resulting melodic pattern

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544 The Musical Quarterly

F1. 2 , - - ,0)

Pno.

3 3 4 1

9 3 4

Example 2. S
Music, Inc., a

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 Steve Reich and Hebrew Cantillation 545

for the flute part is 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 4, 1, 2', 3, 4. As Reich notes, "the sound of

this music is not at all similar to that of the cantillation, but the structure
resembles the motivic construction of the cantillation."27
In Tehillim, composed in 1981, Reich turns to the Hebrew Scrip-
tures as the poetic source for his musical settings. Originally, Reich had
thought of starting out by transcribing the Book of jonah exactly as it is
chanted in Western synagogues on Yom Kippur and of having the tran-
scription performed not by another male voice ("I think that would be a
poorer version of what's done in the synagogue"), but, rather, by a female
voice.28 Soon, however, he felt that "to compose a setting for this text
seemed problematic-perhaps similar to the difficulty I felt in using an
African bell in my own music. Another factor for me was the fact that
the tradition of the synagogue had been to preserve the original cantilla-
tion. In short, there is no need of new musical compositions in the tradi-
tional synagogue."29 Eventually, his interest turned to the Book of
Psalms, with a selection of excerpts that includes Psalms 19:2-5,
34:13-15, 18:26-27, and 150:4-6: "One of the reasons I chose to set
Psalms as opposed to parts of the Torah or Prophets is that the oral tradi-
tion among Jews in the West for the singing of the Psalms has been lost.
(It has been maintained by Yemenite Jews.) This means that I was free
to compose the melodies for Tehillim without a living oral tradition
either to imitate or to ignore."30 Reich's main concern in this work was
to formulate the relation between text and music in a way that would
preserve the meaning of the words: "Up to that moment, I had limited
myself to set in music individual words independently, in a way, of their
meaning, but now I had to confront myself with texts in which meaning
was fundamental, and for this kind of operation I did not have any
method .... For the first time, the music had to serve the purpose of the
meaning of the words."31
The first idea was that of inserting in the rhythm of the vocal parts
the rhythm which was immanent in the structure of the words. In read-
ing the Hebrew text of the Psalms, Reich could perceive a metric succes-
sion of units of two and three beats. This series of twos and threes
become the basis for the rhythmic structure of his vocal lines, so as to
form constantly changing meters (see Example 3).
Reich pays attention also to the syntactical structure of the Hebrew
text. In his settings, the division of the musical phrases in the vocal lines
tends to follow the division marked by the te'amim in the Hebrew text.
The Biblical text of the Psalms is typically organized in verses, which are
divided by an ending sign called Sof Pasuq, consisting of two vertical
dots (:). Each verse, in turn, is divided by a caesura in two or occasion-
ally three parts. The length of the parts and the placement of the caesura

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546 The Musical Quarterly

2 (Lyric S.)

Voices Ha-le - lu - hu ba- tof u-ma-chol, Ha-le - lu- hu ba-mi-

3 (Alto)

Ha-le - lu - hu ba- tof u-ma-chol, Ha-le - lu- hu ba-mi-

Example 3. Steve Reich, Tehillim, part 4, voices 2 and 3, mm. 1-7

Music, Inc., a Boosey & Hawkes company. Reprinted by permission.

vary among verses. In the Book of Psalms, the m

by one
Silluq of strongest
is the three accents:
accent. Silluq (--), precedes
It typically Atnach Sof
(-"),Pasuq
andatOleh-we-yored
the end of ( ").
the verse, but it might also be placed within the verse to emphasize an
individual word and/or to mark the main internal division in longer, tri-
partite verses. Atnach is the most common main divisional accent within
the verse. In longer verses, Oleh-ve-yored is also found.
Example 4 shows the vocal line of the soprano in the opening mea-
sures of Tehillim with the text of Psalm 19:2-4. The placement of rests
and accents in the music conforms to the disposition of the cantillation
accents in the biblical text (see Tables 1 and 2). Reich places a long rest
to correspond to each verse ending, marked in the Bible by the Silluq +
Sof Pasuq combination. Verses 2 and 3 are bipartite. The internal divi-
sions are marked by Atnach, which corresponds to a note of longer dura-
tion in Reich's music on the accented word (m. 4: Kiil; m. 11: Omer).
Verse 4 is also divided into two main sections marked respectively by
Atnach (with a note of longer duration and a descending melodic line
leading to a low E on the last tonic syllable of devahrim) and Silluq-Sof
Pasuq (a longer note on the last tonic syllable, lithm, followed by a rest).
Tehillim also presents some examples of word painting. In the set-
ting of Psalm 34, the words Sur may-rah va-ah-say-tov are set with a
descending melodic line on Sur may-rah ("Turn from evil"), and a
strongly rising line for va-ah-say-tov ("and do good"), ending on an A-
flat-major triad on the word tov ("good"), while the third of the chord is
voiced as a high C in the high soprano voice (see Example 5).
The principles of word painting apply not only to individual phrases
but are extended to affect the large-scale structure of the composition as a
whole. The setting of Psalm 19:4 in the first movement has a central struc-
tural role in Tehillim. The words Ain-oh-mer va-ain de-vah-rim, Beh-li nish-
mah ko-lam ("Without speech, and without words, nevertheless their voice
is heard.") are set on a melody of four tones: G, A, D, E (see Example 6).
Reich explains that

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 Steve Reich and Hebrew Cantillation 547

non vibrato sempre

Female Voice2 . . . : ... .. . l I"" .. . '

Ha-sha - my-im meh-sa-peh - reem Ka-vohd Kail__ u - ma-ah -

fK..J - ! ... . -. : .-,. . .. . .. ..':: ' I :1

say ya-dive mah - geed ha - ra - ki - ah. Yom - le-yom ya -

bee - ah o - mer _va - ly - la le - ly - la

14

r-
ya - cha- vey dah - aht. Ain oh - mer va -
I
18

- ' . . " I.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , i . i :

ain da - va - reem beh - lee nish - ma ko lahm.

23

... . .. .. : -. ,.. .
Beh-kawl ha - ah - retz ya - tza ka-vam u - vik -

27

I? , , L... .. .... .I . . I i=-

tzay tay-vail mee-lay - hem. Be-kawl-ha - hem. Ha- sha -

Example 4. Steve Reich, TehiUllim, part 1, voice 2, mm. 1-32. ?

Inc., a Boosey & Hawkes company. Reprinted by permission.

although the original key signature is one flat an

these four tones alone can be interpreted (especia
repeated over and over again in the four-part can
C major, G major or D major (among others), dep
and the chords harmonizing them. They are inter
movement, as in D minor and then in G major, b
suggests that when we hear a voice without speec
only hearing music, but music of the most open
with many harmonic interpretations.32

This four-note scale, according to Reich, "was s

returns on the ending Halleluja and supplies on
harmonic change in the piece.

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548 The Musical Quarterly

Table 1. Psalm 19:2-4, Hebrew transliteration and English text

Psalm 19:2-4 (transliteration and phonetic accents by Steve Reich)

Ha-sha-mV-im meh-sa-peh-rim ka-v6hd K~iil, [Atnach]

U-mah-ah-siy ya-dfve mah-ghid ha-ra-ki-ah. [Silluq-Sof Pasuq]

Y6m-le-y6m ya-bde-ah 6h-mer, [Atnach]

Va-lI-la le-lI-la ya-chah-v~y dci-aht. [Silluq-Sof Pasuq]

Ain-6h-mer, va-iin deh-va-rim, [Atnach]

Beh-lf nish-mih ko-lihm. [Silluq-Sof Pasuq]

Psalm 19:2-4 (English translation by Steve Reich)

The heavens declare the glory of G-d

the sky tells of His handiwork.

Day to day pours forth speech

night to night reveals knowledge.

Without speech, and without words

Nevertheless their voice is heard.

From Tehillim, ? Copyright 1981 by Hendon Music, Inc., a Boosey & Hawkes company. Reprinted by
permission.

Table 2. Psalm 19:1-4, Hebrew text with Masoretic accents

~~7BD ~ ~ , P~t~7() :~ i:t nu ()4

:Y~~~l~~~~;i~ (3)1~~ri~t3 NW

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 Steve Reich and Hebrew Cantillation 549

Tamb. 2

I~~ r .

Voice 4
A. j A_ I ,A ,A I
Sur - may - rah_ va - ah - say tov bah-

Voice 2

Sur - may rah va - ah - say tov bah -

Voice 3

Sur - may - rah _ va - ah - say tov bah-

Vln. 1

Example 5. Steve Reich, Tehillim, part 2, tambour

Music, Inc., a Boosey & Hawkes company. Reprinte

16

Voice 2 - ? ?? ? ? -- ? ?
dah - aht. Ain oh - mer va - ain da - va -

20

Voice 2 - l n m ?I... ... .ka l . -r' "

reem - beh lee nish - ma ko - lahm. Beh-kawl-ha -

Example 6. Steve Reich, Tehillim, part 1, voice 2, mm. 16-24.

Inc., a Boosey & Hawkes company. Reprinted by permission.

In Different Trains for string quartet and

Reich reintroduces electronic instrumentatio
of using speech recordings to generate the mu
instruments.33 Unlike in his early taped-spee
to preserve the semantic content of the word
tion of the recorded material. Different Train
train between New York and Los Angeles duri
World War and those of the Holocaust survivo
description, "the piece mixes the sound of the
selection of speech samples and recorded Am

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550 The Musical Quarterly

sounds of the 1930s and 1940s to present both a documentary and a musi-
cal reality."34 In order to combine the taped speech with the string instru-
ments, Reich selected small speech samples that had a marked melodic
contour and then wrote them down as accurately as possible in musical
notation, as in a melodic dictation. The speech fragments, together with
the train sounds and other special sound effects (including sirens), are
stored in digital format on a sampling keyboard. The strings then literally
imitate the speech melody, taking into account its pitch profile, its tim-
bre, and its inherent rhythm (see Example 7). Tonality is established
without any semblance of functional harmonic progressions, the new key
simply being juxtaposed alongside the previous one. The intonation and
the pitch level of the original speech fragments determine the harmonic
framework of the composition. The introduction of a new speech frag-
ment is accompanied by a tonal shift to a different harmonic plane.
In Reich's video opera The Cave, completed in 1993, we can find
examples of most of the techniques of word setting and speech manipu-
lation discussed so far. The Cave is the result of the collaboration of
Steve Reich with the video artist Beryl Korot. Both were interested in
making a new kind of musical theater based on videotaped documentary
sources, in which one could see and hear people as they spoke on the
videotape and, simultaneously, see and hear onstage musicians doubling
them-actually playing their speech melodies as they spoke.35
The work takes as a point of departure the story of Abraham in
Genesis. In the Bible, Abraham buys a cave as a burial place for his wife
Sarah. The cave of the Patriarchs, as it has come to be known, became
the final resting place for Abraham, Sarah, and their descendants. The
Cave of Machpelah is located in the largely Arab town of Hebron, in
the West Bank. It has been traditionally a place of war between Jews and
Muslims, but is also the only place where they both pray.
The Cave is in three acts. Reich and Korot started out with quota-
tions from the Bible and the Koran. Then they began asking questions
about the ancient biblical and Koranic characters associated with the
site for Israeli Jews, Palestinians, and Americans. In setting the text of
Genesis, Reich refers to the procedure of melodic construction that he
had already adopted in Tehillim. The vocal lines follow closely the
accentuation of the English text, with free metric accents. In the inter-
view sections, Reich had to deal with a series of speech samples as in
Different Trains, accompanied by the video image of the talking heads on
a multiple-channel installation on stage. The speech melody of each
person becomes a kind of musical portrait of the person and works as a
guide to the character's personality. Reich notes that when the ear con-
centrates on the music inherent to the words, one might become aware

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 Steve Reich and Hebrew Cantillation 551

from Chi-ca - go to New Yo - rk

Example 7. Steve Reich, Different Trains. ? Copyright 1989 by Hendon Music, In

Boosey & Hawkes company. Reprinted by permission.

of an additional layer of meaning, one that reflects the inner voice o

person speaking. For Reich, the composer can bring the speech melo
to the fore and make the "other" subconscious meaning surface.36
In transcribing the melodies from everyday speech onto a staff,
composer is forced to operate a stylization, eliminating microtonal
inflections, microintervals, glissandi, and so on. In this operation, h
might lose precisely those nuances of meaning that he is trying to c
vey. In Reich's view, this problem can be solved by preserving the re
tion of the music to the person speaking. In The Cave, "the music an
the person talking are together. When you see The Cave, you see the
people, you hear the people, and you hear the music. And the music
stylizing, stressing the tonal part. But you get the whole story.... Y
must hear to understand. You get the music and you also get the way
people look; their facial expression; the way they look at you, the w
they turn their eyes down. All this is part of the music, and part of the
theater, and part of the meaning of what they say."37
As in biblical cantillation, the text reveals its depth in perfor-
mance, in its physical reality in sound and in the living voice of the
son speaking as a representative of his or her own community. The
speech melody becomes a window into a person's soul.

Reich's works composed after his studies of Hebrew cantillation testi

his attempt to preserve the semantic integrity of the text in his mu
setting and to model the structure of the music on that of the text.
The Cave, the speech samples of the interview become the basis for
composition of music that reflects their main features in terms of
melodic and rhythmic profile. This approach marks a departure from
techniques of speech manipulation that Reich had used in his early
pieces and is a significant break from a tradition that, in the work of
Cage and of other composers, had considered speech in purely acou
terms, depriving the words of their semantic content. The search fo
techniques of text-setting that restore the union between the "soun

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552 The Musical Quarterly

aspect of speech and the semantic meaning of the words seems to me the
most fruitful influence of Hebrew cantillation in Reich's music and
points toward avenues of approach that might inspire other composers in
the future.

Notes

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Sonneck
Society of American Music at Seattle, Washington, in March 1997. I am grateful for their
comments to Giorgio Biancorosso, Stanley Boorman, Alexander Gamburd, Marc Kligman,
Enzo Restagno, Edward Roesner, and Elizabeth Tolbert, and to the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem for a Research Fellowship (1995-1996).

1. My discussion draws extensively from Reich's own writings, including his article
"Hebrew cantillation and its influence on composition" of April 1982, and from the tapes
of Reich's interview with the Italian musicologist Enzo Restagno (New York City, Jan.
1994). The text of the interview with Restagno has been published in Steve Reich, "La
Vita," in Reich, ed. Enzo Restagno (Torino: EDT, 1994), 55-111. Reich's article on
Hebrew cantillation has been published in Italian as "La cantillazione ebraica e il suo
influsso sulla composizione," trans. Antonella Puca, in Reich, 219-31.

2. Steve Reich, liner notes, Steve Reich: Early Works (Elektra/Nonesuch 9 79169-2).

3. K. Robert Schwartz, "Steve Reich: Music as a Gradual Process," Perspectives of New

Music 19 (1980-81): 374-92; 20 (1981-82): 225-87. On It's Gonna Rain and Come Out,
see also Steve Reich, Writings about Music (New York: New York University Press, 1974),
49-52.

4. Reich, "La cantillazione ebraica," 221.

5. Interview, Steve Reich with Cole Gagne, Soundpieces: Interviews with American Com-
posers, ed. Cole Gagne and Tracy Caras (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1982), 305-18.

6. K. Robert Schwartz, Minimalists (London: Phaidon Press, 1996), 83.

7. Interview, Reich with Cole Gagne, 314.

8. Interview, Reich with Enzo Restagno, 84.

9. Interview, Reich with Enzo Restagno, tape.

10. For an introduction to the biblical Masorah, see Israel Yeven, Introduction to the
Tiberian Masorah, trans. and ed. E. J. Revell, vol. 5 of Masoretic Studies, ed. Society of Bib-
lical Literature (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1980); For an introduction to the
Masoretic accents for cantillation, see Avigdor Herzog, "Masoretic Accents (Musical Ren-
dition)," in Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Keter, 1971) 11:1098-1111; and William
Wickes, Two Treatises on the Accentuation of the Old Testament (New York: KTAV, 1970).

11. Herzog, "Masoretic Accents."

12. For a discussion of the marks included in the Masoretic text of the Bible, see James
D. Price, The Syntax of Masoretic Accents in the Hebrew Bible: Studies in the Bible and Early
Christianity, vol. 27 (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1990). Besides the vowel points
and the cantillation accents, Price lists as part of the Masoretic text of the Bible (1) marks

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 Steve Reich and Hebrew Cantillation 553

called niqqudim or puncta extraordinaria consisting of prominent dots placed above (or
sometimes below) the characters of the word or words in question, presumably to register
textual or doctrinal reservations on the part of the scribes; (2) marks referring to marginal
notes to the text, including a small circle to indicate that what is written in the Masoretic
text (ketib, "it is written") is not what should be read (qere, "it is read"), a situation that
typically occurs for the pronunciation of the divine name (Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey), which
should not be read as it is written, but rather "Adonai"; and (3) hyphens (maqquep) used
to join words that are closely related syntactically and that should be considered, for
accentuation purposes, as a single word.

13. In "Musical Accents," Herzog mentions five verses in the Torah whose construction
is uncertain, including Genesis 4:7 and 49:7, Exodus 25:34 and 17:9, and Deuteronomy
31:16.

14. Reich, "La cantillazione ebraica," 221.

15. Reich, "La cantillazione ebraica," 221.

16. In his classic study Jewish Music in its Historical Development (New York: Schocken
Books, 1956), Abraham Idelsohn focuses his attention on the motivic structure of the
cantillation and on the relation between motives from different traditions. He emphasizes
that the structure of the cantillation remains the same among various communities, while
the musical rendition of the te'amim changes.

17. Solomon Rosowsky, The Cantillation of the Bible (New York: Reconstruction Press,
1957), 1-2.

18. Reich, "La cantillazione ebraica," 225.

19. See the recent studies of Uri Sharvit and Daniel Meir Weil. In "The Musical Realiza-

tion of Biblical Cantillation Symbols (te'amim) in the Jewish Yemenite Tradition," Yuval 4
(1982): 179-210, Uri Sharvit presents a research carried out in seven Yemenite congrega-
tions in Israel, who all claim they have preserved the same tradition of the region of San'a,
the capital of Yemen. He notes that "One of the traditional features common to the Pen-
tateuch tunes of many Jewish communities is that every ta'am has a fixed musical motive.
The Yemenites, however, deviate from this norm in that they have fixed motives not to a
single ta'am, but rather to a syntactical function which may be indicated by several
te'amim. Thus, different te'amim may be chanted according to the same motive, when they
indicate the same syntactical function" (186). In The Masoretic Chant of the Bible
(Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1995), Daniel Meir Weil bases his analysis of the cantillation on
the principle that there is a "conspicuously high" degree of uniformity between the
Masoretic accents as they appear in modern editions of the Hebrew Bible and their most
ancient known forms "in the manuscripts of the so-called conventional Tiberian school,
produced a millennium ago." This uniformity concerns both the signs themselves and
their actual occurrence in the biblical text. Meir argues that the te'amim are essentially
signs of "descriptive" notation, which codify a preexistent oral tradition of reading. He
suggests that the grammar of the biblical accents follows its own laws, independent of that
of the Hebrew language. The musical motives associated with each individual ta'am vary
according to the specific Jewish tradition one is dealing with, but the laws regulating the
occurrence of the accents do not change. The laws of the system explain the syntax of the
te'amim as notated in the Bible and their relation to the syntax of the Hebrew consonan-
tal text. They also account for the presence of a common musical structure that underlies

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554 The Musical Quarterly

the different renditions of the te'amim among the various Jewish communities. Weil main-
tains that the variations between the musical rendition of the te'amim can be reconciled
with reference to a common pitch-centered "chain system," defined as "a symmetric exten-
sion of a strictly descending series of tones that we call row."

20. William Wickes, A Treatise on the Accentuation of the So-Called Poetical Books ...
Psalms, Proverbs, and Job (New York: KTAV, 1970), 4: "We find, when we come to exam-
ine the text for ourselves, words united, which ought from the sense or construction, to be
separated, and separated, where we should have expected them to be united.... These
instances are of very frequent occurrence." According to Wickes, most of these irregulari-
ties can be explained by situations when a "purely musical character will make itself felt,"
the rhetorical character of the declamation ("a good public reader may hurry over some
words to come to... the part which appears to him most weighty and important"), and
the peculiar form of the composition. The other irregularities might be accounted for by
clerical errors or accentual licenses of the scribe.

21. A typical example of word emphasis occurs in Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning God
created / the heavens and the earth." A disjunctive ta'am separates "God created" from
the rest of the verse.

22. In his article on cantillation, Reich explicitly mentions and quotes from Avigdor
Herzog, "Psalms: Musical Rendition in the Jewish Tradition," in Encyclopedia Judaica
(Jerusalem: Keter, 1971) 13:1329-34; Herzog, "Masoretic Accents"; Abraham Idelsohn,
Jewish Music (New York: Schocken Books, 1967); Rosowsky, Cantillation; Johanna Spector,
"Jewish Songs from Cochin, India," Fifth World Congress of Jewish Studies, 4 (Jerusalem:
1973); Wickes, Treatise on the Accentuation of the Three So-called Poetical Books; and Eric
Werner, The Sacred Bridge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959). The editions are
those indicated by Reich.

23. Reich, "La cantillazione ebraica," 227.

24. Interview, Reich with Enzo Restagno, tape; see also Restagno, Reich, 85.

25. Schwartz, Minimalists, 84-85.

26. Reich introduces longer melodic lines already in Music for a Large Ensemble, com-
pleted in December 1978. The piece is composed of four movements. The central part of
each section presents long melodic lines constructed with the technique of "motivic addi-
tion." In Eight Lines the use of motivic addition is much more pervasive.

27. Reich, "La cantillazione ebraica," 228.

28. Interview, Reich with Cole Gagne, 313-14.

29. Reich, "La cantillazione ebraica," 228.

30. Reich, "La cantillazione ebraica," 228.

31. Steve Reich, liner notes, Steve Reich: Tehillim (ECM 82744),
32. Reich, liner notes, Steve Reich: Tehillim.

33. Steve Reich, liner notes, Different Trains (Elektra/Nonesuch 9 79176-2).

34. Reich, liner notes, Different Trains.

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 Steve Reich and Hebrew Cantillation 555

35. Steve Reich and Beryl Korot, "Thoughts about the Madness in Abraham's Cave,"
New York Times, 13 Mar. 1994; interview, Steve Reich and Beryl Korot with Jonathan
Cott, "Jonathan Cott interviews Beryl Korot and Steve Reich on The Cave," in The Cave
(New York: Boosey and Hawkes, 1993), 10-15.

36. Interview, Reich with Enzo Restagno, tape; see also Restagno, Reich, 111.

37. Interview, Reich with Enzo Restagno, tape; see also Restagno, Reich, 111.

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