Haftarah Tropes
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Introduction to leyning
When the Haftarah is chanted out loud, this is called ‘leyning’ (Yiddish: “to read”). Symbols above or below the words, known as t’amim, indicate how to parse the word grammatically and also how to chant the word with the correct emphasis and what melody to use. There are a number of different melodic systems – or trope (also Yiddish) – that can be used to chant the Haftarah and indeed other texts within our tradition. In this course, we will focus on Western Ashkenazi trope.
Each leyning group or family will be colour-coded. This will help us to identify which family we are learning (e.g. Sof-Pasuk, the Blue family), and will be incredibly useful when we are applying the leyning theory to the text as we will be able to colour-code our text too.
Each leyning family has a number of variants, which will be demonstrated. These variants will be accompanied by its music and transliteration. In the transliteration, the capitalised syllable is the emphasised syllable in that melody. The diagram (example below) reads like Hebrew, from right to left. The transliteration and music notation are read left to right.
These diagrams demonstrate where the leyning symbol (t’am) is in relation to the word. For example, this picture shows you that all these leyning t’amim (symbols) occur underneath the word, with the rectangle boxes representing the words. If the box is white, this t’am is conjunctive. This is punctuation that connects words together, and means that its melody can change depending on the t’am that follows it.
If the box is grey, this t’am is disjunctive. This is punctuation that separates ideas and we typically take a short pause after a disjunctive. Its melody will always be set, it will not change depending on what comes after it.
This is the end of every verse, where you see a : in the text.
[one_fourth]
sof-paSUK
סוֹף-פָּסֽוּק
[/one_fourth]
[one_fourth]
merKHA
מֵרְכָא
[/one_fourth]
[one_fourth]
tip’CHA
טִפְּחָא
[/one_fourth]
[one_fourth_last]
merKHA
מֵרְכָא
[/one_fourth_last]
טִפְּחָא סוֹף-פָּסֽוּק׃
טִפְּחָא סוֹף-פָּסֽוּק׃