Reciting Tone - Reciting Tones in Other Chant Traditions

Reciting Tones in Other Chant Traditions

Some traditions of Qur'an reading utilize reciting tones, although it should be clarified that in Islam, Qur'anic recitation is not considered a form of music. For example, the tulaba ("students of Islam" in Arabic) of Morocco recite the Qur'an and chant hymns for special occasions using one or two reciting tones.

Among the Yemenite Jews, cantillation of the Torah follows a distinctive practice that may be of great antiquity. Typical cantillation uses a system of signs, each of which represents a fixed musical motif. Yemenite chant, however, uses a different set of motifs, which only affect the final words in phrases. All other words are sung to reciting tones.

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Famous quotes containing the words reciting, tones, chant and/or traditions:

    If the oarsmen of a fast-moving ship suddenly cease to row, the suspension of the driving force of the oars doesn’t prevent the vessel from continuing to move on its course. And with a speech it is much the same. After he has finished reciting the document, the speaker will still be able to maintain the same tone without a break, borrowing its momentum and impulse from the passage he has just read out.
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    This was Venice, the flattering and suspect beauty—this city, half fairy tale and half tourist trap, in whose insalubrious air the arts once rankly and voluptuously blossomed, where composers have been inspired to lulling tones of somniferous eroticism.
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    Pan’s Syrinx was a girl indeed,
    Though now she’s turned into a reed;
    From that dear reed Pan’s pipe does come,
    A pipe that strikes Apollo dumb;
    Nor flute, nor lute, nor gittern can
    So chant it, as the pipe of Pan;
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    And all the great traditions of the Past
    They saw reflected in the coming time.

    And thus forever with reverted look
    The mystic volume of the world they read,
    Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book,
    Till life became a Legend of the Dead.
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