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Ekphonetic notation [lectionary]

Gudrun Engberg

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.08680
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001

Notation designed to facilitate the solemn cantillation of lessons,

especially of biblical texts. The term ‘ekphonetic’ (from Gk.
ekphōnēsis: ‘pronunciation’, ‘reading aloud’) was coined by I.
Tzetzes in 1885 (‘Hē epinoēsis tēs parasēmantikēs tōn Buzantinōn’,
Parnassos, ix, 1885, p.441). Various such systems may be found in
medieval manuscripts; in no case is the musical significance of the
signs known, and hypothetical transcriptions are possible only by
comparison with cantillation in the modern practice of the various
traditions. The signs may comprise letters, dots or ‘cheironomic’
figures which presumably represent the motions of a conductor’s
hand; these signs are termed ‘accents’ in the Semitic systems and
‘neumes’ in the Latin and Greek, although their significance is not
that of the neumes in Western and Byzantine neumatic notations
(see Notation, §III, 1 and Byzantine chant, §2) and the types should
not be confused. Ekphonetic notation occurs mainly in association
with biblical texts, whether for church or synagogue, but may be
found also in other prose texts and even in hymns.

1. Syriac, Pehlevi and Soghdian.

Dots are often found in Syriac manuscripts of the Bible, written in

black ink above, below or on the line. In other texts they appear less
frequently and in red, perhaps to indicate that their use in this way
is unusual. They served to facilitate a correct understanding of the
sacred text, and to indicate the inflections of the voice; according to
Gregory bar-Hebraeus (13th century; ed. and trans. in Moberg, ii,
108–9): ‘In every language a listener can distinguish aurally various
meanings in one and the same phrase … merely through changes in
inflection; Syrian writers … devised a system and constructed signs
consisting of dots for the accents, so that the various inflections,
each of which indicated a particular meaning, could be understood
visually by the reader in the same way as they are recognized aurally
by the listener’. Earlier treatises associate the accents with the
translation of the Bible from Greek. These treatises contain lists of
accents, with examples from the Bible and comments on their use
and significance (e.g. to express astonishment or fear).

According to tradition, Joseph Hūzāyā (fl c530) of the school of

Nisibis invented the nine main accents, but two of them (pasoqa,
main pause, and ‘eṣyana, subsidiary pause) occur frequently in a
manuscript dating from 411. During the 5th century the system
increased in complexity; it had developed fully before the 11th

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 century. More than 30 accent names are known, but all except 12 to
15 denote special functions of the main signs. Originally the system
seems to have consisted entirely of single dots; later these were
combined with the main pausal accent, the pasoqa, as signs
containing two dots, which superseded the single dots as indicators
of the main divisions within verses. The signs containing two dots
were in their turn again combined with the pasoqa, as signs
containing three dots (Table 1).

Ekphonetic notation lectionary 1. Syriac, Pehlevi and Soghdian.: Table 1

TABLE 1

After the schism of the 6th century (see Syrian church music, §1),
the Syriac tradition bifurcated into a Western (Syrian Orthodox,
Jacobite) tradition whose centre was at Edessa, and an Eastern
(Assyrian, Nestorian) tradition whose centre was at Nisibis. New
accents were added to the Western tradition, and James of Edessa (d
c700) invented nine new variants of existing signs. In practice,
however, the notation was reduced to a mechanical application of
four pausal accents and other interrogative accents.

The Eastern Syriac notation was supplemented with many additional

signs; it became highly sophisticated, and remained more flexible
than the Western system. In it, the accents were usually larger than
other dots used in the text, in order that the reading should be
facilitated. Red ink was used to indicate variant readings. The high
degree of sophistication of this notation may be seen in the Mar
Babai manuscript, dating from 899 and containing elaborate
interlinear corrections and variants.

A 6th- or 7th-century Pehlevi psalter (ed. in Andreas and Barr)

contains ekphonetic notation identical with that of early Syriac
manuscripts. New Testament manuscript fragments from Turfan, in
the Soghdian language and written in Nestorian Syriac characters
(fig.1), contain Eastern Syriac accents (Table 1b); the corresponding
passage is similarly subdivided in Greek manuscripts with
ekphonetic notation.

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 Fragments of a New Testament lectionary from Turfan (c9th century) in
the Soghdian language (Syrian script) with Eastern Syriac accents (read
right to left), and (below) transliteration, with English translation,
showing positions of Syriac accents

2. Hebrew.

The Tiberian system of notation is the best studied, although some

scholars still maintain that it was purely syntactical rather than
musical. According to tradition it was invented in the 9th century CE
by the family of Ben-Asher at Tiberias, and superseded the
Babylonian and Palestinian systems of notation, which are thought to
have developed around the early 7th century CE. It is still in use: one
system is used for the poetical books of the Old Testament (Psalms,
Proverbs and parts of Job), one for the rest of the Bible (see below),
a third for rabbinical texts.

The verse is the basic unit of passages of the Bible and is marked off
by an accent, silluq, and a punctuation sign, sof-pasuq. Each word of
the verse has an accent, serving to join it to or divide it from the
next. The signs, placed over or under the line, are dots or strokes,
perhaps cheironomic in origin: some Egyptian and Tunisian
communities still accompany the cantillation of the Bible with hand
movements (see Cheironomy, §4). Final clauses of lessons are not

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 notated, perhaps because the text was divided differently at different
times into one-year and three-year cycles; the final words are recited
differently from the rest of the lesson only in some communities.

There are 13 dividing accents; Table 2a shows the most important

(silluq at the end of a verse, atnaḥ at the end of a half-verse, zaqef
and segolta as subsidiary stops within either half of the verse). The
sequence of signs is not arbitrary: silluq or atnaḥ is preceded by
tifḥa or tebir; zaqef is preceded by pashta; segolta is preceded by
zarqa (Table 2b). The chief dividing accents correspond in equivalent
texts to a certain extent with Greek notational signs, but the
correspondences may be due to the fact that the Greek translations
are parallel in syntax to the Hebrew, rather than to musical
similarities between the traditions (Table 3).

In the modern tradition, the accents may be interpreted differently

in different parts of the Bible (e.g. Pentateuch and Prophets) or on
different occasions (e.g. for cantillation at synagogue or in the
ḥeder, the religious school). Although accent lists (lu’ah zarqa) exist,
comparable to those of the Greek tradition, where each accent is
given its musical value, these do not remain constant in different
contexts nor a fortiori within different Jewish communities; and no
original interpretation, common to different traditions, can be
reconstructed. (See also Jewish music, §III, 2, (ii)).

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 (a) List of ekphonetic signs (read right to left) from a 10th- or early 11th-
century MS (ET-MSsc 8, f.303v); the ekphonetic signs are in red ink and
are distinct from the supplementary Palaeo-Byzantine notation, here,
unusually, in black ink; (b) transcription of the above passage showing
ekphonetic signs only

Ekphonetic notation lectionary 2. Hebrew.: Table 2

TABLE 2

3. Byzantine.

Byzantine ekphonetic notation occurs in manuscripts between the

9th and 14th centuries, and occasionally in later additions to early
manuscripts such as the 5th-century Codex Ephraimi (F-Pn gr.9).
After the 15th century the function of the signs had been forgotten,
and their significance was sometimes misinterpreted as that of
punctuation. They occur almost exclusively in biblical texts: the
prophetologion (Old Testament lectionary), evangeliarion (Gospel
lectionary) and apostolos (Epistle lectionary). They do not occur in
the psalter or prose liturgical texts apart from those of the
lectionaries, although synod texts in GB-Ob Holkham 6 are provided
with ekphonetic notation for liturgical use. Study of Byzantine
notation began in the mid-19th century, but the first systematic
analysis was that of Høeg (1935). The recitation of lessons in the
modern Greek Orthodox Church has not been systematically
compared with the medieval notation.

Medieval manuscripts contain continuous lists of neume names, with

notation added to the lists as it would be to a biblical lesson. The
10th- or 11th-century manuscript ET-MSsc Monastery of St

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 Catherine 8 has such a list, added in what may be a late 12th-
century hand, with ekphonetic notation in red as well as an archaic
Palaeo-Byzantine notation (see Byzantine chant, §3) in black, which
shows the musical significance of each combination of ekphonetic
signs (fig.2). Unfortunately this archaic notation is impossible to
transcribe precisely in isolation. Some of the neume names derive
from the names of the ancient Greek prosodic accents (oxeia =
‘acute’, bareia = ‘grave’); the apostrophos may represent the
hypodiastolē, a prosodic sign of the grammarians of antiquity. The
remaining neume names may be cheironomic in origin.

Ekphonetic notation lectionary 3. Byzantine.: Table 3

TABLE 3

The classical notational system was fully developed between the

11th and 14th centuries with a series of stereotyped neume pairs
(Table 4). These signs are written in red above, below or between
the phrases of the text as in fig.3, and are combined in pairs so that
each pair frames a kolon (unit of three or four words), which is to be
recited to a particular musical phrase. The signs at the beginning
and end of the kolon are normally identical, except in the apesō-exō
pair and those including a teleia. According to the neume list in fig.
3, the first and last accented syllables of a kolon are subject to
melismatic treatment, and the rest are recited to a simple tonus
currens. In the fully developed system, a kolon with the combination
syrmatikē and teleia was also marked by a melisma near the end,
indicated by a media.

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 Byzantine neumes of the classical system

TABLE 4 Byzantine neumes of the classical system

In the classical system, three or four kola are usually linked as a

period, the cadence of which is one of the teleia combinations;
within the period, intermediate cadences are indicated with the
apostrophos (no.10 in Table 4). The whole biblical lesson normally
comprises about 15 periods, and concludes with a stereotyped final
cadence, consisting of the neume pairs nos.5, 9 and 10, sometimes
preceded by pair no.6; nos.6 and 5 occur only in this final cadence.

The archaic ekphonetic notation differs in a number of respects from

this classical system: other neume combinations are possible, one
neume of a pair may be omitted, the pairs nos.6 and 5 may occur
outside final cadences, and in some manuscripts the ekphonetic
signs are written in the same brown ink as the text. The melodic
formulae must originally have been transmitted orally and applied to
the text, from memory, according to the punctuation: the latter, in
early manuscripts, comprises dots for short stops and spaces for
longer (‘full’) stops. It would seem that when the notation was
invented, perhaps in the 8th century, it could at first be used freely,
but was then codified by some authority, perhaps at Constantinople.

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 4. Slavic, Georgian and Armenian.

The Byzantine ekphonetic notation, like the Byzantine neumatic

notation, was adopted by the Slavs. A few New Testament
manuscripts contain a system of ekphonetic notation; in one source
(the Kuprianovskie listki) the notation agrees with that of Greek
manuscripts. A Glagolitic missal from Kiev contains eight signs
interpreted by some as Latin ekphonetic neumes and by others as
prosodic accents. Georgian manuscripts from the 11th to 13th
centuries contain lists of neumes transliterated from Greek; the
Greek notation may have been used in Georgian lectionaries.
Armenian manuscripts contain an indigenous ekphonetic notation,
used for the recitation of the Gospel and the Old Testament
Prophets. Some of the signs indicate pitch: verjaket, marking a main
pause and raising of the voice; midjaket, marking a secondary pause
and lowering of the voice; storaket, also marking a secondary pause;
and buth, indicating the lowering of the pitch by degrees, without a
pause. These are used together with rhythmic signs (sugh, for a
shortening of the note, and jerkar, for a lengthening of the note) and
signs indicating formulae (shesht and harzanish) (Table 5). Special
formulae, not written down, are used at the beginning and end of
lessons.

Armenian ekphonetic signs

TABLE 5 Armenian ekphonetic signs

5. Latin.

Between the 10th and 15th centuries, a heterogeneous jumble of

ekphonetic notational systems was used in Latin lectionaries,
sacramentaries, missals, homiliaries and other books, for biblical
lessons and also for collects (prayers), other chanted prose sections

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 of the services and homilies. The system used varies between
manuscripts but each manuscript normally contains three or four
(sometimes many more) signs comprising dots and neumes
illustrating the inflection of the voice.

Many manuscripts use neumes in conjunction with the ancient

punctuation signs, a dot above the line (plena distinctio, full stop), a
dot on the line (media distinctio, middle stop) and a dot below the
line (subdistinctio, weak stop). The full stop is combined with the
apostrophus to signify a final cadence, and with a quilisma to signify
a question; the middle stop, together with the flexa, signifies a
middle cadence; the weak stop, together with the flexa, pes or
podatus signifies a weaker division (Table 6a). These signs occur
after each section of the text, like punctuation marks, and they may
be no more than that in the simpler versions of the system that use
only two signs. Some manuscripts use these punctuation marks
doubled, trebled or quadrupled as in the Syriac systems of
ekphonetic notation, but still combined with neumes. I-Rvat lat.4770
contains the signs shown in Table 6b, for example. Biblical texts are
subdivided with these signs in a way similar to that of Byzantine
ekphonetic notation.

Ekphonetic notation lectionary 5. Latin.: Table 6

TABLE 6

Single words and passages within texts may sometimes carry

neumes in the usual sense (i.e. full musical notation rather than
ekphonetic notation) over each syllable. This may occur in the title of
a lesson, or in its last few words (compare the Byzantine final
cadence formulae). In the Passions the words of Christ on the cross
may be fully notated with neumes; similar treatment is sometimes
given to the genealogies from Luke and Matthew (see Gospel and
Passion, §1). Some manuscripts similarly prescribe a performance of
the biblical canticles more solemn than that of the surrounding text.

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 See also Inflection.

Bibliography
P. Wagner: Einführung in die gregorianischen Melodien, ii:
Neumenkunde (Fribourg, 1905, 2/1912/R), 82ff [Latin]

F.W.R. Müller: ‘Neutestamentliche Bruchstücke in

soghdischer Sprache’, Sitzungsberichte der Berliner
Akademie der Wissenschaften 1907

A. Moberg, ed.: Le livre des splendeurs (Lund, 1907; Eng.

trans., 1924) [Syriac]

F.C. Andreas and K. Barr: ‘Bruchstücke einer Pehlevi-

Übersetzung der Psalmen’, Sitzungsberichte der
Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften:
philosophisch-historische Klasse (1933)

C. Høeg: La notation ekphonétique, MMB, Subsidia, 1/2

(1935)

C. Høeg, G. Zuntz and G. Engberg, eds.: Prophetologium:

lectiones anni mobilis, MMB, Lectionaria, 1 (1939–81)
[Greek]

E. Wellesz: A History of Byzantine Music and

Hymnography (Oxford, 1949, enlarged 2/1961)

R. Palikarova-Verdeil: La musique byzantine chez les

bulgares et les russes (du IXe au XIVe siècle), MMB,
Subsidia, 3 (1953)

J.B. Segal: The Diacritical Point and the Accents in Syriac

(London, 1953)

E. Wellesz: ‘Early Christian Music’, NOHM, 2 (1954), 1–13

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mediaevalia, 23 (1962), 293–301 [Greek]

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G. Engberg: ‘Greek Ekphonetic Neumes and Masoretic

Accents’, Studies in Eastern Chant, 1, ed. M. Velimirović
(London, 1966), 37–49

D. Jourdan: ‘La notation ekphonétique archaïque

(Vaticanus gr.2144)’, Ecole pratique des hautes études:
section des sciences historiques et philologiques: annuaire
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 J. Raasted: ‘Musical Notation and Quasi Notation in Syro-
Melkite Liturgical Manuscripts’, Cahiers de l’Institut du
Moyen Age grec et latin, no.31 (1979), 11–37, 53–77

E.J. Revell: ‘Hebrew Accents and Greek Ekphonetic

Neumes’, Studies in Eastern Chant, 4, ed. M. Velimirović
(Crestwood, NY, 1979), 140–70 [Hebrew]

J. Spector: ‘Chant and Cantillation’, Musica judaica, 9

(1986–7), 1–21

R. Flender: Der biblische Sprechgesang und seine

mündliche Uberlieferung in Synagogue und griechischer
Kirche (Wilhelmshaven, 1988) [Hebrew; Byzantine]

R. Flender: ‘Die Entzifferung der massoretischen Akzente

und der ekphonetischen Notation: ein Forschungsbericht’,
Musikkulturgeschichte: Festschrift für Constantin Floros
zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. P. Petersen (Wiesbaden, 1990),
479–90 [Hebrew]

A. Ascrizzi: La musica bizantina in Calabria: un frammento

di un evangeliario in notazione ecfonetica conservato
presso la Biblioteca communale di Reggio (Palermo, 1990–
91)

D. Jourdan-Hemmerdinger: ‘Fonction du chant dans les

discours et lectures publiques’, Aspects de la musique
liturgique au Moyen Age, ed. C. Meyer (Paris, 1991), 15–
42

P. Kannookadan: The East Syrian Lectionary: an Historico-

Liturgical Study (Rome, 1991)

S.G. Engberg: ‘Greek Ekphonetic Notation: the Classical

and the Pre-Classical Systems’, Palaeo-Byzantine
Notations: a Reconsideration of the Source Material, ed. J.
Raasted and C. Troelsgård (Hernen, 1995), 33–55
See also
Armenia, §II, 3: Church music: Notation
Georgia, §II, 5: Church music: Notation
Notation, §I, 2: General: Chronology
Syrian church music, §6: Notation

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