Скачать или смотреть Reading of Psalm 113 in a reconstruction of Tiberian Hebrew pronunciation

This pronunciation, used by the Masoretes in Early Medieval Galilee, is the one the Hebrew vowel signs we're all familiar with were actually designed to record.

I decided to create such recordings because despite the profusion of data about this reading dialect and its importance for the later history of Hebrew (such as in the the development of the vocalization signs), I couldn't find anybody who had actually taken the liberty of making a recording that used all the most recent research on this dialect to give an idea of what it (may have) actually sounded like (for example, we now know that the vav was indeed labiodental in this dialect, and that vowel length was indeed at least somewhat contrastive.) As with all reconstructions, this is at more than one level hypothetical. In listening to this, you are doing something less like watching a documentary than watching a well-researched work of historical fiction. A friend pointed out to me — in connection with the reading of the Hallel psalms — that the Babylonian Talmud (Sukkah 38b and also Tractate Sofrim believed to be composed in Palestine) and, in a more oblique way, the Jerusalem Talmud (Shabbat 16) inform us as to the specifics of communal participation in the chanting of the hallel psalms in the early synagogue. Specifically, they state that it was done with the first helf-verse as a call-response, then with the rest as a responsory with הללויה. I am uncertain as to whether the song-final instance of הללויה in the actual text is to be treated as its own half-verse for these purposes (and thus get a responsory הללויה before and after it) or if the reader is to read the whole påsūq up to הללויה on his own uninterrupted, and then be answered by a final הללויה in response. I figure the former, more orthopractically fastidious reading would be likely to crop up anyhow no matter what so I went with that. The practice is I understand not common today, but the inference I take (given that not only the Talmuds attest this, but Rambam endorses it) is that people living in the Land of Israel during the Masoretic period — the actual user-base of the Tiberian reading tradition — would likely have chanted the hallel psalms in this fasion. So I figured, why not incorporate that into my Tiberian reading of the hallel psalms? It's a simple matter of recording on multiple tracks and rhythmicizing the cantillation in a way proper to psalmodic delivery. On hearing the result, a certain person, who shall remain anonymous, remarked "wow, that sounds so Christian". Make of that what you will. To me, fact that I managed to produce something Christian-sounding simply by following directives from Rambam and the Sages of the Talmud, is absolutely hysterical.