Some music samples from last night

[rhu]

I've uploaded two images of music from last night's work. First, the hybrid Tal/Geshem:



And second, I found a melody for Psalm 117. I have always struggled when leading Hallel because I don't want Psalm 117's identity lost; it's so short and has the same verse lengths as the ultra-singable beginning of Psalm 118 that many people use one melody straight through. I was delighted to find this melody in Baer, listed as a Portuguese melody; I then found it in Nathanson, almost note-for-note the same, listed as a traditional Sephardic melody (and noted as transcribed by a different musicologist).

Interestingly, it starts off sounding a bit like Hatikvah, but of course that motif has been around since forever. In any case, it's a lovely bit of through-composed music for the shortest chapter in the bible, and it solves my dilemma quite nicely, so into my siddur it goes:

Comments

[cellio]

That's almost the melody I was taught (informally) for Psalm 117. I stay on A in the antepenultimate measure, then go up to B on "lam" and finish as you do, and I have slightly different syncopation in places. Presumably what I learned has drifted.