@2023-11-24: BING'S AI ON SUZANNE HAIK-VANTOURA
John Wheeler (יוחנן רכב) wrote:
I asked Bing’s AI
the following and got the following results (2023-11-23):
Suzanne
Haïk-Vantoura
(née Vantoura; 13 July 1912 – 22 October 2000) was a French organist, music
teacher, composer, and music theorist. Her main work was in the field of musicology.
During World War II,
Vantoura and her family fled from the Nazis to southern France. There, she
studied the cantillation marks (also known as melodic accents or te’amim)
in the Hebrew Bible (Masoretic Text). These marks form the basic
hypothesis of her system for decoding the Masoretic cantillation. After the
war, she put aside this work and did not resume it until, after her retirement
in 1970, she finally published her system in La Musique de la Bible révélée
(1st ed.: 1976).
Her magnum opus, Music
of the Bible Revealed, covers the entire Hebrew Bible, decoding the
cantillation marks as musical notes that support the syntax and meaning of the
words. Vantoura argued that the accentual system preserved in the Masoretic
Text was originally a method of recording hand signals (“chironomy”) by which
temple musicians were directed in the performance of music. She focused on the
prose te’amim system, which comprises 8 sublinear signs, hypothesizing
that they corresponded to the eight degrees of a musical scale, particularly a
tonal scale (the diatonic scale).
Through her
groundbreaking work, Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura has provided valuable insights into
the ancient music of the Hebrew Bible, shedding light on how it may have
sounded in antiquity 1234.
Avi Wollman (אברהם בן-עמנואל) replied:
AI is basically GIGO[א] so at best it takes Wikipedia and summarizes it, at worst creates an illusion it knows something which it doesn't.
Avi
I got (Chat gpt 3.5)
Suzanne Haik-Vantoura was a French musician and musicologist known for her controversial theories on deciphering the musical notation in the Hebrew Bible. In her book “The Music of the Bible Revealed,” she claimed that the accents in the biblical text were musical notations representing the melodies sung in the ancient Jewish tradition. While her ideas garnered some attention, they are not widely accepted in academic circles, and her work has been criticized for lack of scholarly support.[ב]
Using Bard
Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura (née Vantoura; 13 July 1912 – 22 October 2000) was a French organist, music teacher, composer, and music theorist. She is best known for her work on the decipherment of the musical notation of the Aleppo Codex, a 10th-century manuscript of the Hebrew Bible.[ג]
[Image of The Aleppo Codex]
Haïk-Vantoura's
research led to the development of a new method for understanding and
performing the music of the Aleppo Codex. Her work has been highly influential
in the field of Biblical musicology, and it has helped to revive interest in
the musical traditions of ancient Israel.
In addition to her
work on the Aleppo Codex, Haïk-Vantoura was also a prolific composer. She wrote
a number of organ works, as well as chamber music, choral music, and songs. Her
music is characterized by its clarity, its elegance, and its deep spirituality.
Haïk-Vantoura was a
pioneer in the field of women's music. She was one of the first female
organists to perform in major concert halls, and she was a strong advocate for
the performance of music by women composers.[ד]
Haïk-Vantoura's work
has been recognized with numerous awards and honors. She was elected to the
Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1996, and she was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque
du Syndicat de la Critique for her recording of the music of the Aleppo Codex.
Suzanne
Haïk-Vantoura was a remarkable musician and scholar. Her work has had a lasting
impact on our understanding of the music of the Aleppo Codex, and it has helped
to preserve and promote the musical heritage of ancient Israel.
“GIGO” this may be, but even between AI’s, the opinions differ. How much more between human beings who examine SHV’s work? But an AI cannot follow SHV’s logic; it can only report on the logic (or else the illogic) of human beings. Even its illusion of passing the Turing Test is demolished by the now-famous illustration of the “Chinese Room”. AI has no understanding of what it does and never will. Only humans can have such self-awareness.
John Wheeler (יוחנן רכב)
[א] “Garbage In, Garbage Out”. This is
true of computer programs generally. This is why we still don’t give most
computers legs; if we told them to “go jump off a cliff”, they literally would do
exactly that.
[ב] Apparently, this AI is utterly
unaware of the tremendous scholarly support given when the work first was
published, and why there is apparent lack of support now (the reasons are specious at best). Not everybody
believed Copernicus over Ptolemy in cosmology at first either, but Copernicus
turned out to be right.
[ג] This reference is misleading. It should read “the Hebrew
Masoretic Text”, or even better, “the 3rd Letteris Edition of the
Hebrew Masoretic Text”. The Aleppo Codex was not available in facsimile when
SHV did her work. On the recommendation of Gerard E. Weil, editor of BHS, she
used the 3rd Letteris Edition (as reprinted by Editions Colbo,
Paris), which in Psalms especially is far superior to the “minimalist” approach
to the accentuation taken in the Aleppo Codex. Had she used Aleppo (or even
BHS), she would have found many stubborn anomalies in her results., again
especially in Psalms, but also on many scattered words in prose. SHV discusses
the reasons for this in principle in her publications. When I worked with her, from
1982 onward, she was able to examine the facsimile of the Aleppo Codex in the
national library in Paris.
[ד] I was not aware of what this
paragraph says, although it doesn’t surprise me.
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