When and how were trop melodies first written down?

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

We know that the trop (cantillation) marks were added to our written Tanakh text by the ba'alei hamesorim (Masorites) around the 8-10th century CE. They were recording an oral tradition that, I assume, was passed from generation to generation from Sinai.

My question is about the musical rendering -- when, and how, did the particular melody for each tropsymbol/family start getting recorded in a durable form? I've studied folk music; I know that minor variations in oral musical transmission are hard to avoid despite people's best efforts. (A memorized text has some more opportunities for reinforcement.) "When" will vary by community, of course -- there are at least a couple dozen different localized sets of trop melodies. I'm interested in a general answer and information on the musical history of any specific trop systems.

Musical notation (at least in Europe) goes back to at least the 6th century CE, though its form and versatility have varied over time. There might have also been some other system of writing it down that wasn't formal music notation; I remember, when I was learning my haftarah portion, writing dots above some of the phrases to show melodic shape (up/down, long/short) even though it wasn't a full musical notation. (It was a study aid.)