Art of Torah Cantillation, Vol. 1: A Step-By-Step Guide to Chanting Torah Paperback – January 15, 2000

I had read from the Torah before, but chanting had remained on my "bucket list" until I read The Art of Torah Cantillation. It really does exactly what it sets out to do: teaching a novice, step-by-step, to how to understand the trope marks and master a Torah portion. I worked entirely through the first four lessons, which teach the three main types of trope clauses (etnachta, sof-pasuk, and katon), then dipped into the rest of the book as needed for the few parts of my parasha not covered by these clauses.The Appendices were especially helpful. Appendix B is a great summary of the internal structure of the different types of trope clauses. Appendix H represents the main varieties of these clauses in standard musical notation, so you can reproduce them on a keyboard. There are 41 in total.Once I had worked through the necessary parts of the book, I prepared my first parsha as follows:* I made sure I understood the Hebrew (not necessary, but it added a lot to the experience for me)* I made a photocopy of the parsha.* I bracketed each trope clause and labeled it by the number of its melody in Appendix H* I worked through the parsha clause by clause sitting at my piano, first singing the names of the tropes, then plugging in the actual Hebrew.* When I could do the whole thing smoothly, I weaned myself from the piano.* By this time I was ready to wean myself from the masoretic text (marked with vowels and trope marks) and chant directly from the Hebrew as written in the Torah scroll. I used a Tikkun to practice this.Not an easy process, but the next time will go a lot faster.Thank you, Cantors Marshall and Wolff!

This book helped me figure out what was going on with my anxious attachment and gave me ways to deal with it. I wish I had found it earlier. The examples given are very relatable and easy to follow. I think this is a great guide for anyone struggling with anxious attachment.

Amazing primer for learning how to really chant Torah after using memorization for your Bar or Bat Mitzvah. Step by step teaching of the trope (with accompanying CD) in their common sequences makes it easy to learn the musical expressions, improves Hebrew reading, and, ultimately, allows you to work out the cantillation for whatever passage you need to chant. Pages with the musical expressions written out at the back of the book are especially helpful. I learned to play all of these on the tin whistle; makes working out the tunes fun and easy.

This book has great practice drills and recordings to help!

The book is nice but it did not come with the CD.

The book is extremely well-organized and explains Torah trope in a very logical, step by step manner making it easy to learn yourself. I've tried to learn it several other times/ways with little progress. This book explains how the tropes relate to one another in families, the role that each trope plays, and the meanings of the trope names (in a table at the back). It also provides a CD that allows you to listen to the sound of all the examples in the book and an appendix with the notes written out on musical staves. This book is well done and well worth the cost if you want to learn Torah cantillation.

There are many positive things about this book/CD, many of which have been noted in other customer reviews: clear presentation, beautiful voices. You should be aware, however, that the melodies themselves are likely to differ somewhat from the ones that you are used to. The words "dissonant," "minor," "sophisticated," even "bluesy" come to mind, though I'm not enough of a musical expert to apply them definitively. I do know that when I went to an online trope-learning site, what I heard was easier to learn, in part because it sounded more like what I've heard in synagogues throughout my life, and in part because the intervals and melodies were simpler. I also appreciated the fact that the site showed the written notes together with the initial presentation. In this book, the written notes are small and are relegated to an appendix, and the key in which they are represented contains three accidentals, which is a bit more of a struggle for me to sight-read. Finally, the website had the advantage that it "cut to the chase"; it allowed you to go right to the individual trope and listen to them once, twice, or however many times you wanted. By contrast, the tracks on the CD that come with this book alternate between the tropes, words sung with those tropes, and repetitions. These are helpful from a pedagogical standpoint but not so much when you want to return to them as a quick reference.However, in defense of the book, it does explain the tropes better than the website, in a way that is more likely to help you keep them in your head. In addition, a book, merely by virtue of its physical presence, is easier to refer to and relate to than a website, or printouts from that website.In conclusion, I would say that your decision to learn from this book or from a website should be based on how ambitious you are and how willing you are to depart from what you (and your mainstream audience) find more familiar.

I bought this to review trope. It had been a while since I had chanted Torah and this was so helpful. It took me through each of the trope and then strung them all together. Really helpful review sheet of all trope in the back as well. The recordings are part of it so those trope that always trip me up were there for me to review again and again on CD. Sephardi pronunciation. rather than Ashkenazi. Excellent resource.

O produto veio sem o CD??

UM livro excelente, claro, com o auxílio maraviloso do CD que ensina a verdadeira entoar, harmonicamente, a TORAH. Maravilhoso!

nicht so brauchbar

Clear and well explained to the details.