Books by William Wickes
Continuing my interesting in cantillation-related matters, two of the most important books ever published on the subject are available at the Internet Archive and Google Books, both of them by William Wickes.
1. A Treatise on the Accentuation of the Twenty-one so-called Prose Books of the Old Testament (here and here). In the introduction see his discussion of the Aleppo Codex.
2. A Treatise on the Accentuation of the Three so-called Poetical Books on the Old Testament, Psalms, Proverbs, and Job (here)
Also see:
3. Arthur Davis, The Hebrew Accents of the twenty-one Books of the Bible ([K"A Sefarim]) with a New Introduction (here)
June 12th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
In Aron Dotan’s introduction to the Ktav reissue of Wickes’, he takes Arthur Davis to task for liberally ripping Wickes off, without really mentioning him (IIRC he considers the subtitle “With a new introduction” an allusion to Wickes, as if to justify this new book).
Re the Aleppo Codex in Wickes, note that it contains a facsimile of a leaf before the title page which is now missing.
June 12th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
At the website on the Aleppo Codex they mention the photograph that is found in Wickes’s book.
June 15th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Both books are available from Ktav in a single volume.
November 4th, 2008 at 8:49 am
I note your interest in William Wickes. Nothing about him outside his two books was known until my short biography of him in my recent book The Music of the Hebrew Bible and the Western Ashkenazic Chant Tradition:
ISBN 09531104 8 6
I have found out just about all there is to know of him, in the hope that his remarkable achievement in ‘decoding’ the ta’amei hamikra and his close study and comparison of all the known codices will receive deserved recognition. He had none in his lifetime.
November 22nd, 2008 at 11:09 pm
“the photograph that is found in Wickes’s book”
it was also published by cyrus adler a little later in 1895
“will receive deserved recognition”
his work on trop has been duly recognized in the hebrew literature on the subject