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Cheironomy (from Gk. cheir: ‘hand’)

Edith Gerson-Kiwi and David Hiley

https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.05510
Published in print: 20 January 2001
Published online: 2001

The doctrine of hand signs: a form of conducting whereby the

leading musician indicates melodic curves and ornaments by means
of a system of spatial signs.

1. General.

The practice of cheironomy can be detected in several basic forms:

(i) as hand movements made in the air to guide a musical

performance;

(ii) as the transformation of these into a neumatic notation: many of

the written symbols are recognizable as stylized graphs of the
outlines of such movements;

(iii) as the conversion of the conducting hand into a kind of reading-

board (such as the Guidonian Hand: see Solmization, §I) by using the
single ends and joints of the fingers as the sites of pitches. In the
Western medieval system these pitches were presented as isolated
notes of a measured acoustical ratio, in contrast to the fluctuating
intonation of the singing voice. Moreover, these exact and
instrumentally conceived pitches by then formed part of a modal unit
such as the Hexachord, and could thus be assigned places within the
measured space of the palm of the hand;

(iv) as the more recent didactic method of Tonic Sol-fa combining the
two ancient methods: the Guidonian syllables together with the
visible hand signs now representing the intervals contained within
an octave. This was a conscious retreat from staff notation, for the
benefit of the singer and the training of his aural sensitivity. It
became manifest in John Curwen’s ‘interpreting notation’ (since
1841), stressing the interrelationship of sounds within a given key
and towards its key-note, irrespective of its absolute pitch. The most
striking single item in this 19th-century method is the resumption of
the Egyptian style of cheironomic hand signs to be mastered by the
modern cheironomist-conductor;

(v) as the present-day renewal of hand-conducting in the teaching of

Gregorian chant, now based on the reading of printed music (see the
work of A. Mocquereau).

This article will concentrate entirely on (i). There is ample evidence

of the practice of cheironomy in ancient Pharaonic Egypt from the
fourth dynasty (2723–2563 BCE) onwards, and lasting through many

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 later periods; certain remnants of it are still practised today. There
are also indications that cheironomic systems were used in many
ancient civilizations including those of Greece, China, India, Israel
and Mesopotamia.

2. Egypt.

Knowledge of the Egyptian art of cheironomy is based mainly on the

detailed research done by H. Hickmann. According to him in ancient
Egypt cheironomy was not a conductor’s art but an educational
system of melodic graphs indicated by hand signs – a musical
science that was rooted in earlier myths and that had evolved over
centuries of artistic growth. Hickmann’s shrewd attempts at
deciphering the ‘writing in the air’ brought to light some of the
‘speaking’ messages depicted on tombs of antiquity. There is a
wealth of iconographical documentation for cheironomy whose signs
are clearly distinct. Some questions, however, remain unanswered.
For instance, it is not yet known whether the hand signs of the
cheironomists are meant to indicate single intervals or melodic
formulae comprising a group of notes. Of particular interest is the
cheironomic guidance of instrumentalists – a branch not known to
have existed in other cheironomic traditions of antiquity.

Hickmann’s method of decipherment is based not only on the

interpretation of hieroglyphic symbols and the realistic designs on
murals and bas-reliefs, but also on present-day ethnomusicological
observation of living musicians in their own environment.
Cheironomy is still practised by some Coptic and Egyptian cantors
who also act as teachers and professional cheironomists. Their hand
movements reveal a remarkable similarity to those of antiquity. Their
finger and arm movements have been recorded on film, and a basic
repertory of melodic and rhythmic signs has thus been
reconstructed. Comparison of these with all the available
representations of such gestures in ancient Egypt has enabled the
meanings of some of the movements to be identified.

Of the rhythmic signs, a stroke on the thigh apparently signifies a

downbeat or thesis; the pressing of fingers against thumb signifies
the weak parts of the measure, as also practised in ancient magical
counting rhymes. Melodic signs were probably based on two
principal hand positions, representing the melodic centre and its
dominant note by keeping the rounded index finger on the thumb, or
by stretching the hand vertically. The position of the upper or lower
octave seems to have been given by lifting the elbow into the air or
by supporting the elbow on the knee. Even if a final version of all the
interrelated movements of fingers and hand has not yet been
established, the solution of this mystery of musical instruction and
guidance in the ancient world is now much closer.

A subject closely connected with the system of cheironomy is the

ancient polyphony documented, among other places, on the relief at
Ptahḥotep’s tomb at Saqqara, where there is an illustration of two
cheironomists guiding a harpist simultaneously with different hand

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 symbols. These hand symbols, here interpreted as tonic and
dominant, suggest a kind of instrumental drone style – a musical
form still alive in the rural parts of Egypt and Sudan.

The guild of cheironomists in Pharaonic Egypt had its own divinity

who, according to legend, created the living world with a swing of
his arm. Arm and hand (fig.1), therefore, became the exclusive
symbols of music and musicians. Little hands made of wood or ivory
have been found in tombs, and were until recently believed to have
been tokens given to deceased musicians. Yet according to
Hickmann’s conclusions they are not to be considered merely as
ornaments, but as real musical instruments of the clapper type.
Unfortunately they have not, so far, been found in the tomb of a
professional musician.

2. Arm and hand symbols associated with music and musicians in

ancient Egypt

Cheironomy seems to be deeply rooted in Egyptian musical

performance. From the historical evidence so far assembled, it
appears that the system has never died out, and has even survived
through Greek, Roman and early Christian periods. It is not
altogether surprising, therefore, that it is still practised in Egypt
today, mainly in the teaching of the chant repertory of the Coptic
Church. The series of hand symbols used by Coptic cantors reveals
that not only the principles of cheironomy but also the actual hand
movements have been preserved over millennia.

3. South Asia.

Gestures indicating the division of rhythmic cycles are used in the

Hindustani and Karnatak traditions of South Asia. The current
system of claps, waves and finger counts denoting the various beats
and structures of the tāla(from Sanskrit: ‘flat surface’, ‘palm’) derive
from the complex historical tāla described in the Nātyaśātraand
Dattilam (see India, subcontinent of, §III, 4, (i)).

Cheironomy also occurs in South Asian Hindu ritual. Movement,

gesture and posture are important elements of Vedic ritual, often
corresponding to changes in chant. One notable example is that of
the soma sacrifice (for a full description, see W. Caland and V. Henry:

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 L’agnistoma: description complète de la forme normale du sacrifice
de soma dans la culte védique, Paris, 1906). The song-manuals
(gāna), which aid the practice of sāmavedic chant, give indications of
gestures that act as mnemonics (see B. Varadarajan: ‘Music in the
Sama Veda’, Journal of the Music Academy, lviii, 1987, 169–80;
seeIndia, subcontinent of, §I, 2).

4. Jewish tradition.

In addition to the Egyptian, Indian and East Asian traditions of

cheironomy there is an equally strong tradition of hand signs in
Jewish synagogue music. A tradition of hand signs is continuously
documented in ancient Israel from at least the middle of the 3rd
millenium BCE onwards. The Talmudic treatise Berakhot 62a states
that the right hand was to be kept clean and holy for signalling the
melodic intonations of the Bible. Continuing this line, a legitimate
successor to these earlier spatial movements can be seen in the
system of biblical accents (ṭe’amim) as added to the Hebrew texts by
the Tiberian School of Masoretes in the 9th century CE. Clearly this
is a series of written symbols based on the original gestures of the
hand delineated in the air by the teachers.

As in the Egyptian and Hindu traditions, this practice has survived in

the Israeli tradition from Jewish antiquity until the present. The art
of cheironomy continues in use today in varying degrees and forms
by many Jewish communities such as those of the Yemen, Egypt,
Tunisia or Morocco, whether in the country of their origin or
following their return to Israel since 1948. In order fully to
understand the roots of this ancient custom, the original meaning of
‘cheironomy’ as an art of bodily gesticulation, not confined to hands
and arms as suggested by the Greek name, should be considered.
The term was itself probably coined by taking the most striking part
for the whole. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that in the
Jewish tradition the head and the back as well as the hand are
employed in spatial writing. Their respective functions are clearly
defined. Of the three, the hand is the proper didactic medium for
elementary teaching in religious schools (ḥeder). It should be noted
that the cantillation of the Bible (Ṭe‘amei ha-migra) is not an
independent piece of music, but a structural recitative, the main task
of which is to emphasize the syntax of the individual sentences,
especially to mark separation between each of them by means of an
idiomatic melisma or thematic flourish (seeJewish music, §II). Small
children learn first how to chant the syntactical motifs and how to
string them together according to the ever-changing structures of
the prose texts. Only when the melodic outlines are fully memorized
is the holy text interpolated, at a second stage of learning. Here then
is the place of the didactic hand-‘waving’ and ‘gesturing’ (Gk.
neuma) used by the teacher to indicate the general outlines of
melody, and – even more so – its continuous flow and its animated
spirituality (Gk. pneuma: ‘spirit’). In Morocco, as in Egypt, the
cheironomist–teacher even uses both hands simultaneously or in
alternation to enable him to signal an almost complete series of

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 accents. This practice should be a warning against the interpretation
of Pharaonic paintings showing a cheironomist employing both
hands in different positions as evidence of early polyphony.

The back is used mainly as a mnemonic aid for lay readers during
the public reading of the Pentateuch. This reading is performed from
handwritten scrolls in which no punctuation, no vocalization and no
accents (neumes) are given. Hence the old custom whereby a
bystander (supporter or prompter) assists the lay reader, using his
back as a kind of writing-board and impressing on it the neumatic
symbols. This strange custom of hand signs through direct physical
contact is limited to the use of only seven signs and may be observed
in the Tunisian liturgy of the Isle of Djerba as in the Egyptian one of
Old Cairo. Of all the cheironomic traditions investigated so far in
Jewish liturgy, the one originating from the community of Old Cairo
seems the richest in spatial design and symbols, and the nearest to
the ancient Pharaonic style of conducting note symbols in the air. In
Europe the system of hand signs had been used mostly by Spanish
and Italian cantors. The two hand positions shown in fig.2 in the
tradition of the Italian congregation in Rome represent two different
disjunctive neumes, the paseq (a dividing-line) and the tevir (a short
interruption). There is one manual position that has remained alive
through the millennia without a break or change of meaning: the
hand covering the ear of a musician. In this case no technicality of
intonation, interval or motif is intended, but rather the status of the
musician as a professional singer. In addition, its purpose is to
convey his prominence among the musicians as the most exalted
personality, gifted with an inspired and ecstatic disposition. Today, as
in Pharaonic times, great singers from Morocco to Persia and
Kurdistan will enter a state of meditation by putting their left hand
over their ear (often also pressing the thumb against the throat),
thereby intimating a change of personality through change of their
vocal resonance or timbre.

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 4. Hand signs used by the Italian-Jewish congregation in Rome: paseq
(a dividing line, left), and tevir (a short interruption) (after Laufer)

Asher Laufer, Jerusalem: from A. Laufer, "Hand and Head movements during the Reading
of the Pentateuch", 5th Congress of Jewish Studies, Jerusalem 1969

The third means of ‘writing in the air’ uses head movements. This
custom is known from Morocco and, in a more elaborate form, from
the Yemen. The reader accompanies his own chanting by vigorous
turns and shakings of the head, mainly indicating the strongest
punctuating melodic formulae, those attached to the full stop and

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 comma. In the Yemenite tradition the movements are concentrated
in four groups, each one represented by one motif; in addition, the
right hand continuously draws the sequence of accents on the table
or in the air. Observing the Yemenite reader one is amazed by the
speed with which the singing and the cheironomic signalling
proceed in coordination, the latter being not so much prescriptive as
following after the chant.

Some preliminary documentary films of cheironomy in Jewish chant

traditions have been made at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
and are being analysed in special research projects by S. Levin, M.
Morag and A. Laufer.

Manual signs symbolizing the combination of melodic motifs

according to the syntactical division of sentences are, of course,
much older than the more rational forms of the written neumes. The
calligraphic forms of Jewish accents preserve not only the outlines of
the hand signs in a kind of stereotyped symbolic form, but also
another of their characteristics, namely the comparative freedom of
performance. The single sign hardly ever corresponds to a single
note but to a complete organism of notes, that is, to an elaborate
melodic motif; these motifs are never themselves defined
sequentially note for note. This means that internally the aggregate
of notes remains fluctuating and loose while their character as a
group remains constant. This is a melodic phenomenon that is
closely bound to the basic mentality of oral traditions in music, in
which the melodic memory takes the place of the visible graphic
symbol. Yet the Jewish singer, while working his way through the
masses of stored melodic elements, keeps the mnemonic process in
an equilibrium by, on the one hand, following the mainstream of
constant characters and, on the other, leaving room for variants to
fill in the open spaces.

Nearly all ancient oral traditions provide striking manifestations of

the dual characteristics of endless variety within a fixed framework.
In this sense, cheironomic gestures were never meant to function as
a rational musical notation, and their air-drawn curves are no more
than casual landmarks given to the expert singer, who of course
knows the general direction of his chant, especially if it is connected
with a running prose text of greater dimensions (such as that of the
Bible stories). It also implies the purely vocal character of the
cheironomic art together with its later transformation into written
symbols. Thus the art of cheironomy may rightly be considered the
main source for some, though not all, of the neumatic notations of
the Middle Ages. The individual names of single neumes, particularly
in the Syriac, Samaritan or Jewish-Aramaic traditions, are vivid
reminders of their true origin: for instance, zaqef (‘upright’, i.e. the
stretching of a word, and, therefore, a momentary interruption of the
recitation), for which the corresponding cheironomic movement is
the raising of the index finger; and nagda(also legarmeih, or pisqa or
revi‘a), a trill-like ornament whose corresponding cheironomic sign
is a trembling hand movement.

Another indication of the strong links between the reading and the
cheironomic signs is the fact that the reader, chanting the Hebrew
Bible (ba‘al qore), was aided by a supporter (somekh) who was the

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 exact counterpart of the ancient Pharaonic cheironomist, facing the
musician and directing his performance. The reading of the Hebrew
Bible has always been steeped in melodic recitation: in fact, by law it
could not be read without the melodic framework (Talmud Bab.,
Megilla 32 a). This melodic recitation is, by its very nature, not a
song or a spoken recitation but a chanting style or cantillation that
may move between the extremes of pure logogenic speech-melody
and the pathogenic or halleluiatic style. The cheironomic tradition
was not generally used for the 24 books of the holy scripture but was
applied exclusively to the Pentateuch. As already mentioned, only
the latter was read in public from the scrolls, in which the
punctuation, the vowels and the neumatic accents are not added to
the holy text. Thus the reader had to memorize the whole sequence
of cantillation, and it was here more than anywhere else that he was
dependent on the helping hand of the cheironomist standing by.

Besides the early source in the talmudic treatise of Berakhot (which

has frequently been discussed by theologians, grammarians and
musicologists: see Werner, p.124), there is additional literary
evidence from the Middle Ages. Among others, there was the
talmudic scholar Rashi (11th century) who stated in his commentary
to the above source that he had observed Bible readers from
Palestine performing the hand signs during cantillation. The
medieval traveller Petachyah of Regensburg reported in his travel
diary (c1187) that he saw this tradition still practised when he
visited the Jews of Iraq. The practice was also mentioned as a living
one in the basic treatise on Hebrew syntax Diqduqei ha- ṭe‘amim
(10th century). Indirect evidence of the living tradition of
cheironomy may be present in the many local variants of
performance of the written neumatic symbols developed from the
hand signs. Although it is tempting to emphasize the close affinity of
Syriac, Armenian, Coptic, Hebrew, Byzantine and Western systems of
accents, there are certain basic differences between them, not only
in design but also in their different historic evolution. Of all the
neumatic systems, only the Roman one reached the state of rational
and independent legibility through diastematic design and final
supersession by staff notation.

5. Byzantine and Western chant.

Although cheironomy, in a general sense of conducting, is known in

both Eastern and Western Christian chant performance, no precise
cheironomic system in which particular gestures indicate specific
melodic progressions appears to have existed during the Middle
Ages or later. (Illustrations such as those discussed by Huglo, 1963,
cannot be interpreted as evidence of such a system; see Hucke,
1979.) Although some theoretical treatises contain references to
conducting and, occasionally, eye-witness accounts of the practice,
such material tends to make the absence of detailed evidence even
more obvious.

Regarding Byzantine practice, the treatise of Nicolas Mesarites

(12th century) is often quoted; this work contains a description of
novice choirboys being helped by gestures to hold the line, keep in

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 time and in tune. Two further sources, however, are not Byzantine
but were written by Western Christians: in the 12th-century
manuscript I-MC 318 a monk of Monte Cassino gives an account of
a conductor (whom he calls ‘chironomica’) directing the singing in a
Greek monastery in South Italy; in his Euchologium
graecorum(Paris, 1647) the Dominican J. Goar describes a
performance he had heard in the East in 1631 in which the singing
was led by a ‘cantus moderator’. The only Byzantine music treatise
to make a direct connection between cheironomy and the signs of
Byzantine neumatic notation is that of Michael Blemmides (ed.
Tardo, 1938, pp.245–7). The theory that the neumes of Western Latin
chant notation derive from cheironomic gestures, though attractive
and plausible, has even less basis in contemporary accounts.

Bibliography

General
MGG2 (‘Handzeichen’, E. Hickmann and C. Thorau)

J. Dérenbourg: ‘Manuel du lecteur’, Journal asiatique (Paris, 1870–

71)

O. Fleischer: Neumenstudien, 1 (Leipzig, 1895)

G. Schünemann: Geschichte des Dirigierens (Leipzig, 1913)

R. Haas: Aufführungspraxis der Musik, HMw (1931)

C. Sachs: The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, East and West
(New York, 1943), 71–102, esp. 78–9

Egypt
MGG2 (‘Ägypten’, E. Hickmann)

MGG2 (‘Ägypten’, E. Hickmann)

RiemannL 12 (‘Ägypten’, E. Hickmann)

C. Sachs: ‘Die Tonkunst der alten Ägypter’, AMw, 2 (1920), 9–17

J. Finnegan: Light from the Ancient Past (New York, 1947), 180–81

H. Hickmann: ‘Observations sur les survivances de la chironomie

égyptienne dans le chant liturgique copte’, Annales du service des
antiquités (1949), 417–27

H. Hickmann: ‘La musique polyphonique dans l’Egypte ancienne’,

Bulletin de l’Institut d’Egypte, 34 (1952), 229–44

H. Hickmann: ‘La chironomie dans l’Egypte pharaonique’, Zeitschrift

für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, 83 (1958), 96–127

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 H. Hickmann: Ägypten, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, 2/1 (Leipzig,
1962, 2/1975)

E. Hickmann and L.Manniche: ‘Altägyptische Musik’, Die Musik des

Altertums, 1, ed. A. Riethmüller and F. Zaminer (Laaber, 1989), 31–
75

Israel
A.Z. Idelsohn: Thesaurus of Hebrew-Oriental Melodies, 1 (Leipzig,
1914), 20–23

R. Lachmann: Jewish Cantillation and Song in the Isle of Djerba

(Jerusalem, 1940), 40ff

J.B. Segal: The Diacritical Point and the Accents in Syriac Oriental
Series, 2 (London,1953)

E. Werner: The Sacred Bridge: the Interdependence of Liturgy and

Music in Synagogue and Church during the First Millennium
(London, 1959), 107–9

E. Gerson-Kiwi: ‘Religious Chant: a Pan-Asiatic Conception of Music’,

JIFMC, 13 (1961), 64–7; repr. in Migrations and Mutations of the
Music in East and West (Tel-Aviv, 1980), 50–53

S. Levin: ‘The Traditional Chironomy of the Hebrew Scriptures’,

Journal of Biblical Literature, 87 (1968), 59–70

A. Laufer: ‘Hand- and Head-movements during the Reading of the

Pentateuch’, 5th Congress of Jewish Studies: Jerusalem 1969, 92–
105

H. Avenary: ‘Masoretic Accents’, Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem,

1972)

J. Spector: ‘Chant and Cantillation’, Musica judaica, 9/1 (1986–7), 1–

21

R. Flender: Der biblische Sprechgesang und seine mündliche

Überlieferung in Synagoge und griechischer Kirche (Wilhelmshaven,
1988)

Byzantine and western chant

L. Tardo: L’antica melurgia bizantina (Grottaferrata, 1938)

E. Wellesz: A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography (Oxford,

1949, 2/1961)

C. Gindele: ‘Chordirektion’, Studien und Mitteilungen zur Geschichte

des Benediktinerordens, 63 (1951)

B. Di Salvo: ‘Qualche appunto sulla chironomia nella musica

bizantina’, Orientalia christiana periodica, 23 (1957), 192–201

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 M. Huglo: ‘La chironomie médiévale’, RdM, 49 (1963), 155–71

H. Hucke: ‘Die Cheironomie und die Entstehung der Neumenschrift’,

Mf, 32 (1979), 1–16

N.K. Moran: Singers in Byzantine and Slavonic Paintings (Leiden,

1986)

See also
Notation, §I, 2: General: Chronology

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