How would sheet music be written for vocals in a right-to-left language (Hebrew or Arabic)? It seems there would be a clash between the left-to-right convention of sheet music and the right-to-left of the language.
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@JacobSwanson: Ah, but surely those Yiddish versions of my favourite Lieder do?– user20731Commented Jul 8, 2015 at 14:52
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3 Answers
One possibility that is seen in Hebrew occasionally is to print a mirrored score (including all symbols) apart from the lyrics. Most of the time, however, you just get the score straight, and the lyrics left-to-right, syllable by right-to-left syllable. I would imagine that it takes some practice singing that.
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3Thanks for this answer. Can you show an example? I looked for one and couldn't find any.– LarsHCommented Jan 27, 2022 at 15:48
Here's an image of a hymnal in St. George's Cathedral, Jerusalem. It shows Western music notation, written right-to-left, with the clefs and key sig on the right hand side, and a well-known hymn tune (Forest Green).
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I see the music symbols are written in a right-to-left order, but the symbols themselves aren't mirrored. Interesting Commented Jul 23, 2022 at 16:51
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1Reversed sheet music is surprisingly easy to read to me, at least compared to reversed english text (txet hsilgne desrever).– EdwardCommented Jul 23, 2022 at 20:28
I haven't seen many examples, but on this Persian web site, they use Roman letters for the words in the sheet music:
Note that most of the web site uses Persian (Arabic-based) script, including the pages that show the words of songs without the melody:
So the roman letters above are an exception, presumably used for the purpose of fitting into the left-to-right musical notation.
