Cantillation
Cantillation is the ritual chanting of readings from the Bible in synagogue services.
The chants are rendered in accordance with the special signs or marks printed in the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) to complement the letters and vowel points. These marks are known in English as accents and in Hebrew as ta`amei ha-mikra or just te`amim. The musical motifs associated with the signs are known in Hebrew as niggun and in Yiddish as trop: the equivalent word trope is sometimes used in English with the same meaning.
A primary purpose of the cantillation signs is to guide the chanting of the sacred texts during public worship. There are different sets of musical phrases associated with different sections of the Bible. The music varies with different Jewish traditions and individual cantorial styles.
The cantillation signs also provide information on the syntactical structure of the text and some say they are a commentary on the text itself, highlighting important ideas musically. The tropes are not random strings but follow a set and describable grammar. The very word ta'am means "taste" or "sense", the point being that the pauses and intonation denoted by the accents (with or without formal musical rendition) bring out the sense of the passage.
Cantillation signs are in blue and vowels in red.