cantillate /KAN-tə-layt/. verb. To recite or chant musically, usually a religious text. From Latin antillāre (to sing softly), from cantāre (to sing). See also: cantor and cantata.
When one has lived a long time alone,
and the hermit thrush calls and there is an answer,
and the bullfrog head half out of water utters
the cantillations he sang in his first spring…
(Galway Kinnell)
“What would that strange man, the trope—cantillation—teacher, have said to that? The trope teacher! Why have I suddenly recalled the trope teacher? A quickening beat of the heart in the swiftly gathering clouds of sleep.” (Chaim Potok)
“Punk had blown the top of pop’s skull off, and downtown concert music was on high alert. The scene was stripping down—postminimal, pulsed, machinic. The music grew a skin of brushed steel and smoky glass. It sounded to Els almost nostalgic, like a holy cantillation for a city slipping down into the East River ooze.” (Richard Powers)
“The stom-dancers held their arms out, displaying giant black wings made from dyed membrane and springy bark strips as they ran at and turned round each other, making unconvincing roaring noises. Priests and monks sitting in the higher levels of the reviewing stand and dressed in ceremonial robes, kept up a running cantillation describing the proceedings.” (Iain M. Banks)