Is there a way of chanting the Therigatha? If so, where can I find recordings of it?
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Not quite what you are looking for, but there is a chant of the foremost bhikkhuni disciples of the Buddha
There are links in the description to the Aloka vihara chanting book with the English and Pali. This isnāt a canonical text but uses the qualities of the foremost bhikkhunis based on those in the Anguttara Nikaya.
Yes, you can chant/recite the therigatha. I havenāt seen any recordings online. Just use the correct syllable length and go for it.
Thig1.1
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I just discovered that Venerable VimalaƱÄį¹i has recorded both Thig1 and Thig4 much more beautifully than my hack attempt above.
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I see now that my question was ill posed. I didnāt realize that Pali chant depends on Sinhalese and Thai pronunciation. I thought it was a musical punctuation, as in Gregorian, Koranic and Torah chanting. It canāt really be learned abstractly. But thanks for your suggestions which I listened to with considerable interest.
Well, thatās not exactly the case. Pali is phonetic, so you can pronounce it correctly by reading. In Thailand they tend to add in some vowels to make it easier for them to pronounce.
There are many modern styles of chanting where different tones are used. So that has to be learned by listening if you want to match.
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I donāt know any Thai and barely any Sinhala. It doesnāt make a difference. When you know the sounds that the vowels and consonants make and you understand a that there is a fixed way of pronouncing syllables, then itās pretty easy to sight chant a text.
I actually recorded the whole of Thig1 from near sight. It had a few too many stumbles so I deleted the recording when I found Ven VimalaƱÄÅiās recordings. I had defaulted to a different ātuneā to hers, but that is far less important than getting the meter correct.
There are different intonation patterns used in different traditions. My ātuneā was quite different to Ven VƱās. There are certain beliefs about a maximum number of tones, usually 5, to comply with vinaya rules. However as a layperson you can do as you wish.
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