Syriac Hymnody
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Syriac Hymnody
Syriac sacral music is music in the Syriac language as used in the liturgy of Syriac Christianity. Historically it is best known from and important for its part in the development of Christian sacred music since Antiquity. The Syriac churches have a musical system based on ancient principles today known as ''maqam'', there are eight maqams used in the church and these are known as qadmoyo ( maqam bayati, maqam ussak), (maqam huseini), tlithoyo (maqam segah, maqam nahawand, maqam kurd), rbi'oyo ( maqam rast), hmishoyo ( maqam huzam), shtithoyo ( maqam ajam), shbi'oyo (maqam saba) and tminoyo ( maqam hijaz) (in order from one to eight). The most predominant works of the Syriac Church's music was collected in an anthology named '' Beth Gazo'' (''Psalms of the Treasury of Maqams''). There are also musical psalms other than this repertoire of 700 psalms, among them are the Fenqitho of the Syriac Orthodox and Maronite Churches, as well as the Khudra of the Church of the East. ...
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Syriac Language
The Syriac language (; syc, / '), also known as Syriac Aramaic (''Syrian Aramaic'', ''Syro-Aramaic'') and Classical Syriac ܠܫܢܐ ܥܬܝܩܐ (in its literary and liturgical form), is an Aramaic language, Aramaic dialect that emerged during the first century AD from a local Aramaic dialect that was spoken by Arameans in the ancient Aramean kingdom of Osroene, centered in the city of Edessa. During the Early Christian period, it became the main literary language of various Aramaic-speaking Christian communities in the historical region of Syria (region), Ancient Syria and throughout the Near East. As a liturgical language of Syriac Christianity, it gained a prominent role among Eastern Christian communities that used both Eastern Syriac Rite, Eastern Syriac and Western Syriac Rite, Western Syriac rites. Following the spread of Syriac Christianity, it also became a liturgical language of eastern Christian communities as far as India (East Syriac ecclesiastical province), India ...
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Beth Gazo
Beth Gazo ( ; literary "the house of treasure") is a Syriac liturgical book that contains a collection of Syriac chants and melodies. The book is considered a reference of Syriac Hymnody and without it clerics belonging to the West Syriac Tradition cannot perform their liturgical duty. There exist modern varieties of this book with different names such as: ''beṯ gázo dqinóṯo'' (), ' () and ' (). History The origin of Beth Gazo can be traced back to the early centuries of Christianity going as far as Bardaisan (154–222 CE).Edessian Preservation Initiative
lostorigins However, the bulk of the hymns is attributed to Ephrem the Syrian (306 – 373 CE). There are two main traditions in chanting: western based on the
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Canticle
A canticle (from the Latin ''canticulum'', a diminutive of ''canticum'', "song") is a hymn, psalm or other Christianity, Christian song of praise with lyrics usually taken from biblical or holy texts. Canticles are used in Christian liturgy. Catholic Church Prior to the Pope Pius X's Reform of the Roman Breviary by Pope Pius X, 1911 reforms, a single cycle of seven canticles was used at Lauds: * Sunday – The Song of the Three Holy Children () * Monday – The Song of Isaiah the Prophet () * Tuesday – The Song of Hezekiah () * Wednesday – The Song of Hannah () * Thursday – The (First) Song of the sea, Song of Moses () * Friday – The Prayer of Habakkuk () * Saturday – The (Second) Song of Moses () These canticles are rather long, and the weekday ones display something of a penitential theme, but some were not often used, as all feasts, and weekdays in Eastertide used the Canticle of Daniel, the Sunday canticle. The 1911 reform introduced for weekdays not of penitenti ...
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Poet Balai
Balai of Qenneshrin ( syr, ܒܠܝ ܕܩܢܫܪܝܢ), was a Syriac saint who lived in Qinnasrin in the 5th century CE. Very little is known about his early life. It has been suggested that he might have been a native of Edessa who later moved to Qinnasrin after being ordained a monk. A collection of sermons is attributed to him as well as a number of hymns found in Beth Gazo Beth Gazo ( ; literary "the house of treasure") is a Syriac liturgical book that contains a collection of Syriac chants and melodies. The book is considered a reference of Syriac Hymnody and without it clerics belonging to the West Syriac Traditi .... References Syriac writers {{saint-stub ...
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Epiphany (holiday)
Epiphany ( ), also known as Theophany in Eastern Christian traditions, is a Christian feast day that celebrates the revelation (theophany) of God incarnation (Christianity), incarnate as Jesus Christ. In Western Christianity, the feast commemorates principally (but not solely) the Biblical Magi, visit of the Magi to the Christ Child, and thus Jesus Christ's physical manifestation to the Gentiles. It is sometimes called Three Kings' Day, and in some traditions celebrated as Little Christmas. Moreover, the feast of the Epiphany, in some Christian denominations, denominations, also initiates the liturgical season of Epiphanytide. Eastern Christians, on the other hand, commemorate the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River, seen as his manifestation to the world as the Son of God. The spot marked by Al-Maghtas in Jordan, adjacent to Qasr al-Yahud in the West Bank, is considered to be the original site of the baptism of Jesus and the ministry of John the Baptist. The traditional dat ...
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Harmony
In music, harmony is the process by which individual sounds are joined together or composed into whole units or compositions. Often, the term harmony refers to simultaneously occurring frequencies, pitches ( tones, notes), or chords. However, harmony is generally understood to involve both vertical harmony (chords) and horizontal harmony ( melody). Harmony is a perceptual property of music, and, along with melody, one of the building blocks of Western music. Its perception is based on consonance, a concept whose definition has changed various times throughout Western music. In a physiological approach, consonance is a continuous variable. Consonant pitch relationships are described as sounding more pleasant, euphonious, and beautiful than dissonant relationships which sound unpleasant, discordant, or rough. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Counterpoint, which refers to ...
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Arabic Poetry
Arabic poetry ( ar, الشعر العربي ''ash-shi‘ru al-‘Arabīyyu'') is the earliest form of Arabic literature. Present knowledge of poetry in Arabic dates from the 6th century, but oral poetry is believed to predate that. Arabic poetry is categorized into two main types, rhymed or measured, and prose, with the former greatly preceding the latter. The rhymed poetry falls within fifteen different meters collected and explained by al-Farahidi in ''The Science of ‘ Arud''. Al-Akhfash, a student of al-Farahidi, later added one more meter to make them sixteen. The meters of the rhythmical poetry are known in Arabic as "seas" (''buḥūr''). The measuring unit of seas is known as "''taf‘īlah''," and every sea contains a certain number of taf'ilas which the poet has to observe in every verse (''bayt'') of the poem. The measuring procedure of a poem is very rigorous. Sometimes adding or removing a consonant or a vowel can shift the ''bayt'' from one meter to another. Also, ...
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Lamentations Of Jeremias
The Book of Lamentations ( he, אֵיכָה, , from its incipit meaning "how") is a collection of poetic laments for the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. In the Hebrew Bible it appears in the Ketuvim ("Writings") as one of the Five Megillot (or "Five Scrolls") alongside the Song of Songs, Book of Ruth, Ecclesiastes and the Book of Esther although there is no set order. In the Christian Old Testament it follows the Book of Jeremiah, as the prophet Jeremiah is its traditional author. However, according to modern scholarship, while the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon in 586/7 BCE forms the background to the poems, they were probably not written by Jeremiah. Most likely, each of the book's chapters was written by a different anonymous poet, and they were then joined to form the book. Some motifs of a traditional Mesopotamian "city lament" are evident in this book, such as mourning the desertion of the city by God, its destruction, and the ultimate return of the divini ...
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Psalms
The Book of Psalms ( or ; he, תְּהִלִּים, , lit. "praises"), also known as the Psalms, or the Psalter, is the first book of the ("Writings"), the third section of the Tanakh, and a book of the Old Testament. The title is derived from the Greek translation, (), meaning "instrumental music" and, by extension, "the words accompanying the music". The book is an anthology of individual Hebrew religious hymns, with 150 in the Jewish and Western Christian tradition and more in the Eastern Christian churches. Many are linked to the name of David, but modern mainstream scholarship rejects his authorship, instead attributing the composition of the psalms to various authors writing between the 9th and 5th centuries BC. In the Quran, the Arabic word ‘Zabur’ is used for the Psalms of David in the Hebrew Bible. Structure Benedictions The Book of Psalms is divided into five sections, each closing with a doxology (i.e., a benediction). These divisions were probably intro ...
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Alphabetic Acrostic
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syllable, and logographic systems use characters to represent words, morphemes, or other semantic units. The first fully phonemic script, the Proto-Sinaitic script, later known as the Phoenician alphabet, is considered to be the first alphabet and is the ancestor of most modern alphabets, including Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and possibly Brahmic. It was created by Semitic-speaking workers and slaves in the Sinai Peninsula (as the Proto-Sinaitic script), by selecting a small number of hieroglyphs commonly seen in their Egyptian surroundings to describe the sounds, as opposed to the semantic values of the Canaanite languages. However, Peter T. Daniels distinguishes an abugida, a set of graphemes that represent consonantal base lett ...
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