This is a question which I’m interested in as a historian. I’ve been reading about Islam and Arab Christianity, and one of the things mentioned was the night gatherings of Christian believers to chant passages of Scripture and Psalms to particular rhythm patterns.
This quite facinated me as it reminds me very much of Islamic Qur’an recitation with its tajwid rules of pronounciation.
But I’m wondering: is this still a practice in any modern church to practice Scriptural chanting?
I don’t know whether you’re the type of Muslim who is open to receiving this kind of information, but it is a matter of historical fact that the Islamic chant borrowed heavily from pre-existing Syriac Christian chant, as Syriac was the language of the Christians of the Middle East at the time of the Arab-Islamic conquests (and even in Arabia proper, the Christians had depended on Syriac as a medium of expression, even though it wasn’t their native language, as Arabic hadn’t developed into a language of Christian theological expression at that time; see Tremingham’s 1979 book “Christianity among the Arabs in pre-Islamic times” for more on that). The
maqamat of the Syriac Orthodox match those of the Arabs (but of course have their own names in Syriac; Maqamat in Arabic is first recorded in the 14th century, and even if it had extended to earlier times, it was post-expansion anyway), and I think any honest Muslim can’t miss the similarities between
Syriac chant and their own
Islamic religious chant.
Of course, Syriacs are not the only people who chant their liturgies (including the scriptures). We do it in the Coptic Orthodox Church as well, whether in
Coptic (the original language of the Church, now reduced to a liturgical language only thanks to Arabic),
Arabic (fusha or as close as the chanter can manage; for instance, you’ll notice if you know Arabic that the qaf is present in this reading; it isn’t in colloquial Egyptian Arabic),
English,
Spanish (reading from the Gospel begins at ~31 minutes, after the introduction in Coptic), etc.
This is a general “Eastern” or “Oriental” Christian tendency, by the way. All the native Christian Churches of the East (Eastern Europe through the Middle East) do this. Only the forms of chant differ, and even then not that much.
Here’s the Eastern Orthodox take on the chant in Arabic (probably from Syria or Lebanon, where most Arabic-speaking EO come from), and
its Middle Eastern Catholic equivalent (that one’s Maronite, from Lebanon; Raja Badr was a famous singer back in the 1970s-early 80s). Contrast that with the
Armenian Orthodox way, or that of the
Malankara Syriacs in India, and you’ve pretty much covered all possibilities in the native churches (leaving out the Greeks and Slavs as the EO in general have much more uniform liturgical practices, so even a
Russian Orthodox reading in English will be of the same tonal quality as the Arabic previously linked, as they are ultimately based on the same Byzantine musical principles).
It should also be said that chanting of the scriptures used to be the norm in the Western church as well, during its Orthodox period and some time afterward (at what are now considered “Traditional Catholic Churches”, you can still find it).
I go through all 150 in a week and I thought that was quickly. I tip my hat to you!