The Coptic Orthodox Liturgy of St. Basil: With Complete Musical Transcription (review)

The Coptic Orthodox Liturgy of St. Basil: With Complete Musical Transcription. Compiled by Ragheb Moftah; music transcription by Margit Toth; text edited by Martha Roy. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1998. [Acknowledgments, p. vii; introd., p. ix-xi; the Coptic alphabet, p. xiii; order of the liturgy, p. xv-xix; alphabetical index of the liturgy, p. xx-xxiv; the Coptic Orthodox Liturgy of St. Basil, 697 p.; front matter in Arabic, 23 p. Cloth. ISBN 977-424-437-0; Dar el Kutub no. 3717/97. E£100.]

The Coptic Orthodox Liturgy of St. Basil provides a rich and unique resource for the study of a major living tradition of Christian worship. It will interest students and researchers of chant traditions, Egyptian music, Middle Eastern musics both devotional and more secular, and liturgics. Additionally, it will serve the Coptic religious community, a historic population in the Middle East and an ever-growing and important one in North America, as a musico-historical document. As a liturgical resource, it broadens our understanding of Christian practice, bringing us closer to the contemporary living tradition of one of the four historic Patriarchates, that of Alexandria (alongside those of Antioch, Byzantium, and Rome).

The volume presents the entire Liturgy of St. Basil, one of three major liturgies of the Coptic Church, the others being the liturgies of St. Gregory, used for the four great feasts of the church, and of St. Cyril, the melodies of which have been lost. The Liturgy of St. Basil is celebrated throughout the year with special additions particular to the day of the ecclesiastical calendar. The present volume gives a transcription for the day commemorating St. Antony, the first Christian monk, which is Tubah 22 in the Coptic calendar (p. ix). The book opens with brief introductory material in English and Arabic (at opposite ends of the book, as befits the two languages) on the Coptic liturgy and alphabet plus an alphabetical index of the Coptic liturgical texts, followed by the complete transcription of the liturgy that fills almost seven hundred pages.

This edition is primarily a scholarly work. Compiled by life-long student of Coptic music and religious practice, Ragheb Moftah, it is based on recordings he collected from authoritative religious practitioners in Cairo--a collection that spans most of the twentieth century. The notation was prepared by Margit Toth, a well-known ethnomusicologist schooled in the techniques of melodic transcription taught by Béla Bartók and his students. Her transcription is meticulously notated, allowing the reader to see countless nuances of tuning, intonation, and ornamentation in the rendering of the liturgy. It is detailed and descriptive, not necessarily intended for would-be practitioners. Martha Roy, a linguist, self-proclaimed "educationalist," and lifelong resident of Egypt, prepared the text, which is given in Coptic, Arabic, and English. The collaboration of these well- educated, knowledgeable, and dedicated individuals produces a remarkably useful result. The book documents twentieth- century practice and possibly older historic practices as well, presenting a "reading" of contemporary Coptic worship, unique in its detail and completeness.

The study of Coptic music has been nearly impossible outside the community of its practitioners, since the practice of the music depends primarily on oral transmission. The documents that have accrued to other great chant traditions simply do not exist for this one, thus severely limiting scholarly research. Roy does offer excellent introductions to Coptic liturgical music elsewhere, including the Sachteil of the second edition of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (vol. 5, pp. 718-26 under "Koptische Kirchenmusik" [Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1996]); in the forthcoming second edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 2000); and in the also forthcoming The Middle East (ed. Virginia Danielson, Scott Marcus, and Dwight Reynolds; vol. 6 of The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music [New York: Garland Publishing, 2000]). In addition, Salwa El Shawan Castelo-Branco's master's thesis, "An Annotated Bibliography on Coptic Music" (Columbia...