An Anthology of Ethiopian Christian Liturgical Chant

A three-volume edition of Ethiopian Christian Liturgical Chant accompanied by a compact disc is now in print and available. Ethiopian Christian chant is of particular interest because it survives as both an oral and written tradition, providing a laboratory in which one can observe, first-hand, the many processes involved in the transmission of such traditional repertories: the interaction of memorization and improvisation with reading and writing, the role of performance as a determinant of content and style, and the survival of competing local and regional styles within the overall tradition. In the Ethiopian tradition, notated manuscripts, handwritten on parchment using medieval scribal techniques, are still copied by students in Ethiopia as part of their training, while the liturgy is at the same time primarily taught and performed as an oral tradition. The edition incorporates materials from both oral and written domains, interpreting their relationship to each other.

These volumes thus unite the materials and methods of ethnomusicology and historical musicology in providing the first major scholarly study of the Ethiopian musical tradition and its notational system. The edition also seeks to incorporate both oral and written materials in a manner that is interpretative and potentially controversial. Of particular concern is the limitation of musical notation as it relates to the act of musical performance and the appropriateness--and methodological problems--raised by translating one notation (in this case, the Ethiopian notational signs) into another (i.e., transcriptions, primarily in Western staff notation).

Volume I contains a general introduction to the musical tradition in its historical context, providing a background concerning the Ethiopian ecclesiastical calendar, literature, and liturgy. This volume contains a dictionary of the signs of the Ethiopian notational system, which explains and illustrates all the types of signs used, the melodies associated with each sign, and the relationship of the melodies to three broad categories of the sacred musical system. The means through which hundreds of individuals melodies are organized into groups with differing liturgical uses are also set forth and explicated in this volume.

Volume 2 presents an introduction to Ethiopian Christian performance practice, tracing the education and career of the Ethiopian church musician and explaining concepts that shape liturgical performance. Accompanied by a compact disc recorded in Ethiopia, Volume 2 contains musical transcriptions in Western notation, textual translations, and facsimiles of each of eighteen sample liturgical portions from the annual cycle. Commentaries discuss each portion in terms of both its oral performance practice and notational history.

The third and final volume presents charts which summarize the notational history of each of the 18 portions. This is followed by a re-evaluation of the literature discussing Ethiopian chant from the earliest times to the present, a general conclusion, and a complete bibliography.

In seeking to make available basic information about the Ethiopian chant repertory, the edition presents each of the 18 sample chants in four forms: (1) a recording by an accomplished Ethiopian musician; (2) a transcription of the performance into Western staff notation; (3) one or more facsimiles of the chant in Ethiopian notation; and (4) a synoptic chart in which the original Ethiopian notation is translated into alphanumeric figures keyed to the dictionaries in Volume 1 of the anthology. Each of the synoptic charts provides the notation found in every one of two dozen manuscript sources in chronological order, enabling the user to trace the written history of the chant from the sixteenth century to the present.

The oral materials, which were gathered by Shelemay during fieldwork in Ethiopia during the mid-1970s, are based primarily upon the knowledge and practice of Alaqa Berhanu Makonnen, a master musician and accomplished teacher in charge of all church musical activity and accreditation of musicians. The most important source for chant manuscripts included in the study was the Ethiopian Manuscript Microfilm Library (EMML) in Addis Ababa, which has microfilmed more than 7,000 manuscripts from hundreds of libraries in Ethiopia. Many of these manuscripts, copies of which are available through the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library (HMML) at St. John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota, Have been catalogued by Getatchew Haile and William F. Macomber (1975- ).

This unusually complex edition was supported by generous grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Musicological Society.

Ethnomusicologist Kay Kaufman Shelemay is Professor of Music at Harvard University. Her other publications on Ethiopian music include Music, Ritual, and Falasha History and A Song of Longing, An Ethiopian Journey. Peter Jeffrey, an historical musicologist who is Professor of Music at Princeton University, is the author of Re-envisioning Past Musical Cultures: Ethnomusicology in the Study of Gregorian Chant.