Syrian chant

The earliest of the independent branches of Christian chant. Its language was the Eastern Aramaic dialect, also called Syriac. Apart from some indecipherable cantillation formulae the music of the early Syrian church has not survived; and it is impossible to say how closely what is sung today resembles it.

In addition to the cantillation (chanting in unison) of the lessons and the singing of psalms, common to all liturgies, a repertory of hymns emerged, anticipating in some cases the forms of Byzantine chant. The memrâ was a poetical homily, sung to a recitative formula. The madráshâ was a strophic hymn sung by a soloist, with a refrain sung by the choir. The sogîthâ was a poem of dramatic character. Lesser forms, inserted between the verses of psalms, are comparable to the troparion and sticheron of the Byzantine liturgy.