Syriac sacral music

The predominant works of the Syriac Church's music were collected in an anthology called Beth Gazo (Psalms of the Treasury of Maqams).

Besides variety of metre and division into strophes, the Syrians prior to the ninth century knew no other artifice than the arrangement of acrostic poems.

The name of Jesus Christ, of Mary, or the saint in whose honour the hymn is composed serves to form linear or strophic acrostics.

From the ninth century the influence of Arabic poetry made itself felt in Syriac hymnody, especially by the introduction of rhyme, this manner of marking the final stroke of a verse had been hitherto unknown, the rare examples held to have been discovered among older authors being merely voluntary or fortuitous assonances.

Most ancient Syriac hymns, e.g., those of St. Ephraem, Narses and Balai, although composed for one or two choirs, were not originally intended for liturgical use properly so called but addressed as much to the laity as to clerics, and date from a period when the codification of harmony was not yet regularly established.

They show great simplicity of thought and language and consist of two strophes, generally of six verses each, sometimes of four, as for example: During forty days Moses fasted on the mountain: And with the splendor of its light His countenance shone.

The sagitha is less frequently replaced by the augitha, a canticle in the form of a dialogue that recalls the "Victimae paschali" of the Roman Missal.

These three kinds of hymns correspond to the three subjects that form their usual theme, praise, prayer, and instruction, but as has been said the last-named was chiefly imparted by the mimre.

Indeed, the knowledge of hymns supplied by editions of the liturgical books of Catholic Chaldeans, Syrians, or Maronites is inadequate for the reasons indicated above.

The Nestorian Breviaries, which have most faithfully preserved the ancient texts, have never been printed and manuscripts are rare, while the collections of hymns apart from liturgical books are few and have not been sufficiently studied.