Non-Western Chant
  • Greetings,

    My name is frater Bradley Vanden Branden, O.Praem. and I'm currently studying theology at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. As part of an assignment for my Christian history class, we are to develop a timeline of various "threads" of Christianity over the past 2000 years. Because of my interest in sacred music, I am choosing that as one of my "threads". My professor has also strongly suggested that we include non-Western elements in our timelines, so I was hoping someone could point me in the direction to find some resources on non-Western sacred music through the ages, ex. development of Coptic chant, etc.

    Many thanks!
    frater Brad Vanden Branden, O.Praem.
  • DougS
    Posts: 793
    Welcome to the forum, Brad!

    Kay Kaufman Shelemay and Peter Jeffery have written extensively (books and articles) on Ethiopian liturgical chant.

    A more general thought: I don't know what resources you have at CTU, but if you have access to the JSTOR database (and other full-text article databases), you could probably find much more by limiting your search to musicology periodicals and searching for "Coptic chant," "Byzantine chant," etc. and then mining the bibliographies of those articles for even more information. It could become endless!

    Best of luck in your searching, and I hope others have more ideas.
    Thanked by 1opraem827
  • You might want to consult the work of Egon Wellesz relevant to Byzantine chant, especially 'Eastern Elements in Western Chant' and 'Byzantine Music and Hymnography', et al.; also, Oliver Strunk's 'Essays on Music in the Byzantine World'.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,986
    There is a cantor institute at St. Cyril and Methodius Byzantine Catholic Seminary in Pittsburgh. They have publications and perhaps could give you some information on Byzantine chant. The seminary has a website and both it and the cantor institute can be google searched.