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Palm Sunday Psalms

Amoussa01
in General Announcements
I was wondering why people chant the fourth psalm in the Liturgy in the annual tune. My resources tell me its sengary...why would anyone switch back? It even has a psalm response!

Comments

  • minatasgeelminatasgeel
    I bet your sources also say that Covenant Thursday Psalm is fully singari....:-)

    So Anba Mettaous book says it should be singary.
    Nahdet El-kanayes is the one that says you say it in annual tune. St.Mina Monastery in Alex published a great resource (4 books) for the entire Pascha Week and they take the rite of Nahdet el-kanayes.

    My comments, We asked Anba Benyameen once about this who is a great resource for explaining rites. He told us, and i think i said this on another post before, that the Church will never take you (more like your emotions) from one extreme to the other. And this is shown in saying the 1st psalm in singary, and then the 2nd psalm in annual, then the next psalm in etribi (which can either be the General Funeral's or psacha). SO the annual psalm is like a transitional state between festive and sorrowful. 
  • Amoussa01
    Mina,

    Sorry to say but I don't "buy that" explanation. The feast is not suppose to transition you; that is contrary to what a feast is. Secondly, if we were to follow this logic, we should have kept the entire liturgy annual starting from the gospel response. Thirdly, there is no theological meaning behind it. Is it just to prepare myself? Isn't that what the general funeral is for? It would make more sense to have the general funeral prayer in the annual rite than to have one random psalm chanted in the annual tune in the middle of a festal liturgy and then switching back to the Hosanna tune for the rest of the entire service. 

    On a side note:
    I find it really strange that our church does not consider the Institution of the Eucharist a Major Lordly feast. After all, it is the Body and Blood that gives us life and sustains us and the resurrection cannot be fully realized without the partaking of the Holy mysteries. However, I have never heard about chanting the psalm in the singary tune...is this what Anba Matteos also says in his book?
  • minatasgeelminatasgeel
    The general funeral is a totally separate service despite the fact that we do it right after the liturgy. It is not the "transitional" service that I would consider. The transition is specific to the psalm chanting and not the entire liturgy. Also, I think Ramez has a translation of a chapter (or so) from Fr. Athansius El-Maqari about the general funeral...dig for it. You might be surprised have mixed the general funeral was within the Hosanna Sunday Liturgy.


    response tot he side note :-):
    Anba Mettaous and Albair's say sanawi. Nahdet elkanayes says singari and annual. C.Farag's book is the same as Nahdet elkanayes. C. Ibrahim says so here: http://tasbeha.org/mp3/Hymns/Holy_Week/Ibrahim_Ayad/Part_4.html
  • drewhalim
    edited April 2015
    The books do not say that the second psalm is annual they say "Al mulakhus" which as anybody who knows it will know it borrows greatly from the Singary mulakhus.

    I personally believe that as the rites have developed there is no longer a case to argue, both psalms are festive. Firstly and foremost Palm Sunday is a major Lordly feast and secondly we cannot continue to pick and choose. What I mean by that is if you go back to the old dalal book it does state the first psalm is Singary and the second is annual mulakhus HOWEVER that very same book does not have a psalm response or a psalm 150 response. You cannot chant a psalm on a major feast in an annual tune followed by a festive response. That is not just messy for want of a better term it is illogical. All this talk of transition etc is meaningless and with no foundation whatsoever.

    With all respect to Ibrahim Ayad I find he is very inconsistent in his recordings and they are certainly a mix of modern day practice vs original dalal book vs tarteeb el baya'a book and he does pick and choose between them.

    I recently saw a YouTube video where Albei was talking about this point and he said that old books refer to Al Mulakhus meaning the festive Mulakhus not the annual one and how the confusion came about. I'm not sure the name of that recording but it was but definitely on YouTube.
  • minatasgeelminatasgeel
    edited April 2015
    drewhalim said:

    Firstly and foremost Palm Sunday is a major Lordly feast and secondly we cannot continue to pick and choose. What I mean by that is if you go back to the old dalal book it does state the first psalm is Singary and the second is annual mulakhus HOWEVER that very same book does not have a psalm response or a psalm 150 response. You cannot chant a psalm on a major feast in an annual tune followed by a festive response. 

    I haven't seen any reference to Elmulakhas psalm in Tarteeb elbe3a simply because i didn't go through the book....but i would like to get the reference exactly in the book.

    I understand your point about not having a Gospel and a Psalm Response but you have to realize that what we say now for those is a new development; you do not see them in books (atleast i don't see them in Farag's or Nahdet elkanayes). Not every festive liturgy need a psalm response. We don't have a psalm response for weddings...and the wedding must always be festive. No, I am not comparing the Crowning Ceremony with a Lordly feast, but I am just showing that we are starting to change/add/take away things within hymns to follow a specific structure, which is really fine with me....as long as we understand the changes. The best example is the development for Feast of the Cross responses.

    I cannot ever blame C. Ibrahim. He is not a cantor who is leaving alone somewhere in Upper Egypt with no outside affects, but he lives in the heart of Egypt, and the heart of the Church in the Cathedral. He has his status, and we must respect it, and we must question him as needed while also respecting him. That being in said, he is NOT a source of rites but he is a source of hymns. Similar to Albair, atleast to me--I don't take him as an alhan source or a cantor, but I take him as a great and a valuable source of rites because he has the connections and the knowledge to do a well done research about a rite. Everyone in our Church has something to present. Each has their own talent that their good at. everyone else must discern and do enough research and consider all options--no book will always be full or everything and none should be trusted to be without research.  
  • drewhalim
    I have no issue with Palm Sunday having a liturgy psalm response and psalm 150 response and I totally agree it is a major Lordly feast. My point was that as the rites have developed then it should also automatically follow that both psalms are festive. While this idea of a transition maybe a personal interpretation I think too much is being read into something that never existed.

    The first book I saw a Palm Sunday psalm response in was actually Muallim Farag's which also adds the words "riding on a donkey" at the end which C.Ibrahim does not say.

    The crowning ceremony, while not a Lordly feast, follows the Sha3neen ritual and not festive and as was the case with Palm Sunday and the Feast of the Cross there was no psalm response.
  • minatasgeelminatasgeel
    Hehe.
    There is no Palm Sunday psalm response in C Farag book :-)

    For the crowning ceremony, you are now getting more specific... It's festive and sha3anini. Festive for people's responses sha3anini for the rite and specific hymns. It's exactly like Palm Sunday and feasts of the Cross. In fact, in books, they say the wedding rite is festive and then when it comes to some hymns, ti-estoli for example, they say sha3anini
  • drewhalim
    My apologies the response is C.Farag's book it is in audio recording.
  • RemnkemiRemnkemi
    I guess the real issue here is that no one knows what "Shanini" really means. I've looked for an etymological origin of the word for years and could not find anything. Every one I ask, thinks it simply means "Palm Sunday". When I ask for the root word in Arabic, I get a long stare. 

    If we can't define what Shanini means, how do we know it has anything to do with a feast's status as a major Lordly feast? For all we know "Shanini" really does mean transition. (I doubt it) and that is why we have a strange mix of tunes. Given the observation that we see the Shanini tune in Lordly festive feasts (Palm Sunday), non-Lordly, non-festive feasts (Cross), non-Lordly, festive feasts (crowning ceremonies), non-Lordly, non-festive, non-feasts (Glorification Tiestoli and O Penchois), it is hard to categorize the Shanini tone as festive only and not festive, mixed festive-annual, or completely unknown.

    It seems to me that Shanini, as a musical tone, meant something different than Shanini, as a calendric category. But at some point, the two merged and now we have an enormous amount of confusion. To add to the confusion, we really don't know why all feasts (Lordly and non-Lordly) don't simply use the Festive tone in its entirety. Why have a Shanini tune and a Festive tune used on Palm Sunday to begin with? 

    I have a theory but I'll leave it to others to respond first.

  • minatasgeelminatasgeel
    I think, and i don't know why i do so but someone probably spoke to me about this, Sha3anini comes from sha3anin who maybe comes from Hosha3na, which is the original word for Oosanna=Hosanna. Actually, i think hosha3na is the Hebrew word for osanna which just means Save us. The old versions of Nahdet elkanayes books uses the word Hosha3na,هوشعنا rather then Osanna.....that was my 2-cent' worth


  • RemnkemiRemnkemi
    Interesting point. By this theory, "shanini" is a calendric category referring to Palm Sunday. Somehow this calendric category became a semantic definition for a musical tone; which by observation is used outside of Palm Sunday. 

    Can you or anyone else give us any ideas why there are 2 musical tones used on Palm Sunday?
  • Mgabby1234
    drewhalim 
     edited April 7 Flag
    The books do not say that the second psalm is annual they say "Al mulakhus" which as anybody who knows it will know it borrows greatly from the Singary mulakhus. 

    Drewhalim,

    The Deacon's Service book, nahdet ilkanais version, specifically mentions that the Psalm for the fourth gospel is to be chanted in the mullakhas or "sanawy" tune, not just mullakhas.
  • minatasgeelminatasgeel
    edited April 2015
    @Remnkemi, I think we have to make a differentiation between what is to be festive on Hosanna Sunday (better than palm sunday, :-), and what is sha3anini. So in books, there is always a difference between responses (people or deacons) and hymns or doxologies or psalies or praises. So the 2 musical tones you are references are towards different things with in the liturgy. Let's take Kiahky for example...to me, it's on the same level as sha3anini, both are watos ways. while some hymns are said in the Kiahky tune, the responses are still in annual....am I making any sense?!

    @mgabby1234, you are right, i forgot to look at the book for that. We have to wonder about this thoo because I don't think El-molakhas was famous in Ba7ari or Cairo area until A. Fahim learned it from C. Tawfik and brought it to the Cathedral. the oldest recording I know of is C. Tawfiks. Some people just think it's a perversion of el-singary. 
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