Skip to the content
Icon of Christ

The cantors

Muʿallim Farag ʿAbd al-Masih المعلم فرج عبد المسيح · cantor of the Church of the Virgin at Rawd al-Farag, 1921-2000

Farag ʿAbd al-Masih taught the hymns to the Church’s priests and cantors for decades, and reposed on the day the patriarch called him to help unify them. A pupil of Mikhail al-Batanuni, he was cantor of the Church of the Virgin at Rawd al-Farag in Cairo, teacher of the hymns at the Clerical College and the Didymus Institute, and one of the teachers of Ragheb Moftah’s choir.123 When he reposed in April 2000, al-Kirāza called him “شيخ مرتلي الكنيسة حالياً,” the senior cantor of the Church today.4

Teacher of the hymns

An elderly man with white hair and glasses, in a dark suit, chants into a microphone with an open book before him
Muʿallim Farag ʿAbd al-Masih chanting the great Sinjari psalm at the Christmas liturgy, 6 January 2000.From the Coptic Hymns Guide, where the original is.

He learned from Mikhail al-Batanuni. Carolyn Ramzy names him among Mikhail’s pupils,5 and Laurence Moftah counts him in the second generation of cantors, “Farag Abdel-Messih (b. 1921-d. 2000).”6 The pupils did not all sing like their teacher: Ramzy writes that Farag “enjoyed a few ornaments, but certainly not as much as” Ṣadiq ʿAttallah.7

He taught at the Clerical College and the Didymus Institute. In 1989 al-Kirāza described him as “مدرس الألحان بالكلية الإكليريكية ومعهد ديديموس ومرتل كنيسة العذراء بروض الفرج” (teacher of the hymns at the Clerical College and the Didymus Institute, and cantor of the Church of the Virgin at Rawd al-Farag).8 In 1991 the Coptic Encyclopedia found the Didymus Institute for blind cantors in Shubra, “under the direction of Muʿallim Faraj.”9 When Pope Shenouda III met the teachers of the Clerical College on 31 July 1995, Farag was among them, teaching the liturgy and the hymns, with Ibrahim Ayad,10 and in 1998 the Didymus Institute reported that he had come back to teach after visiting his children in Australia.11

He taught Moftah’s choir. Pope Shenouda III, at Ragheb Moftah’s funeral, named him among the teachers of the choir: “Muʿallim Farag ʿAbd al-Masih, teacher of the hymns at the Clerical College.”12

His books and praises

He edited books for deacons and wrote praises. He compiled and arranged al-Durra al-Urthūdhuksiyya, a collection of the Church’s praises and hymns,13 and an edition of The Service of the Deacon, sold at his church.14 He composed praises (madāʾiḥ) of his own, among them praises for the distribution at the feast of Nayruz and on ordinary days, and for St. Mark, St. Theodore the Eastern and St. Macarius the Great.15

His repose

He reposed on the day the patriarch called him. On Tuesday 11 April 2000 Pope Shenouda III received Ragheb Moftah to talk about unifying the hymns through a committee of three cantors: Muʿallim Farag of the Clerical College, Muʿallim Nagi of Alexandria and Muʿallim Tawfiq of Dayr al-Muharraq. That evening, al-Kirāza reported, Farag reposed.16 His funeral was held at the Church of the Virgin at Rawd al-Farag, where the patriarch sent his secretary, Bishop Yoannes, to lead the prayers, after “decades of service handing on the hymns and the liturgy.”17

His recordings are still taught. In 2014 the hymns department of the Institute of Coptic Studies taught its courses from the recordings of Muʿallim Mikhail al-Batanuni and Muʿallim Farag ʿAbd al-Masih.18 On this site you can hear his recordings.

Photographs

A choir of deacons in white and red vestments sings at a microphone while two men sit before them with their backs to the camera
Ragheb Moftah and Muʿallim Farag ʿAbd al-Masih during a recording session at the Institute of Coptic Studies.Library of Congress, Music Division, Ragheb Moftah Collection.

Notes

  1. Ramzy, “A Musical Inheritance”, para. 5. ↩
  2. al-Kirāza 1989, notice, p. 10. ↩
  3. Shenouda III, al-Kirāza 2001, p. 10. ↩
  4. al-Kirāza 2000, p. 5, tr. ours. ↩
  5. Ramzy, “A Musical Inheritance”, para. 5. ↩
  6. L. Moftah, “Scholars of Music”, para. 34. ↩
  7. Ramzy 2015, p. 78. ↩
  8. al-Kirāza 1989, notice, p. 10, tr. ours. ↩
  9. Moftah, Robertson, Roy and Tóth, “Music, Coptic”, vol. 6, “Cantors, Their Role and Musical Training”. ↩
  10. al-Kirāza 1995, “al-Bābā maʿa hayʾat al-tadrīs”, p. 4. ↩
  11. al-Kirāza 1998, Didymus Institute, p. 11. ↩
  12. Shenouda III, al-Kirāza 2001, p. 10, tr. ours. ↩
  13. al-Kirāza 1989, notice, p. 10. ↩
  14. al-Kirāza 1991, notice, p. 20. ↩
  15. Hymns Guide, Farag ʿAbd al-Masih, “His works”. ↩
  16. al-Kirāza 2000, p. 4. ↩
  17. al-Kirāza 2000, p. 5, tr. ours. ↩
  18. al-Kirāza 2014, notice, p. 5. ↩

Sources

Back to the cantors.