SYRIAN CHURCH.
We now turn to the early Christian church of Syria, founded by the Apostles Paul and Barnabas.
One of the earliest in existence, the church of Antioch soon became the metropolis of Syrian Christianity. Yet it was in this church also that the first heresy took place, by the rise of the Gnostics (disciples of science); one of this sect, named Bardesanes, founded a separate denomination of these, and was the first who composed hymns in the native tongue, and adapted them to melodies. He composed one hundred and fifty psalms in imitation of David.
But greatest of all the musicians of the Orthodox Christian church of Syria, was Ephraem Syrus. He is still called “Harp of the Holy Spirit” in many churches who yet honor him and celebrate his feast.
He was a monk of Syria, born of poor parents, in a village of Mesopotamia. At eighteen years of age he was converted and baptized, and soon retired to a desert spot to practice penitence and piety. It was in this retreat that he composed his voluminous sermons, hymns, etc., all of which have much poetic beauty and oriental imagery.[244] He wrote fifteen hymns on the “Nativity,” fifteen on “Paradise,” fifty-two on “Faith,” and “The Church,” fifty-one on “The Virginity,” eighty-seven against “Heresy,” and “The Arians,” eighty-five “Mortuary,” fifteen moral hymns, etc. His writings on the Peshito or Syriac version of the scriptures are still of use to the theological student.
He arranged the music to his hymns, and he himself speaks of having arranged sixty-six of them in the style of Bardesanes.
Many of the songs and prayers in the Syrian liturgy, ascribed to St. Ephraem are spurious. It is related that at the first interview between him and St. Basilius, the former was endowed by the Holy Ghost with sudden power to speak Greek, and the latter Syriac, thus giving them a choice of languages in which to converse.
It is impossible to give a thorough account of the music of the Syrian Church, as although the first instruments mentioned in the Bible (the taboret, a tambourine held in one hand and struck with the other, and Kinnor, a seven stringed triangular harp) are Syrian, yet the people have never, from time immemorial, written down their melodies, but always handed them down orally, father to son, or teacher to pupil.
The mass in Syrian liturgy, is very different in its form, from the Catholic: there is neither Kyrie Eleison, Gloria, nor Epistle, contained in it.
There are two distinct sects in the Syrian church; the first Ephraemitic, or followers of the Orthodox saint; the second, heretical and followers of Jacob Baradaeus, a Syrian monk of the sixth century. These are called Jacobites, and hold Eutychian doctrines.
The music of the latter is ornamented to excess; that of the Ephraemitic rite nobler and plainer.