The tradition of sacred vocal (synagogue) music of the Samaritans, a religious community (which in 1999 numbered about 640), living in Nablus (Shechem) and Holon near Tel-Aviv. They claim descent from the ancient Israelites, and their music and the manner of its performance have many apparently archaic features. The Samaritans differ from the Jews in a number of ways, recognizing only the Pentateuch as canonical (and no other books of the Bible) and regarding Mt Gerizim (near Nablus) rather than Jerusalem as the supreme holy place (see John iv.20).
Samaritan music is an oral tradition sung at synagogue services and at other religious and social gatherings. It consists of performances of literary texts (the Pentateuch and prayers in Hebrew, and hymns in Samaritan Aramaic) and is sung only by men. Although old manuscripts contain Samaritan biblical accents for guiding the reading of the texts, these are no longer used today. Samaritan music can be divided into three categories: songs sung by the whole community; those sung by both a soloist and the community; and solo songs. The group songs are more syllabic in style and rhythmically repetitious, and have fewer glissandos and tremolos than solo music. They are sometimes sung in unison, but mostly antiphonally, the worshippers being divided into two groups, one on the right-hand side of the synagogue facing Mt Gerizim, the other on the left; the former group is termed the ‘right’ or ‘upper’ group, the latter the ‘left’ or ‘lower’ group. Alternate groups of verses drawn from the Pentateuch (called ‘Qataf’), or important hymns (in Samaritan Aramaic) are taken by the two groups, beginning with the ‘right’ group together with the priests; each group begins as the other reaches approximately the midpoint of its verses, so that there is an almost continuous bitextual performance. All the group songs are characterized by improvised parallel polyphony, in which all the intervals are at times found, and in which there are also usually drones and notes of indefinite pitch (ex.1; see also the similar improvised polyphony resembling parallel organum to be found in Syrian church music). Among the group songs, the Pentateuch canticles (the Song of the Sea, Exodus xv.1–21, performed five times a year at the presentation of the holy scroll in the synagogue; see ex.1, and the Song of Moses, Deuteronomy xxxi.30–xxxii.43) are particularly popular, with different melodies and styles of performance for different occasions; the singing is led by the priest-cantor.
Solo songs are usually free, melismatic recitatives, characterized by prominent glissandos and tremolo on or between certain notes. Almost all songs make use of some kind of metrical structure (especially at the end of phrases) coupled by non-lexical syllables. Solo songs are sung by the priest-cantor, or, in the case of certain hymns, by a mashira (expert in music).
Many Samaritan prayer melodies do not exceed three notes; the melodies comprise short phrases repeated over and over again or combined in pairs of half-verses in the manner of the parallelismus membrorum of the psalms. Some aspects of the style of the music sung outside services suggests a relationship to Arab folksong; others, such as the organal polyphony and the extensive use of nonsense syllables (see above, ex.1; see also the Byzantine Teretismata), may be archaic survivals. Grove, who visited Nablus in 1861, thought Samaritan music archaic, and Lachmann went so far as to ascribe to the Samaritans the greatest antiquity of any liturgical tradition (1974, p.55). The extreme conservatism of leading Samaritans may support this hypothesis.
J. Mills: Three Months’ Residence at Nablus and an Account of the Modern Samaritans (London, 1864)
F. Grove: Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa, ii (London, 1890), 241ff
J.A. Montgomery: The Samaritans, the Earliest Jewish Sect: their History, Theology and Literature (Philadelphia, 1907)
A.E. Cowley, ed.: The Samaritan Liturgy (Oxford, 1909)
A.Z. Idelsohn: ‘Die Vortragszeichen der Samaritaner’, Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums, lxi (1917), 117–26
J.E.H. Thomson: The Samaritans: their Testimony to the Religion of Israel (Edinburgh, 1919)
M. Gaster: The Samaritans: their History, Doctrines and Literature (London, 1925)
Z. Ben-Hayyim: Ivrit ve-aramit nusah Shomron [The literary and oral tradition of Hebrew and Aramaic among the Samaritans] (Jerusalem, 1957–67)
D. Cohen and R.T. Katz: ‘Explorations in the Music of the Samaritans: an Illustration of the Utility of Graphic Notation’, EthM, iv (1960), 67–74
J. Macdonald: ‘Arabic Musical and Liturgical Terms Employed by the Samaritans’, Islamic Quarterly, vi (1961), 47–54
M. Ravina: Organum and the Samaritans (Tel-Aviv, 1963)
J. Macdonald: The Theology of the Samaritans (London, 1964)
J. Spector: ‘Samaritan Chant’, JIFMC, xvi (1964), 66–9
S. Hofman: ‘ ’Arba‘ha-’ ‘amîdot’ bi-qri’athat-tôrah befîhaš-šomerônim’ [The four differentiae in the Samaritan reading of the law], World Congress of Jewish Studies IV: Jerusalem 1965, ii, 385–94; Eng. summary, 208 only
J. Spector: ‘The Significance of Samaritan Neumes and Contemporary Practice’, SMH, vii (1965), 141–53
J. Spector: ‘Written Tradition and Contemporary Practice in the Biblical Cantillation of the Samaritans’, World Congress of Jewish Studies IV: Jerusalem 1965, ii, 153–6
E. Gerson-Kiwi: ‘Vocal Folk-Polyphonies of the Western Orient in Jewish Traditions’, Yuval, no.1 (1968), 169–93
S. Hofman: ‘Qeriat piyyutê Marqah be-săbbat befi haš-šômerônim’ [The reading of Marka’s poems by the Samaritans on the Sabbath], Yuval, no.1 (1968), 36–52; Eng. summary, 251
S. Hofman: ‘Samaritans: Musical Traditions’, Encyclopaedia judaica, ed. C. Roth (Jerusalem, 1971–2/R, 2/1982)
R. Katz: ‘The Reliability of Oral Transmission: the Case of Samaritan Music’, Yuval, no.3 (1974), 109–35
R. Katz: ‘On “Nonsense” Syllables as Oral Group Notation’, MQ, lx (1974), 187–94
R. Lachmann: ‘Orientalische Musik und Antike’, Robert Lachmann: Posthumous Works, i, ed. E. Gerson-Kiwi (Jerusalem, 1974), 45–59
A. Herzog: ‘Metrical Aspects of Samaritan Music’, World Congress on Jewish Music: Jerusalem 1978, ed. J. Cohen (Tel-Aviv, 1982)
R. Katz: ‘Samaritan Music’, The Samaritans, ed. A.D. Crown (Tübingen, 1989), 743–70
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