Coptic Orthodox Liturgical Chant & Hymnody
The Ragheb Moftah Collection at the Library of Congress
The seventeenth-century German Jesuit, Athanasius Kircher, made the earliest-known attempt at transcribing a piece of Coptic music. It was not until the early nineteenth century, during Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, that Villoteau transcribed an Alleluia; and, in the late nineteenth century, the French Jesuit priests, Fathers Blin and Badet, attempted to transcribe the Coptic liturgy. These early transcribers, along with other important figures associated with Copts and Coptic music, such as Edward William Lane, are the subjects of the biographies in this Gallery.
The most important work in the preservation of Coptic music was begun in the 1920s and 1930s by Ragheb Moftah and Ernest Newlandsmith. The biographies of Moftah’s friends and colleagues presented here – Newlandsmith, O.H.E. Khs-Burmester, Hans Hickman, John E. Gillespie, Ilona Borsai, Martha Roy, Margit Tóth, Marian Robertson-Wilson, and His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – highlight the principal figures in the history of preserving Coptic music.