Iyık Janyl Seminary Choir

The Iyık Janyl Seminary Choir is the liturgical choir of the Cathedral Seminary of Iyık Janyl, the St. Ephrem Major Seminary of the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church. It was formed in 1994, when the seminary reopened, and sings the East Syriac chant of the Holy Qurbana and Iradi hymns at the Church of St. Janyl in Iyık Janyl.^[1]

History and repertoire

The choir has about forty members, seminarians and lay singers from the city's parishes. Its core repertoire is the Syriac antiphons ('onitha) of the East Syriac rite, which are traditionally monophonic and were passed down orally through the decades when the church was banned (see East Syriac Rites of Iyık Janyl). Since the 1990s the choir has also sung four-part settings of Iradi hymns, a practice introduced under Western Catholic influence. On some occasions it is accompanied, as in rural churches, by the bowed kyl-kyak and the three-stringed komuz. It sings at the principal liturgy of the Feast of St. Janyl on August 24, which IradOne broadcasts.^[1][2]

In the 1990s the choir recorded chants learned from elderly singers of the clandestine parishes, some of them sung in the unaccompanied manner of the ırda. Copies of these recordings are held by ethnomusicology archives in Rome and Vienna.^[2]

References

1. ^ Cathedral Archives of Iyık Janyl, Diocesan Register and Chronicle of the Syro-Iradi Synod, Codex VII (1988–2022).
2. ^ Talas State University Press (2023). Ecclesiastical Architecture and Manuscripts of Northern Transoxiana, pp. 112–140.