Moftah, Ragheb

Ragheb Moftah was born Dec. 21, 1898, in Egypt. He was a musicologist, scholar, and a pioneer of the preservation of the Coptic liturgical music heritage. Moftah and Ernest Newlandsmith collaborated together from 1927 to 1936, the latter transcribing from live Coptic music performances some 16 folios of music notation. In 1945, Moftah established a center to teach Coptic chant melodies. By 1954, Moftah was among the founders of the Higher Institute of Coptic Studies, and established its Music Division. From 1954 until his death in 2001, Dr. Moftah recorded the entire corpus of Coptic Orthodox Liturgical chants and hymns in the Higher Institute of Coptic Studies (HICS). He was also responsible for training cantors at the Higher Institute of Coptic Studies (HICS), as well as students at the Coptic Clerical College. Each summer he ran a camp in Alexandria for additional instruction, which was all by rote memorization. In 1970, Moftah commissioned Margit Toth to transcribe the music notation of the Coptic Orthodox Liturgy of St. Basil which was published in 1998. Moftah collected and recorded the orally transmitted chants that were transcribed by Toth from authoritative cantors; the work contains a full text of the Liturgy in Coptic and Arabic, together with an English translation. Moftah died June 16, 2001.