Joseph J. Palackal
Joseph J. Palackal, C.M.I. is an Indic musicologist, singer and composer, with special interests in the musical traditions of the Indian Christians and a Syro-Malabar Catholic priest. He is also the Founder-President of the Christian Musicological Society of India.
Education
Palackal studied Hindustani classical music under N. V. Patwardhan, graduating from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda; he holds degrees in Christian theology and psychology, the latter with a Gold medal from the Faculty of Arts of M. S. University, and held a National Merit Scholarship.Palackal wrote a Master's thesis at Hunter College in 1995 on the various styles of singing the Puthenpaana , the Malayalam poem composed by the grammarian and lexicographer Johann Ernst Hanxleden, analysing the several cultural influences.
He wrote a doctoral thesis in ethnomusicology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2005 on Syriac chant traditions in South India, studying on the one hand the contemporary practice of model melodies of the East-Syriac/Chaldean rite of the Syro-Malabar Church, and, on the other hand, the oktoechos of the [West Syrian Rite|West Syriac Rite] of the Oriental Orthodox Churches of South India.
As part of this doctoral work, Palackal brought out a CD, Qambel Maran, a collection of Syriac chants in the Chaldean tradition of the Syro-Malabar Church; it includes the hymn Awun d'wasmayya, i.e., the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic, arguably in the same words which were used by Jesus when he taught the Pater Noster, compositions by St. Ephrem the Syrian, and the Syriac translation Sabbah lesan of the Latin hymn Pange Lingua by St. Thomas Aquinas; these chants had up to then been preserved in the main only in oral tradition; among the singers is Fr. Abel Periyappuram, the founder of the Kalabhavan and the key in the transition of the Syro-Malabar liturgy from Syriac to Malayalam.
Academic career
He was, for a time, dean of studies at the Kalabhavan under Abel Periyappuram.Palackal published several research papers on music in English and Malayalam. As a consequence, he was invited to write articles on Indian Christian music in the New [Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians] and in the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music; neither encyclopaedia had dealt with the topic before.
He also published illustrations of various facets of their music, culture, and history; these include
the picture of an angel playing a five-stringed violin as carved on the wooden altar of St. Mary's Forane Church, Pallippuram, the iconic portrait of Christ the Guru drawn by Joy Elamkunnapuzha, and the picture of the granite Cross at St. Thomas Mount, Chennai, the earliest available material evidence for a flourishing Christian community in India.