4. ‘Afqǝrnākǝ

T his piece is part of any Sabbath morning service. A portion of its text is sung to a different melody on the Seventh Sabbath. It is a completely composed prayer in Ge’ez and ‘Agawegna, in alternation. The text mentions those who seek God, asking Him that He should not abandon them. The person praying turns to God asking that his prayer be fulfilled.

The distribution of the verses of ‘Afqǝrnākǝ follows the hemiola pattern. Each verse contains three melodic units (A, B, C), distributed in two hemistiches as follows: A-B C/A-B-C. 

While the musical material follows a binary organization, the alternation between the soloist and the choir follows a ternary one. Another characteristic of this piece is its plurivocality: at certain points the choir sporadically sings in simultaneous intervals of a third, or even a fifth, producing a rudimentary form of polyphony.