Ethiopic Tonal Mark Kurt

It often holds the phrase on the pitch the melody settles on. Kurt is a Zaima qirts, a vocal cue that holds the final word before a pause, like a coda. Other qirts combine into top-to-bottom sequences sung one after another, not as chords.

The history of Ethiopian chant notation is mostly oral in the early record: surviving manuscripts show no notation before the sixteenth century. Scholars link its emergence to preserving an oral repertoire after the Muslim invasion. Church tradition credits Yared with the chant's origins in the sixth century; written notation reached a classic form by the seventeenth century. The accounts differ on the chant's origin, not Kurt's role.