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| Overview | ||||
Audio Example 1.
"Pascha hieron," a historical recording of either Lakovos Nafpliotes (died †1942)
or Konstantinos Pringos (died †1964),
both protopsaltae of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
It is the stichera aposticha for Pascha (Easter), in Mode I Plagal and done in 'syntomon' style.
The sound in the background is called 'ison' or 'isokratema'; it is basically the accompaniment that holds the base note of the
tetrachord in which the melos is working (similar to Latin, 'tenor').
This is an ancient chant that is found in a book called the Pentekostarion, which contains the chants for services spanning from
the Sunday of Pascha to the Sunday of All Saints.
Text: "A sacred Pascha hath been shown forth to us today; a new and holy Pascha, a mystic Pascha ..."
{full text}.
A central idea of Eastern Orthodox chant is that humans sing in imitation of the angels; often, the singer will try to depict the meaning of a sacred text by the manner of singing.
Many people automatically associate Orthodox worship with the rich choral
traditions of music that developed in Russia and the Ukraine. Georgian,
Serbian, Romanian and Bulgarian choirs also possess an extensive repertoire
of choral liturgical music. Greek and Arabic Byzantine churches, however,
have retained a very different style of monophonic chant, a tradition which
also lives on, side by side with the Slav choral tradition in many churches
in Romania and Bulgaria, and a closely related form of chant in Serbia.
This music is known as Psalmodia: it has common roots with Latin
plainchant and with the chant of the Syrian and Armenian churches.
It originates in the ancient musical traditions, both Jewish and Pagan,
of the Eastern Mediterranean. (Melling [1], p. 4)
In some cases, one can find in Orthodox chant remnants of the metrical schemes of classical Greek poetry. The early Roman Church apparently borrowed from Byzantine chant, as for instance, the Kyrie ("Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison.") consists entirely of Greek words, even though chanted in the Latin Mass. An exciting area of study, for which NEUMES transcriptions may be useful, is in tracing the connections that Orthdox chant and notation may have to ancient Hebrew practice on the one hand, and to Latin manuscripts of Western chant on the other. |
| Byzantine Neume Notation | ||||
The writers of early manuscripts are anonymous, but manuscripts written in the past two centuries typically usually are attributable to individual scribes. Audio Example 2.
"Cherubic Hymn" by Ioannes Kladas for the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom-Mode 1 (excerpt).
It was performed in Hagia Sophia Cathedral at Byzantium for festive Liturgies in the presence of the Emperor.
(Sung here by the Romeiko Ensemble, directed by Yorgos Bilalis.)
The musical notation from the middle of the 12th century and later, usually
called the Round or Middle Byzantine system, can be read with certainty in
its melodic structure and with very high probability in its rhythmical and
modal character .... But the Early Byzantine systems, though partially
expored are still a controversial subject. The Cloislin Notation (c.
1100-1160) is near enough to the Round system to allow of a tentative
transcription, from which it appears that the neumes do not yet express
the exact intervals, but only give a vague indication of the course of the
melody, which the singer had to learn from his master's lips. ...
What then are we to say about the older neumes of the 10th and 11th centuries?
[Wellesz and Höeg] both incline to view that the most archaic
(or Esphigmenian) neumes had no melodic content whatever, but only showed
the rhythm of an orally transmitted series of hymns.
(Tillyard [2], p. 223)
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Types of Eastern Orthodox Chant | ||||
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By contrast to the Western (Roman Catholic) Church, which evolved to have a unified language of
liturgy (i.e., Latin) and highly centralized authority in the Pope (normally at Rome, the See of St Peter), the Eastern
Orthodox Church
{def.}
retained what might be a more ancient structure of collegial sharing of authority and of the liturgy being conducted in the
local language. (Of course, the Catholic Church of today does encourage the liturgy in local languages.) Kontakion, Troparion, Exaposteilarion, and Vespers Sticheron or Doxastikon The "Troparion" and "Kontakion" are short, poetic chanted hymns that present the main theme of devotion for the day or the commemorated event on particular feasts. Every day and feast throughout the year has a troparion and a kontakion. A sticherarium is a collection of the Proper Hymns for the various holy days of the Church calendar. The Proper Hymns show remarkable uniformity of text, and clearly go back to a common original (Tillyard [3]). The Apolytikion and Kontakion troparia are used in all the daily hour services:
Audio Example 3.
Grand Petition, as sung by monks of
Visoki Decani Monastery (Serbia).
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| Troparion | ||
| The word troparion refers to a short, poetic hymn.
It is also known as the apolytikion or "dismissal hymn," which is the main troparion of the day.
"Troparia" is the plural of "troparion," and "apolytikia" is the plural of "apolytikion." On Sundays, the troparion apolytikia have as their themes the Resurrection of the Saviour Jesus Christ on the third day. There are eight resurrectional troparia, one for each of the eight modes of the Byzantine chant system. The Sunday troparia are dedicated to the Resurrection, because Sunday is the first day of the week, that is, the day when Christ rose from the tomb. Each mode has its own hymns, including its own apolytikion, kontakion and hypakoe troparia. 
Each day of the week has a unique commemoration, as reflected in the daily apolytikia or troparia.
Monday commemorates the incorporeal powers, that is, the angels.
Tuesday commemorates St John the Baptist and Forerunner, as the last of all the Old Testament prophets that
"pointed" to Christ.
Wednesday commemorates the betrayal of Christ to the High Priests.
Thursday commemorates the Apostles and their successors, the hierarchs.
Friday commemorates the Crucifixion of Christ.
Saturday commemorates All-saints, the Mother of God who is Theotokos and the first of all saints,
and the souls of all those who have passed from this world.There are two types of feasts in the Byzantine, Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar: the movable feasts; and the immovable feasts. The movable feasts are those that depend on the date of Pascha (Easter), which is different every year. These are contained in the liturgical books known as the "Compunctional Triodion" and the "Joyful [Charmosinon] Triodion," which today is referred to as the "Pentecostarion." The word "triodion" comes from the fact that the canons (another hymnographic form) contained in these books each has three odes. Hence: "tri" (from the Greek word for "three"); and "odion" (from the term "ode," meaning "canticle"). The immovable feasts are connected to fixed dates of the year. These are contained in the book known as the "menaion," or book of months. Therefore, since every day of the year has some type of saint (martyr, hierarch, righteous, apostle, etc.) or a feast-event (the Nativitiy of Christ, the birth of St John the Baptist, the birth of Mary Theodokos, etc.), each day has its own particular troparion. Audio Example 4.
"Christos Anesti" of the daily hour service for Easter Sunday.
Two versions are given here: (a) an excerpt of the Greek-language version; and (b) the Arabic version
of this hymn as sung by Christians in Lebanon. (The singer, Sister Keyouz, is a member of the Lebanese community of
the Order of the Sisters of Basil.) Full text: "Christ is risen; in his victorious death he has given life to the dead"
[translated in the CD liner notes].
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| Kontakion | ||
Romanus was the greatest of all Byzantine hymn-wrights, and his narrative-odes, or religious ballads,
have a fervor, simplicity, and power, of which later Greek hymnody shows little trace.
After the iconoclastic strife in the early seventh century, the liturgical books were altered by St. John of Damascus
or his followers and only the preludes of the odes of Romanus were left.
The original music consequently disappeared.
(Tillyard [3])
Today, only the 'koukoulion' and first 'oikos' are used, except for rare circumstances and in the much-beloved Akathist Hymn (which is used in the period of the Great Fast). For this reason the 'koukoulion' is now normally referred to as the kontakion hymn. |
