17. from earth to heaven: the changing musical soundscape ... · canadian composer r. murray...

17. From Earth to Heaven: The Changing Musical Soundscape of

Byzantine Liturgy!

Alexander Lingas

Introduction

The sound of human voices raised in song - in other words, that of people performing what most modern listeners grounded in Western culture would recognise as forms of unaccompanied (a cappella) music2 - was integral to

The completion of this article was made possible thanks to the gracious support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (for a year of research leave) and the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies of Princeton University (for a visiting research fellowship). The original lecturedemonstration on which this study is based was delivered with the musical aid of Spyridon Antonopoulos. All English translations of service texts, most of which have been published previously in liner notes to CD recordings by Cappella Romana, are by Archimandrite Ephrem Lash.

2 Since, as Bohlman has observed, approaches to the description of musical activity may be rooted in distinctive ontologies of music, we should note that the Byzantines spoke and wrote about singing in church in ways that differ subtly from those customary today. Unlike Muslims, who traditionally have excluded the recitation of the Koran (qirii'ah) from their definitions of music (musiqiilmiisiqi), Byzantine authors were not averse to describing Christian liturgical singing as 'f.!OVCJLK~'. Indeed, mousike (literally, something pertaining to the Muses) is but one of a host of terms and phrases derived from pagan Greek Antiquity found in Byzantine literature, including treatises of music theory in which the theoretical terminology of Ancient Greek music was resumed, as well as homilies and hymns, where such terms were often deployed for rhetorical effect. Nevertheless, one finds in Byzantine service rubrics and monastic literature a distinct technical vocabulary for ecclesiastical chanting that serves both to distinguish it from other forms of music making and to indicate its continuity with what might also be non-musical activities. Examples of such multivalent terms are the nouns psalmody (\)JaAf.!cpbl.a), ecphonesis (fxcj:>wvT]at<:;) and reading (itV£xyvwaLc;), as well as the verb to say (i\tynv). On the varieties of musical ontologies, see P.V. Bohlman, World Music:

A Very Short Introduction, Very Short Introductions 65 (Oxford and New York, 2002), pp. S-9;

From Experiencing Byzantirtm Copyright © 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

311

312 FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN

public worship in Byzantium. Celebrations in cathedrals, parochial churches and coenobitic monasteries of the eucharistic Divine Liturgy and the major daily offices of morning and evening prayer - that is, Orthros and Vespers -featured, at least in theory, nearly continuous singing.3 This was performed in alternation between groups of singers arranged into ecclesiastical and musical hierarchies, whose precise configuration in a particular place and time was governed by such variables as the liturgical occasion, the rite being served -for example, monastic or cathedral, of Constantinople or Jerusalem - and the financial and human resources that were locally available.

The full range of singers heard in Byzantine churches encompassed ordained soloists (including the higher clergy of deacons, priests and bishops), permanently resident choirs (in cathedrals generally consisting of ordained choristers who were members of the lower clergy, but functionally comparable to modern English lay clerks), various secondary ensembles (choirs of children, deaconesses and monastics), and entire congregations.4 At the top of this hierarchy were bishops and priests, who intoned blessings, the concluding doxologies of presidential prayers, and in some instances the prayers

and P.V. Bohlman, 'Ontologies of Music', in N. Cook and M. Everist (eds), Rethinking Mttsic (Oxford and New York, 1999), pp. 17-34. An overview of Byzantine musi cal terminology is R. Schlotterer, 'Der kirchenmusikalische Terminologie der gJ.iechischen Kirchenvater' (Ph. D. diss., Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat, MLinchen, 1953).

3 The amount of singing performed in minor daily offices or occasional services varied considerably according to the context. The lesser daily and seasonal offices of the rite of the Great Church of Hagia Sophia were musically similar to its major services in being sung throughout - hence, perhaps, the origin of the popular name of the Consta ntinopolitan

cathedral rite in later Byzantium: the 'Sung Office' (' ci<uf-liXHK~ exKoi\ouEJiiX'). The lesser homs of the Palestinian monastic rite of St Sabas, on the other hand, were constructed in such a way as to permit their celebration w ith little or no singing and, if so desired, in private (a practice actually mandated on some occasions by rubrics in monastic service books). The Office of Prepara tion for Holy Communion and other services of devotion or supplication that were not, strictly speaking, part of the daily cycle of offices could likewise be celebrated in private or in common with or without singing. For an overview of the minor hours of the Byzantine Divine Office, see C. Lutzka, Die Klei11e11 Horen des byzantinischen Stundengebetes tmd ihre geschichtliche Entwicklung, 2nd edn, Forum orthodoxe Theologie 7 (Berlin, 2010). The relative importance of music within the Constantinopolitan and Neo-Sabai'tic lih1rgical traditions is examined in A. Lingas, 'How Musical was the "Sung Office"? Some Observations on the Ethos of the Byzantine Cathedral Rite', in I. Moody and M. Takala-Rozsczenko (eds), The Traditions of Orthodox Music. Proceedings of the First Jntemationnl Conference on Orthodox Church Music, University of Joensuu, Finland 13- 19 June 2005 (Joensuu, 2007), pp. 217- 34.

For a comprehensive inventory of the mt1sical forces employed in the churches of Byzantium, see now E.C. Spyrakou, 01 xopoi lj!at\TriJv KetTci· Tl)v Bui;al'Hl' ll naprti)oal),

Institute of Byzantine Musicology Shtdies 14 (Athens, 2008). A compact but older survey is 'The Byzantine Choir', eh. 3 in N.K. Moran, Singers in Late Byzantine and Slavonic Painting, Byzantina Neerlandica 9 (Leiden, 1986), pp. 14-50.

ALEXANDER LINGAS 313

themselves.5 Deacons chanted litanies, the Gospel, and such commands as 'Let us attend' (TlQ6GXWfl€V', effectively 'Pay attention!') and 'Stand upright' (''OQ8ol').6 Among the lower clergy, solo cantors (for whom the generic term was ljJ6:ihm, that is 'psalmists') chanted melodically florid settings of hymns and psalm verses, whilst readers (avayvwa'tcu) cantillated Old Testament lessons. When not singing as soloists, these psaltai and anagnostai also served as members of choirs that performed choral versions of hymns and psalms. The doxologies, litanies and psalms of the higher clergy and professional singers were punctuated regularly with responses and refrains that were mostly brief and easily memorable. This facilitated their performance by larger and less skilled bodies of singers that, in some times and places, included the entire liturgical assembly (6 Aa6<;). Musical continuity in major public services was interrupted only occasionally for the reading of catechetical material (saints' lives, homilies and other patristic texts) and, in some versions of the Palestinian Divine Office, the non-festal recitation of the Psalter?

Given the almost seamless musicality of public worship in Byzantium, it is curious how rarely modern scholarly writing has taken account of its 'soundscape'. Taking this term in the broad sense given to it by its inventor, Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer, the soundscape of Byzantine worship

'Presidential' refers here to prayers usually cast in the first person plural that were recited on behalf of the entire assembly by a presiding priest or bishop. Originally these were performed aloud, but by the sixth century many of them were recited either silently or softly (f.!VOnKwc;) in a voice audible, if at all, only to nearby concelebrating clergy. Celebrants, however, have continued until modern times to sing the concluding doxologies of many presidential prayers. Labelled 'exclamations' (eK<)lwvi]aac;) already in the earliest surviving Euchology (Prayerbook) for the Constantinopolitan rite of the Great Church of Hagia Sophia (the late eighth-century MS Barberini gr. 336), these serve musically as cues for other singers, signalling when they should chant their 'Amen' and begin the next item in the liturgical sequence. From the perspective of an ordinary congregant, the reduction of the audible portion of what were often lengthy prayers to brief sung ecplwneseis could have only enhanced musical continuity in Byzantine services. The fading of most Byzantine prayers into inaudibility is documented in R.F. Taft, S.J., 'Was the Eucharistic Anaphora Recited Secretly or Aloud? The Ancient Tradition and What Became ofit', in R.R. Ervine (ed.), Worship Traditions in Armenia and the Neighboring Christian East: An International Symposium in Honor of the 40th Anniversary of St. Nersess Armenian Seminary (Crestwood, NY, and New Rochelle, NY, 2006), pp. 15-57. The Barberini Euchology has been published with commentary and Italian translation asS. Parenti and E. Velkovska (eds), L'Eucologio Barberini Gr. 336, 2nd edn, Bibliotheca 'Ephemerides liturgicae' Subsidia 80 (Roma, 2000).

6 In the absence of a deacon, a priest would sing most of these items himself. 7 Differences in the musical performance of the Psalter in the traditions of Constantinople

and Palestine are discussed in 0. Strunk, 'The Byzantine Office at Hagia Sophia', Essays on Music in the Byzantine World (New York, 1977), pp. 112-50, at pp. 130-31; and A. Lingas, 'Festal Cathedral Vespers in Late Byzantium', Orientalia Christiana Periodica 63 (1997), pp. 421-59, at pp. 445-7.


would have been its 'acoustic ecology', encompassing every intentional and circumstantial aspect of its sonic environment.8 As a matter of course it would have included all the variable and invariable elements of vocal performance in particular times and places: the acoustics of individual churches, the texts and musical forms contained in the psalmodic and hymnodic repertories of a given rite, and the number of available singers together with their levels of musical knowledge and skill. Furthermore, it would have embraced sonic elements that were incidental or otherwise not under the direct control of those responsible for planning and celebrating services: the ambient noise generated by crowds and nature as heard both inside churches and, during stational processions, in courtyards, monastic compounds and on city streets.9

In recent years it has also become common to employ the term' sounds cape' in a narrower way to denote primarily those aspects of an acoustic ecology that are the result of conscious human efforts at what Schafer calls 'acoustic design':

From the arts, particularly music, we will learn how man creates ideal

soundscapes for that other life, the life of the imagination and psychic

reflection. From these studies we will begin to lay the foundations of a new

discipline- acoustic design.10

Studies of these sorts of soundscapes in ethnomusicology, for example, typically proceed from the identification of the components of acoustic design -the performers, their instruments (if any), their music, and the context for its performance- to investigate how musical performance simultaneously shapes and reflects the belief systems of those who produce and consume it within a particular cultural setting.U

R. Murray Schafer, The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environ111ent and the Tuning of the World (Rochester, VT, 1994); originally published as The Tuning of the World (Toronto, 1977).

9 Bissera Pentcheva, without actually using the word 'soundscape', engages with its importance for Byzantine worship in her discus ion of th Hagia Sophla as an 'icon of sound: a space filled with human breath and the perfume of burning incense experienced as reverberating divine pmmmn in the gHLter of lh golden cupola and emidom ·s': see B. V. Pentcheva, The Sensunl Icon: Spncc, Ritunl, nnd tlw Senses in Byznutium (University Park, PA, 2010), pp. 45-56. Th importance of the sense of smell for the study of Byzantine religious practice was anticipated by S.A. Harvey, Scenting Snlval.ion: Ancient Orris/ in11ify oll(f/lleOlfnclory Imaginntion, The Joan Palevsky lmprint in Classical Literature 42 (Berkeley, CA, 2006). Recent tudies by Robert Taft approad1ing the study of Byzantine liturgy 'From the Bottom Up'

are replet with details about the sounds generated by (often unruly) congregations. For an overview, seeR. Taft, Thr·ouglr their Own Eyes: Liturgy n tile Byzmztirres Smu 11 (Berkeley, CA, 2006), pp. 4-16 and 29-120.

10 Schafer, The Soundscnpe, p. 4. 11 For example, K.K. Shelemay, Soundscnpes: Exploring Music inn Changing World (New

York and London, 2006).

.....


Despite major gaps in the documentary record and the complete absence of sound recordings from the middle ages, it i still possible for u to draw meaningful conclusions about the soundscape of Byzantine worship from those elements of its acoustic design that may b at least partially recovered. Where medieval churches survive, their acoustics may be measured and even duplicated electronically, as is currently b ing done, for example, by the Icon of Sound project at Stanford University.12 The sonic outlines of individual services may be traced from the sh.~dy o£ lihtrgical manuscripts by det rmining the order in which individual or vocal gr ups chanted their appointed texts from particular locations in the sacred topography of an ecd siastical complex or city. In some ea es it i possible to enrich th texture f these data with visual depictions of lih.1rgical singers. 13 Further testimony regarding the onic landscape of Byzantine Jih~rgy may be gleaned from scattered refer nces to chanting in hymns, homilies and hagiography.14

Yet perhaps the most neglected resoLLrce for understanding the soundscape of worship in Byzantium are the very ones that were con ciously created as literary tools of acoustic design: the hundreds f lih.1rgical manuscripts containjng forms of Byzantine musical notation that urviv &om the ninth century onwards.15 E entiaUy two types of notation were used in middle and

12 B.V. Pentcheva, Icons of Sound: Aesthetics and Acoustics of Hagia Sophia, Istanbul, at http:/ /iconsofsound.stanford.edu (accessed 07 /12/12).

13 For numerous examples of this approach, see Moran, Singers. 14 The hymns of St Romanos the Melodist, for example, have been to shown to

contain valuable information about the original contexts for their performance at popular vigils in Late Antique Constantinople: J. Grosdidier de Matons, 'Liturgie et Hymnographie: Kontakion et Canon', Dumbarton Oaks Papers 34/35 (1980), pp. 31--43, at pp. 37--42. Numerous intentional and incidental aspects of Byzantine liturgical soundscapes are addressed in Taft, Through their Own Eyes.

15 The earliest manuscripts containing forms of notation recognised by modern scholars as ' Byzantine' were copied within a few decades of the earliest musically notated documents of Latin plainchant. Ln both cases, the appearance of musical notation i separat·cd by over i hundred year from our . ingle example of a Christian hymn with Anci nt Greek musical

notation, the papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1786, the alphabetic notation of which is unrelated to either By1..antine or Latin neumes. l11e significance of a few, mostly fragmentary, sources from the seventh to ninth centuries containing what appear to be non- or ' proto'-Byzantine musical notations is unclear and, at all events, most singers learning to chant presumably relied exclusively on oral means of transmis ion. On the possible use of musical notation in Byzantium prior to the nin'th century, see l. Papatha11asiou and N. Boukas, ' Byzantine Notation in the Eighth-Tenth Centuries: On Oral and Written Transmission of Early 'Byzantine 01ant', Cnlliers de l'luslitut drr Moyen-A~e grec et lnliu 73 (2002), pp. 3-12; and E. Gert man, npolln61Lllle ClllO,\I!IILWl/11/JIIIllllllllCK()li .Aty.Jl>IKII/ 'nre Lost Ceuluries oflJyz.nutine Mu ic, tr. S. Buko (St Petersbmg, 2001). 111 xyrhynchu hymn is given an exhaustive treatment in C..J-1. Cosgrove, Au Ancient Christinu T-Jymu willr M11sicnl Notntiou: Pnpyrus OX)J''Irynchus 1786. Taxtnnd Comme11tnry, Studien und le te zu Antike ltnd d1i'istentum 65 (Tiibingen, 2011).


late Byz<~ntium: a ystem of -called 'ekphonetic' sign (n umes) employed by readers for the cantillation of scriptural pericopes that is found in Lectionaries, and families of 'melodic' n umes recording the hymns and psalms chanted by oloists and choirs. Originally both typ s f notations were adiast matic: incapable of encoding with pr cision a sequence of melodic intervals, they relayed information about the performance of musical figures that still had to be learned by ear.

Whereas Byzantine lectionary notation remained me! dically ambiguous until it fell out of use in the fourteenth c ntury, the intervallically imprecise '01artres' and 'Coislin' systems of melodi notati.on gave way during the later twelfth century to a fully diastematic 'Middle Byzantine' or 'Round' notation.16

AI though i.t left s me aspects of p rformance practice- in particular, rhythmic subdivi ion of the basic beat, chromaticism, ornamentation, vocal timbre and the r alisahon of ornaments - largely within the realm of oral tradition, Middle Byzantine notation proved to be a powerful tool and remained in use until the ear ly nineteenth century, wb nit was transformed into the so-called 'New Method' of n umatic notation employed in modern churches. During the middle ages, Byzantine melodic neumes facilitated the consolidation and dissemination of m.or or less standa.rdi ed r p rtories of hymns and melodically florid psalms. From th thirteenth century onwards, cantors cultivating distinctly personal tyle of comp siti.on also employed it to create n w d1ants of unprecedented length and complexity. 17

Knowledge of Byzantine n umatic notations thus potentially enables a s holar to recover information about mu ical design in Byzantine liturgy, the amount and quality of which will depend on both the availability of notated sources and the extent to which the form of notation used depended on oral tiadition foi its realisation. In this regard, the onic implications of e phonetic notation have proven particularly resistant t analysis, a! though in recent tud ie Sandra Martani has shown thatit is still possible to draw meaningful conclusions

16 On lectiona(y notation, see S.G. Engberg, 'Greek Ekphonetic Notation. "llle Oassical and thePre-Cia. sicaiSystems', in C. Troelsgllrdand G. Wolfram(ed ), PalaeobyznutiueNotalions 11: Acl11 of the Cottgress 1-leld nl 1-/emeu. Cnstle, The Netlzarlmufs, in October 1996 (Hernen, 1999),

pp. 33-55. A compact survey of early Byu mtine melodic notations is C. J11oros, lnt-roductionlo Early Medieval Nolatiou (with an llluslmled Clwpter on Cheironomy by Nei/ K. Mornn), enlarged 2nd edn, tr. N.K. Moran, Detroit Monographs in Musicology 45 (Warren, M!, 2005). The Middle Byzantine system of notation and the major issues surrounding its transcription are treated compreheJlsively in . Troelsga:rd, Byzantine Neumes: A New Introdu ction to the Middle 8yznntine M11sicnl Notation, Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae Subsidia 9 (Copenhagen, 2010).

17 Tile consequence of the shift to dia tematic notation in Byzantium are discussed inK. Levy, 'Le "Tournant D~cisif" darlS l'hisloire de la musique Byzantine 1071- 1261', XV' Congre lutemalional d'et11des l;yzmtlhws, \lot. 1 (Athens, 1979), pp. 473-80. Regarding the continuing importance of oral tradition and the degree to whlch notated sources served as repositories of 'paradigmatic' renderings of melodies, see C. Troelsgard, 'Musical Notation and Oral Transmission of Byzantine Chant', Classica et MedinevalinSO (1999), pp. 249-57.


about the musical rendering of text from Byzantine lectionaries.18 Manuscripts with Middle Byzantine notation, on the other hand, offer comparatively full melodic profiles of theit· chants that may serve as a basis for study or, more controversially, transcription and modern performa:nce. 19 Congruities between Middle Byzantine notation and its forbears have also enabl d m.odern cholars to use it as a tool for deciphering, at lea t in part, melodies recorded in some earlier non-diastematic 'Palaeo-Byzantine' notation .20

Hitherto most scholarly discussions of medieval Byzantine melodies, in harmony with the disciplinary norms of musicology during the latter half of the twentieth century, have been examinations of their musical form and style analysing such elements as their vocal range, modality, quantities of notes per syllable, and use of stereotypical melodic formulasY Yet much of this same information may serve reflection on sonic or performative aspects of chants, revealing ways in which their musical design may have contributed to the contours of worship as experienced in Byzantium. Jmgen Raasted showed how this might be done on a small scale in a series of pioneering

18 S. Martani, 'Words and Music in the Greek Gospel Lectionaries', in N.-M. Wanek (ed.), Psa/tike: Neue Studien zur Byzantinischen Musik. Festschrift for Gerda Wolfram, Praesens Byzantinistik (Vienna, 2011), pp. 219-31; S.G. Engberg, 'Ekphonetic Chant: The Oral Tradition and the Manuscripts', Jahrbuch der Osterreichischen Byzantinistik 32.7 (1982), pp. 41-7. Two studies that also take into account the wih1ess of received oral traditions of cantillation in the Byzantine rite are A.T. Vourles, D Tporwc; avayvwaewc;-hcf>wvljcJEwc; 'CWV aywypacf>L1<0V avayvWOf.llXTWV (Athens, 2004); and A.E. Alygizakes, ''H EK<j:>WVTJ'UKTJ ljJou\nKij 7tQU~'J· 'l:Ct "Xii}la" Kai 'l:Gt "£x<j:>wvwc;" avayvwovam', in G.T. Stathis (ed.), eewpia Kal Dpal;l) Tljc; li'aAnKTj<; Ti:xvl)c; . npaxnxa A' navEAAI)Viov L.vveopiov li'altn1<1)c; TEXVI]c; (A81)va, 3-5 NOEflf3piov 2000) (Athens, 2001), pp. 89-140.

19 The fullness of these melodic profiles has been debated extensively over the last century. Some scholars and practitioners of received traditions of Byzantine singing have argued on the basis of post-Byzantine sources that Middle Byzantine notation was fundamentally stenographic in its use, with written groups of signs ervi·ng as a form of shorthand for often lengthy melodic formulas learned by ear. Most other scholars, however, have concluded that medieval neumations of chants were essentially self-sufficient with regard to their melodic shape and length, an interpretation that will be followed in this present study. About these controversies over the interpretation and transcription of medieval Byzantine chant, see Troelsgard, Byzantine Neumes, pp. 35--40; and A. Lingas, 'Performance Practice and the Politics of Transcribing Byzantine Chant', Acta Musicne Byzantinae 6 (2003),

pp. 56-76. 20 Floras, Introduction to Early Medieval Notation, pp. 17-71. 21 Recent examples of such approaches are LL Av1:wv[ov, Mopcf>otl.oyia Tryc;

Bv(avnvryc; Movatxryc; 'E1<KA1)ataCJTL1<1)c; MovQL1<1)c; (Thessalonica, 2008); and most of the contributions to G. Stathis (ed.), 8Ewpia xat npa~17 Tryc; li'at\.'l:t1<7)c; TExvl)c;: Ta yE:vT] Kat Ta ELOI) Tryc; Bv(avnvryc; Meltorwiac;. npaKTLKa B' Llte8vovc; r:vveopiov MouaLKOt\oyLKOV Kal li'atl. TL1<oii: A81)va, 15-19 01<Twf3piov 2003 (Athens, 2006). On the tendency towards formalism in musicology during the twentieth century, see J. Kerman, Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology (Cambridge, MA, 1985).


examinations of text-music relationships.22 Somewhat more broadly based are investigations by Moran and Schi0dt of the musical roles played by eunuchs in Byzantine liturgy, 23 or the historical treatment of the eucharistic anaphora by GiannopoulosY Only a few studies, however, have begun to exploit the significant advances made over the last few decades in our knowledge of medieval Byzantine chant in order to address in detail questions of musical design at the levels of whole services or even entire r.ites.25

Building on the work of Raasted and his successors, in the remainder of this study I shall consider some ways in which acoustic design contributed to the soundscapes of worship in the liturgical rites of Constantinople and Palestine. In particular, I shall look at how particular musical forms and styles were applied in these regional traditions to their respective versions of the Christian cycle of daily prayer, what is known in Greek as the 'AKo;\ou8[a wu vux8TJf1EQOU' and to Western scholars as the 'Divine Office' or 'Liturgy of the Hours'. Although differing in detail, the Divine Offices of the imperial capital and the Holy City shared with other urban rites of the Late Antique

22 J. Raasted, 'Some Reflections on Byzantine Musical Style', in M.M. Velimirovic (ed.),

Studies in Eastern Clwnt, Vol. 1 (Oxford, 1966), pp. 57-66, at pp. 57-6; J. Raasted, 'Byzantine

Liturgical Music and its Meaning for the Byzantine Worshipper', in R.C. Morris (ed.),

Church and People in Byzantium, Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies: Twentieth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Manchester, 1986 (Birmingham, 1986), pp. 49-57; J. Raasted,

'Compositional Devices in Byzantine Chant', Cnhiers de l'Institut du Moyen-Age grec et Iatin 59

(1989), pp. 247-70; and J. Raasted, 'Length and Festivity: On Some Prolongation Techniques

in Byzantine Chant', in E.L. Lillie and N.H. Petersen (eds), Liturgy and the Arts in the Middle Ages: Studies in Honour of C. Clifford Flanigan (Copenhagen, 1996), pp. 75-84. A brief but

systematic discussion of musical style in the major genres of medieval Byzantine chant is Troelsgard, Byzantine Neumes, pp. 76-90.

23 Especially N. Moran, 'Byzantine Castrati', Plainsong and Medieval Music 11 (2002), pp.

99-112; and N. Schiodt, 'From Byzantium to Italy: Castrato Singers from the 4th to the 20th Centuries', in Wanek (ed.), Psaltike, pp. 301-11. T11ese studies and other studies of Byzantine

eunuch cantors should now be read in the light of the cautionary remarks of C. Troelsgard,

'When Did the Practice of Eunuch Singers in Byzantine Chant Begin? Some Notes on the

Interpretations of the Early Sources', in Wanek (ed.), Psaltike, pp. 345-50. 24 E.S. Giam1opoulos, 'Ol0f1VOL'n1c; Ay[ac; AvacpoQO:c;. Avai:lQOflTJ cno ITCXQEA8ov Kat

cndlj!nc; yLO: ·n1v lj!a;\flwi:l(a flE acpoQ~LTJ TCx ;\cy6f1CVa "AELTOUQYLKct'", H ~l(l!lTLIO) Tt";(VIl.

!l6yoc; KCYi fti"!loc; cJTI} ;\cnpcia Tljc; 6pl366oC,t}c; i"tcK;tl]rriLYc; (Thessalonica, 2004), pp. 49-63. 25 On the Divine Liturgy, for example, see G. Stathis, ''H lj!cx;\nKll i:KcjJQacrq TOU

MucrTqQLOU ·n1c; 8dac; EuxaQLCJTLac;', T6 Ml!CJTt)pw Tt)c; BEictc; EvxapLinim:;· npaKTUCCY r navu\At)viou ilEITDvpyucov I:vpnoaiov (Athens, 2004), pp. 253-75. Extended comparative discussions of musical form and liturgical function in Byzantine cathedral and monastic

rites are to be found in D.K. Balageorgos, H !f!ailTLKI) napci:i5oo1) TOD Bu~avnvoD Koof/LKOV

Tvm tcov, Institute of Byzantine Musicology, Studies 6 (Athens, 2001); and Spyrakou, Oi xopoi

!f!a!lTCiJV. See also my 'Sunday Matins in the Byzantine Cathedral Rite: Music and Liturgy' (Ph.D. diss., University of British Columbia, 1996), an updated and expanded version of which is forthcoming from Ashgate.


examination of text- music relationship .22 Somewhat more broadly based are investigations by Moran and Sch.i0dt of the musical roles played by eunud1s in Byzantin liturgy,23 or the historical treatment of the uchru-istic anaphora by Giannopou1os.24 Only a f w studies, how ver, hav begun to exploit the significant advances made over the last f w decad s in our knowled e of mectieval Byzantine chant in order to address in detail questions of musical design at the 1 vels of whole services or ven entire rites.25

Building on the work of Raasted and his successors, in the remainder of this study 1 shall consider some ways in which acoustic de ign contribut d to the soundscapes of worship in the liturgical rite of Constantinople and Palestine. In particular, 1 shall look at how particular mu ical forms and tyle were applied in these regional traditions to th ir resp ctive versions of the Christian cycle of daily prayer, what is known in Greek a. the 'AKoAou8ia 'tOU vux.Sllfl QOU' and to Western scholars as the 'Divine Office' or 'Liturgy of the Hours'. Although differing in detail, the Divine Offices of the imperial capital and th Holy City shared with other urban rites of the Late Antique

22 J. Raasted, 'Some Reflections on Byzantine Musical Style', in M.M. Velimirovic (ed.), Studies in Eastem Chant, Vol. 1 (Oxford, 1966), pp. 57-66, at pp. 57- 6; J. Raasted, 'Byzantine Liturgical Music and its Meaning for the Byzantine Worshipper', in R.C. Morris (ed .), Church and People in Byzantium, Society for the Promotion of Byzan tine Studies: Twentieth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Manchester, 1986 (Birmingham, 1986), pp. 49-57; J. Raasted, 'Compositional Devices in Byzantine Chan t', Cnhiers de l'lnstitu t du Moyen-Age grec et Iatin 59 (1989), pp. 247-70; and J. Raasted, 'Length and Festivity: On Some Prolongation Techniques in Byzantine Chant', in E.L. Lillie and N.H. Petersen (eds), Liturgy and the Arts iu the Middle Ages: Studies in Honour of C. Clifford Flanigan (Copenhagen, 1996), pp. 75-84. A brief but systematic discussion of musical style in the major genres of medieval Byzantine chant is Troelsgard, Byzantine Neumes, pp. 76- 90.

23 Especially N . Moran, 'Byzantine Cast1·ati ', Pla insong and Medieval Music 11 (2002), pp. 99-112; and N . Schiedt, 'From Byzantium to ltaly: Castrato Singers from the 4th to the 20th Centuries', in Wanek ( ed. ), Psaltike, pp. 301-11. These st-udies and other studies of Byzantine eunuch cantors should now be read in the light of the cautionary remarks of C. Troelsgard, 'When Did the Practice of Eunuch Singers in Byzantine Chant Begin? Some Notes on the Interpretations of the Early Sources', in Wanek (ed.), Psaltike, pp. 345- 50.

24 E.S. Giannopoulos, 'Oi 0pvoL 'n]:; Al•[ac; AvacpoQiXc:. AvaDQOflll cYctl rrnQcA86v lWL

aKit\Juc; y La ·n1v t\JaApwo[n pc acpoQp ~ <a Acy6p£vn "AnTOl!QYLKa'", 'H J/ICr;\HJo) Tl:·xv'l· Jl6yos- wi !tEAos- CJ TI) ;\cnpcio: TJjc; 6pG66o/;Jjc; t'KK!\J]cJim;; (Thessalonica, 2004), pp. 49-63.

2o On the Divine Liturgy, for example, see G. Sta this, "H t\JnAnKil EKcj:>Qnaq TOU

Muanwlou T~c; E>clac; EuxaQlG'l:LC<c;', To MvaTI)(lW TJ/c; EltiLtc; Evxo:(lWTiac;· n(lCIKTl!CiY f' naV[ /L!LI]Viov il cLTOV(l)ILKOV L:vpnoaiov (Athens, 2004), pp. 253-75. Extended comparative discussions of musical form and liturgical function in Byzantine cathedral and monastic rites are to be found in D.K. Balagcorgos, 'H tflaAnK il n:aeaooar1 Tov Bvl;avnvov Koap11cov

Tvn rKou, lnstihtte of Byzantine Musicology, Studies 6 (Athens, 2001 ); and Spyrakou, Oi xopoi tfla.\Tr,il'. See also my 'Sunday Matins in the Byzantine Cathedral Rite: Music and Li turgy' (Ph.D. diss., University of British Columbia, 1996), an updated and expanded version of which is fo rthcoming from Ashgate.


Mediterranean a common basis in the antiphonal and responsorial chanting of biblical psalms and canticles.26 From the times of their emergence the psalmodic cores of each rite began to be elaborated in ways that were in part adaptations to local circumstances, as well as markers of shifts in liturgical or artistic sensibilities. Since a comprehensive historical treatment of music in these services could easily fill several volumes, I shall limit my discussion of each rite to a survey of their most conspicuous features and a brief examination of the evening office of vespers as it was celebrated on feast days.

The Sung Office of the Great Church

Distinctive features of the liturgical soundscape of Late Antique Constantinople stemmed from its topography, the ecclesiastical architecture of its major churches, and the lavish musical establishments that were attached to them. The urban landscape became especially important during the archiepiscopacy of St John Chrysostom, when Orthodox and Arians processed through the streets of the city in competing processions, their participants singing psalms with refrains advancing their theological positions.27 These processions, as Baldovin has shown, left indelible marks on Constantinopolitan worship by forming the basis for an elaborate stational liturgy uniting the city's major churches and public sites into a single sacred topography.28 In addition, stational elements came to be incorporated into all the services of the rite of the Great Church of Hagia Sophia even on days when worshippers did not venture beyond the confines of their own church complex. These elements are best known from the ceremonial entrances of the three Constantinopolitan eucharistic liturgies celebrated in the modern Byzantine rite, namely the Divine Liturgies attributed to St Basil and St John Chrysostom, and the Lenten Divine Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts. Processions were also integral to the major morning and evening services of the Divine Office of Hagia Sophia, a cycle of

26 An overview of the basic types of Late Antique psalmody and their fate in Byzantine Christianity is R.r. Taft, S.J ., 'Chri lian Liturgical Psalmody: Origins, Development, Decompo ilion, Collapse', in H.W. Attridge and M.E. Fa sler (eds), Psalms in Commrmily: jewi lr nrrd Cilrislinn Textual, Lilurgicn/, and Artistic Tmdilio11S, Society of 'Biblical Literature sympo ium eries (Atlanta, GA, 2003), pp. 7-32. On lhe spread of psalmody from desert a cetics to urban congregations, see). Mcl.<innon, 'De ert Mona ticism and the Later Fourthcentury Psalmodic Movement', Music & Letters 75 (1994), pp. 505-21.

27 The descriptions of these event by the church historians Socrates and Sozomen are provided in English tra.nslation with commentary in J.W. McK!nnon (ed.), Music in Early Orristimr Literature, Cambridge Readings in the Literature of Music (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 101-02 (#218) and 104 (#223).

28 J.F. Baldovin, The Urban Character of Christian Worship: The Origins, Develapment, and Meaning of Stational Liturgy, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 228 (Rome, 1987), pp. 167-226.


daily prayer originally known as '6 EKKi\llaLCXO'Illc;' but cited by late Byzantine authors as the 'qof1Ct'ILK~ cbwi\ou8(cx' or 'Sung Office' .29 Imperial patronage aided the erection of churches designed to accommodate the movements of clergy and congregants in the evolving local rite, a process that climaxed with the Justinianic cathedral of Hagia Sophia.30

The architecture of Hagia Sophia today serves as a tangible monument to the apogee of what Taft has called the 'Imperial Phase' of Constantinopolitan liturgy, but some sense of its equally magnificent sonic scale may also be discerned from textual sources. In AD 612 Herakleios issued a novella assigning a total of 525 clergy to Hagia Sophia and its three dependent churches.31 At least 415 of these clergy - namely the 80 priests, 150 deacons, 160 readers and 25 cantors enumerated by Herakleios - exercised a liturgical ministry that potentially involved singing.32 The cantors constituted an elite vocal ensemble from which would emerge soloists, some (or in certain periods and places perhaps even a majority) of whom were high-voiced eunuchs.33 As a group they were divided into a pair of semi-choruses that alternated weekly in their

29 S. Parenti, 'The Cathedral Rite of Constantinople: Evolution of a Local Tradition', Orientalia Christinna Periodica 77 (2011), pp. 449-69, at pp. 451-4.

30 The classic treatment is T.F. Mathews, The Early Churches ofConstantirwple: Architecture and Liturgy (University Park, PA, 1971). For preli minary remarks on experiencing chant in the acoustics of Hagia Sophia, see Pentcheva, The Sensual Icon, pp. 52-5. Technica l details regarding the acoustic properties of the monument are addressed in CA. Weitze, J.H. Rindel, CL. Christensen and A.C Gade, 'The Acoustical History of Hagia Sophia Revived through Computer Simulation', ODEON Room Acoustics Software, at http://www.odeon.dk/pdf/ ForumAcousticum2002.pdf (accessed 24/07/10).

31 Novella I in J. Konidaris, 'Die Novellen des Kaisers Herakleios', in D. Simon (ed.), Fo11 tes Minores V, Forschungen zu r byzantinischen Rechtsgeschichte 8 (Frankfurt am Main, 1982), pp. 62-72 and 94-100.

32 Taft has argued that the singing 'myrrh bearers' observed by a Russian pilgrim during his visit to Hagia Sophia in 1200 AD were in fact deaconesses. Adding the 40 deaconesses in Novella I to the list of musical personnel brings the total number of clerical singers under Herakleios to 455. Furthermore, based in part on the late (fifteenth-century) witness of Symeon of Thessalonica to Constantinopolitan cathedral liturgy (n[pt ,YEipOTOVLWV, J.P. Migne, Patrologin Grneca 155, cols 365-69), Spyrakou has concluded that the subdeacons, whose number was set at 170 by Herakleios, acted musically as readers when they were not performing their unique duties as assistants to the celebrants. See R.F. Taft, 'Women at Church in Byzantium: Where, When- And Why?', Du mbarton Oaks Pape rs 52 (1998), pp. 27-87, at pp. 67- 8; and Spyrakou, Oi xopoi tJ!cu\TcZJv, pp. 165-6.

33 The twelfth-century canonist Balsam on reports that eunuchs dominated the ranks of soloists in his day, but the degree to which this was generally true in Byzantium during the centuries that preceded 1204 (after the Fourth Crusade references to eunuch singers become extremely rare) is far from certain. Maximalist and minimalist assessments of the prevalence of cnstmti are, respectively, Moran, 'Byzantine Castrati'; and Troelsgard, 'When Did the Practice of Eunuch Singers' .


precedence and were often directed by deacons.34 The cantors also provided leadership for the larger corps of readers, who followed their div ision into two groups and a system of weekly alternation. Readers, although confirmed in their ministry with the same prayer employed in the ordination (XELQ08£cr(a)

of cantors, nevertheless occupied a lower place in the musical hierarchy, performing simpler choral chants and leading the congregations in the singing of refrains.35 Choirs of monks, nuns and orphan children added further sonic diversity to worship in the great urban churches of Byzantium. Communities of monks (ciCTKT]'t~QLct) stationed permanently near Hagia Sophia regularly assisted the secular clergy of the Great Church with the task of maintaining a full roster of services at the cathedral, whereas other vocal ensembles seem to have appeared occasionally to enhance the splendour of major solemnities.36

To fill out our outline of the soundscape of Constantinopolitan cathedral liturgy, we must now consider the music actually sung in its services. Nearly all of the surviving manuscripts containing texts sung in the rite of Hagia Sophia postdate the traumas of Iconoclasm, whilst those featuring diastematic Middle Byzantine notation are later stili.37 Indeed, the only musically notated sources for the ordinary two-week cycle of psalmody sung at the vespers and matins in the Sung Office are a pair of codices from late Byzantine Thessalonica: Athens EBE 2062 (late fourteenth century) and Athens EBE 2061 (first quarter of the fifteenth century).38 Products of the twilight of Byzantium, these

34 It is known from his vita that the great sixth-century Constantinopolitan poetcomposer Romanos the Melodist was a deacon. Only in the past few years, however, have scholars revealed the extent to which deacons played important musical roles in Late Antique worship, especially in the rites of Old and New Rome. See Spyrakou, Oi xopoi l)!aATwv, pp. 203-11; and 'Deacons as Readers and Psalmists in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries', eh. 7 in C. Page, The Christian West and Its Singers: The First Thousand Years (New Haven, CT, and London, 2010), pp. 155-71.

~5 Spyrakou, 0 /,ropo! ljicckrr4J ll, pp. 117- 24; ond Moran, Si11gers, pp. 15- 16. 36 Spyrakou, 01 xopoi ljlfiATcDv, pp. 178-203. Regarding the musica l training and

liturgical contributions of children at the Orphanotropheion said lo have been founded by St Zotikos in late fourU1- or early fifth-century Constantinople, see T.S. Miller, The Orpha11s of Byza11ti11m: Olild Welfnre ill tile Christia11 Empire (Washington, D.C., 2003), pp. 209--46. Musica l parallels beh¥een Old <J.nd New Rom are explored in Page, ?1u! Cl~ristian West and Its Singers, Chapter 12 'Schooling Singe•· in Rome', pp. 243-59.

37 ·n1e earliest surviving servic book for the rite of the Great Church is the eighthcentury Euchologion MS Barberini 336 cited above: Parenti and Velkovska (eds), L'Eucologio Barberini Gr. 336. Extant source for musical practice in the Constantinopolitan cathedral rite are surveyed in my 'Sunday Matins', pp. 48-61 .

38 The texts of the cyd •s of cathedral psa lmody in Athens 2061 and Athens 2062 have been edited in KL Georgiou, ''"H ef31iopabu::dcx tXVTl<jx<IVLK~ Kll'rGWOJ.lli '((~V ljlcu\~IWV KCXl

Tc71v cjll>Wv Eh; Tit~ l\LirpaTtKc.'t~ Al<o.-\ou9tL'(C: eo1tEQLVOV Kal Q9Qou. 'EAArJVIKOL MouatKOi K~nw; 2061-2062 'EOvLKii Bt~AtoO•j•<:•J~ fJT]VWv' (l)h.D. diss., Pontifical Oriental In titute, 1976). Overviews of !:heir music are Strunk, 'The Byzant·ine Office', pp. 112-50; and


manuscripts were copied at a time when the Sung Office was regularly served only in Thessalonica, it having been relegated elsewhere to occasional festal use.39 Despite all of this, many of the musical setting in thes TI1essalonian codices faithfully preserve archaic patterns of ca ll and respon e that had been established a millennium ago to faci litate congregational participation in Late Antiquity. Some of these antiphonal form explicitly r quire the participation of a cathedral's full range of singing personnel: celebrants, deacons, elite choirs together with their soloists, and choirs of readers that at times either lead or stand in for the congregation. Musically elaborate re ponsorial chants such as prokeimena, ettings for which first appear with Middle Byzantine notation in manu cdpts of the late twelfth and thirteenth centurie , genera lly employ only one or two classe of participants, namely solo psnltai and choristers.40 Additional musical textur was provided by cl1.ang s of mode, vocal register or timbre, and variation in the rate of interchange between spatially separated singer , from vigorou in litanies and feria! antiphons from th Con tantinopolitan Psalter to glacia l in rnelismatic responsorial chants.

Progression through the weekly and yearly liturgical cycles for the rite f the Gr at Church reveals addi tional layers of acoustic design that inv sted ead1 gathering for worship with a unique aural topography maJ·ked by peaks and valleys of vocal range, onic density, musical complexity, ru1d chru1ges of acoustical environment. Rubrics record variations in the identity and number of singers (including the participation of gue t en embles of orphru1s or monastics), as well as in their patterns of deployment to locations both inside and outside of churches. Each one of th.ese alterations to the means of musicaJ

Balageorgos, 'H tf!aATLKIJ rrapa6oa7J, pp. 292-335. For additional details about the contents and dating of these manuscripts, see Lingas, 'Sunday Matins', pp. 211-16; and Balageorgos, H tf!arl'wo) rrapa6oatj, pp. 187-93.

39 Symeon, Archbishop of Thessalonica from 1416 or 1417 until his death in 1429,

reports that his Thessalonian cathedral of Hagia Sophia was the last church to maintain daily celebration of the Sung Office, its performance elsewhere having been limited to the performance of asmatic vespers in the Great Church of Constantinople on the eves of three feasts: the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (14 September), St John Chrysostom (13 November), and the Dormition of the Mother of God: De sa era precatione, Migne, Patrologia Graeca 155, cols 553-56; English translation in Symeon of Thessalonike, Treatise on Prayer: An Explanation of the Services Conducted in the Orthodox Church, tr. H.L.N. Simmons, The Archbishop Iakovos Library of Ecclesiastical and Historical Sources 9 (Brookline, MA, 1984), pp. 21-2. Yet the transmission of asmatic festal vespers in late Byzantine musical manuscripts indicates, as I have shown elsewhere ('Festal Cathedral Vespers', pp. 428-48), that this service was more widely performed in Paleologan Byzantium both on feasts and Saturday evenings.

40 TI1e complete repertory of melodies from twelfth- and thirteenth-century manuscripts has been edited in G. Hintze, Oas byzanlinische Prolceimena-Reperloire Untersuclnmget7 und kritische Edition, Hamburger Beitrage zur Musikwissenschaft 9 (Hamburg, 1973). See also S. Harris, 'The Byzantine Prokeimena', Plainsong nnd Medieval Music 3 (1994), pp. 133-47.


production, which included the propagation of sound in particular acoustical environments, in some way reshaped the soundscape of worship.

Despite regularly noting the assignment of chants to a particular mode of the Octoechos, only rarely do rubrics for services of the Great Church contain qualitative or technical musical terms, so it is primarily notated chantbooks that enable us to discern how changes of musical style related to the daily, weekly and seasonal rhythms of Byzantine cathedral worship. Where custom endowed a psalmodic text of the Sw1g Office with multiple melodies, their relative solemnity may fruitfully be charted along a pectrum marking the relative prominence of their text or music. Placing th se melodies at their appropriate points between the spectrum's xtreroes f unmodulated speech and wordless singing, we find that festal chants tend to be both longer and musically more varied in melodic contour than their ferial counterparts. The same procedure may be applied cumulatively to the musical content of entire services, leading one to the complementary conclusion that festal services were generally invested with greater musical sophistication.

How this worked in practice may be seen from the outline of the festal asmatic vespers in Table 17.1. This service differed tructmally from its ferial weekday counterpart mainly in i.ts omission of th addjtional variable antiphon U1at wer customarily sung between U1e first and final antiph ns of its opening ect:ion, and in the inclusion of chanted readings from the Old Te tament at its end. For their celebration both the festal and fe.rlal versions of Constantinopolitan cathedral vespers required th participatiOl1 of representative of th higher clergy,. a double-choir of cantor led by soloists, and complementary choirs of readers. Wh rea the Prokeimenon was assigned only to the most accompli h d singers of the elite ch.oir f psalfai, Table 17.2 shows how the invariable openjng antiphon of the service incorporated all singers present. Although soloists drawn from the psaltai and high r clergy began and ended the anti ph n, th bu lk of its biblical text was delivered by the choirs empl ying a stereotyped melodic formula ('psalm-tone'), each iteration of which wa punctuated by a bri.ef refrain. In performance this hierarchically ordered alternation of ingers and melodic styles would have yielded a soundscape characterised by sonic, musical and spatial variety.

Table 17.1 Musical styles in the chants of festal vespers celebrated according to the rite of the Great Church of Hagia Sophia (the Sung or Asmatic Office)

Sung Item Lesser Feasts Saturdays and Comments Greater Feasts

First A n tiphon (Psalm 85) • A soloist chants musically florid introductions As on lesser feasts, With the exception of settings before the final petition of the deacon and after the but generally set in of the Kneeling Vespers of ecphonesis of the celebrant a more elaborate Pentecost transmitted in South . The stichologia: the two choirs of cantors perform musical idiom and/or Italian copies of the Psaltikon, alternate verses of the main body of the psalm us- different mode the choral psalmody of asmatic ing a syllabic musical formula (psalm tone). Vespers is found only in psalmodic . The appropriate choir of readers punctuates each anthologies (Akolouthiai) of the 14th verse with a brief syllabic refrain and 15th centuries.

• Florid solo coda Final Antiphon (Teleutaion) • Florid solo introductions as in the First Antiphon As on lesser feasts, but . The cantorial choirs employ a syllabic psalm tone set in a more elaborate

for the stichologia, which is often abbreviated. musical idiom and/or . Each psalm verse is followed by a moderately different mode florid refrain ('Alleluia')

Ps. 140 with Kekragarion . Florid solo introduction As on lesser feasts, but and Entrance' . Syllabic choral psalm tone set in a more elaborate . Syllabic 'Kekragarion' (poetic refrain of one or two musical idiom and/or

sentences) different mode . Solo verse at the Entrance . Syllabic choral psalmody resumes . [In some late sources: stichera from the Palestinian rite] . Florid solo coda

Sung Item Lesser Feasts Saturdays and Comments Greater Feasts

Prokeimenon Melismatic responsorial psalmody led by a soloist As on lesser feasts The initial refrain and its verses are from the ambo. notated in the Psaltikon. A more

elaborate final choral refrain (doche) is transmitted for some chants in the Asmatikon.

First 'Little' Antiphon: Syllabic refrains (Neumatic in some MSS) Neumatic refrains Ps 114 wl refrain 'At the

I prayers oj_the Mother of God'

Second 'Little' A ntiphon: Syllabic (Neumatic in some MSS) Neumatic refrains MSS provide only incipits of the Ps. 115 wl refrain '0 Son with syllabic troparia

of God' +2 troparia ('Only- concluding troparia begotten Son' and 'Let us sing the praise of the most g lorious Mother of God')

Third 'Little' Antiphon: Syllabic (Melismatic in some MSS) + a florid solo coda . Florid solo intro- Trisagion replaced by 'Christ has Ps. 116 + Trisagion ducti on risen' for Paschal Vespers

• Melismatic re-frains

• Florid solo in-traduction to the final refrain

OT Readings Sung w/ lectionary notation Sung from lectionary From the Prophetologion notation

Concluding Hymns Syllabic, with some exceptions Syllabic, with some (A polytikia) exceptions

Table 17.2 Outline of the invariable opening psalm of Asmatic Vespers

1. Litany of Peace

'0 L'..LaKovoc;. 'Ev clQrjVr:J, mu KUQLOU bcT]8Wf.1EV. Deacon: In peace, let us pray to the Lord.

'0 Aa6c;. KuQLE, i-AET]O"OV. People: Lord, have mercy.

'0 1'-..LaKOVOc;. 'YTIEQ 'fie; avw8EV dQrjVT]C: Kal 'fie; <J"W"[T]QLCXC: "[WV <)!uxwv Deacon: For the peace from on high and for the salvation of our souls, let

TJf.lWV, mu KUQLOU bET]8Wf.1EV. us pray to the Lord.

'0 Aa6c;. KuQLE, £AET]O"OV. People: Lord, have mercy . .. . ...

K"[,\ . Etc. . .. ...

'0 1'-..liiKovoc;. 'Av,u\ai3ou, awaov, i-AET]aov Kal bLa~vAai:,ov iJf.lac;, 6 Deacon: Help us, save us, have mercy on us, and keep us, 0 God, by your

8c6c;, 'lJ 0"1] xaQm. grace.

2. Antiphon Solo Intonation #1

'0 1'-..of.lEO"nKoc;. Kal ionaKoua6v f.lOV" b6i:,a am, 6 8c6c;. The Choir Leader: And hear me. Glory to you, 0 God.

3. Conclusion of the Litany, Prayer and Ecphonesis '0 1'-..LaKOVOc;. Tfic; ITavaylac;, axQaVmV, UTI£QEUAOYT]f.1EVT]C:, £vb6i:,ou, Deacon: Commemorating our all-holy, pure, most blessed and glorious

1'-..cO"TIOLVT]C: TJ f.lWV 8EQ"[OKOU Kal itanaQ8£vou MaQlac;, f.lf"[Ct naV"[WV Lady, Mother of God and Ever-Virgin Mary, with all the Saints, let

"[WV aylwv f.1VT]f.10VEUO"fXV"[Ec;, Eaumuc; Kal aMrjJ..ouc; Kalmxaav "[TJV us entrust ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ our

i:;wi]v TJ f.lWV XQL<J""[0 ' c}l 8c0 naQa8Wf.1E8a. God.

'0 Aa6c;. L:ol, KuQLL People: To you, 0 Lord.

EYXH ANTicpONOY A' o 'IEQEvc; [f.luanKwc;J. KuQlE olK,lQf.lov Kal £Mfif.lov ...

PRAYER OF THE FIRST ANTIPHON

'EK~WVT]O"lc;· "On TIQETIEL O"Ol naaa b6i:,a, nf.liJ KiXl TIQOO"KUVT]O"lC:, "[W Priest [softly]: 0 Lord, compassionate and merciful. ..

rra,Ql KiXl '[0 Yl0 Kal '[0 Aylc,u IlvcUf.lCXn, vuv Kal ad Kal clc; muc: Aloud: For to you belong all glory, honour and worship, to the Father, the

alwvac; '[WV alwvwv. Son and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever, and to the ages of ages.

4. Antiphon Solo Intonation #2

'0 1'-..of.lEO"nKoc;. 'Af.lrjv. KALvov, KvQLE, '[6 ouc; aou, Kal i':naKoua6v f.lou· The Choir Leader: Amen. Incline your ear, Lord, and hear me. Glory to b6i:,a am, 6 8c6c;. you, 0 God.

5. Antiphon Stichologia

Ol XOQOl iovaMc\:1:,. The choirs alternately. '0 A'xoQ6c; TWV <jJaA'[WV· KAivov, KDQlc, '[Q ouc; O"OU, Kal i':naKOUO"OV Cantors Choir #1: Incline your ear, Lord, and hear me.

f.lOU" '0 A' XOQOC: '[WV avayvW<J"'[WV· L'..6i:,a O"Ol, 6 8c6c;. Readers Choir #1: Glory to you, 0 God.

'0 B'xoQOC: '[WV <jJiXA'[WV· 'On mwxoc; KiXl m'vllc; cLf.ll ioyw· Cantors Choir #2: For I am poor and in penury. . ' ' -~ B' XOQOC: '[WV avayvWO"TWV. L'..6E,a O"Ol, 6 8c6c;. Readers Choir #2: Glory to you, 0 God. 0 A_ XOQOC:. '[WV ~~'[WV· ~vJ..aE,ov '[TJV <)!uxrjv f.lOU, on om6c; cLf.ll" Cantors Choir #1: Preserve my soul, for I am holy. Save your servant my

awaov mv bouJ..ov aov, o 8c6c; f.lOU, '[QV 1-J..nli:;ov'[a 1-nl a{ God, who hopes in you. ' '0 A' XOQOC: '[WV avayvWO"'[WV·. L'..6E,a O"Ol, 6 8c6c;.

... Readers Choir #1: Glory to you, 0 God . K'[J... .. .

... Etc . ...

6. Antiphon Solo Coda

Kal6 1'-..0f.lEO"nKoc; TIEQLO"cn'Jv. The Choir Leader. L'..6E,a am, 6 8c6c;· b6E,a am, 6 8c6c;· b6E,a am, 6 8£6c;. Glory to you, 0 God. Glory to you, 0 God. Glory to you, 0 God.


Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Byzantine manuscripts with music for festal cathedral vespers reveal that on commemorations of the Mother of God and other saints~ a level of solemnity they designate with the generic rubric 'de; 'mai]f-!ouc; EOQTCcc;' ('for notable feasts') - the psalmodic antiphons sung during the first half o£ the service were sung in syllabic or mildly decorated melodic styles.4' Diverging only slightly from th styli tk norms of their ferial counterparts in the we kday offices of th Constantin politan cathedral rite, these antiphon feature choral melodies that remain g nerally obe.r and utili.tarian (charact ristically, sol passages are of greater mel die interest) . Versions of cathedral vespers for solemnities of Christ in the same sources, on the other hand, tend to endow their antiphons with chants that are musically more substantial, melodically distinctive and challenging for their singers to perform. This difference in musical style may be glimpsed in Example 17.1, which contrasts three settings from a late Byzantine manuscript of the choral refrain for Psalm 85, the invariable opening psalm of asmatic vespers: (a) a shmningly unimaginative version in Mode Plagal 2 for the feasts of ai:nts; (b) a melody in Model for Easter; and c) a setting in Mode Plagal4 ascrib d variously to the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (14 September) and ordinary Saturdays, the latter f which have a paschal theme du to their po ition on the ve of the Sunday commemoration of the Resurrection of Christ.

The tendency within th Constantinopoli.tan cathedJ·al rite to manifest heightened solemnity on great feasts with more elaborate mu ic is perhap expressed most strikingly in notated setting of the asmatic Kne ling Vespers of Penteco t (gonyklesia) that are h~ansmitted in South rtalian manuscripts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.42 Copied for use in Stoudite monasteries of Magna Graecia that extraordinarily celebrated vespers according to the rite of the Great Church each Pentecost, these settings represent the most technically sophisticated vocal traditions cultivated at the Great Church of Hagia Sophia prior to 1204.43 Their music for Psalm 18 ('The heavens declare the glory of

41 I analyse these settings in 'Festal Cathedral Vespers', pp. 421- 59. 42 Overviews of these musical settings are D. Conomos, 'Music for the Evening Office

on Whitsunday', Actes de XV' Cougrcs International d'Etudes Byznntines (Athens, 1979), pp. 453-69; and S. Harris, 'The Byzantine Office of the Genuflexion', Music and Letters 77 (1996),

pp. 333-47. 43 These traditions are preserved in three musical collections - the Asmatikon, the

Psaltikon and the Asm a ~that survive mainly in South Italian copies. The Asmatikon contains the elaborate choral chants performed in the rite of the Great Church by elite choirs of cantors, whilst the music for their soloists is included in the Psaltikon. The Asma is a collection of florid chants that are stylistic forerunners of the kalophonic repertories of Paleologan Byzantium. For an overview of these collections, see A Doned a, 'I manoscritti liturgicomusicali bizantini: Tipologie e organizzazione', in A. Escobar (ed.), El pnlimpsesto grecolatino COlllO fen 6mwo librario y textunl, Colecci6n Aetas. Filologia (Zaragoza, 2006), pp. 1 03-10; as well as the detailed inventories in P.B. Di Salvo, 'Gli asmata nella musica bi zantina ', Bollettino de/In Bndin Gmn di Grottnjerrn tn XIII, XIV ( 1959-60), pp. 45- 50, 127-45 [XI!Jj and 45-78 [XIV]; P.B.


Example 17.1 Choral refrains for Psalm 85 from MS Athens EBE 2061

(~ • • • • • a 11 /l6 ~a <JOt, 6 8E- 6~.

Example 17.1a For the Feasts of Saints (fol. 50r)

(~ Z??' t"" • 8 •77• ;; . • • t2 11 116- ~a O'Ot 6 ®E- - 6c;. --

Example 17.1b For Easter Sunday (fol. 48r)

(~ • • • • 11

11 6.6- ~a O'Ol, 6 ee- 6c;.

Example 17.1c For Saturday Evenings (and the Exaltation of the Holy Cross) (fol. 21r)

God'), the final variable antiphon (Teleutaion antipltono11) of Penteco t vespers, is particularly remarkable f r its florid melodic t:yle, monumental seal and hybrid formal construction. An utline of the musical setting in an appendix t the Psaltikon Florence Ashburnhame.nsis 64, a manuscript copied at the monastery of Grottaferrata near Rome in the year 1289, is shown in Tabl 17.3.44

Di Salvo, 'Asrnatikon', Bollettino della Badia Greca di Grottaferrata XVI (1962), pp. 135-58; and C. Thodberg, Der byzantinische Alleluiarionzyklus: Studien im kurzen Psaltikonstil, Monurnenta Musicae Byzantinae Subsidia (Copenhague, 1966), pp. 9-31.

44 Fols 259r-264v. This manuscript has been published in facsimile as C. Hoeg (ed.), Cor1tacarium Ashburnhamense: Codex Bib/. Laurentianae Ashburnhamensis 64 phototypice depictus, Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae 4 (Copenhagen, 1956). Conomos offers a slightly different analysis of this chant in 'WhHsunday', pp. 459-69.

Table 17.3 The final Antiphon ('Teleutaion') prior to the Lamplighting Psalms as sung at the asmatic Kneeling Vespers of Pentecost according to the Psaltikon MS Florence Ashburnhamensis 64. With additional rubrics from the Euchologion MS Grottaferrata r.~. 35 (GROT) and the Typikon of San Salvatore di Messina MS Mess. gr. 115 (MES)*

Liturgical Unit Musical Style Vocal Musical Form Greek Text with Intonations and Translation and Additional Rubrics Range Asmatic Letters from MS Ashb. 64 (Intonations and asmatic letters omitted)

(relative pitch)

1. Continuation of Improvised '0 LlLaKovo~.' AvnAa~oiJ, CJWCJOV, EAET]CJOV Deacon: Help us, save us, have mercy Small Litany cantillation Kal bLa<jH)Aal;ov iJflli~, 6 Elc6~, ~1'] cr1'] on us, and keep us, 0 God, by your

X6:QLH. grace.

2. Antiphon Solo Melismatic chant d-e' '0 LlOflECJnKo~. Ncavcvavw. The Choir Leader: Intonation #1 A Ti]v olKOD!lE-vc•VcVEVTJYYTJV. Avay·ia· The Universe.

c-b B Axaoua xaoua· AEXEOUEyyE- EVaVE VEVE· Alleluia. EAouvou·ia· Avay'ia.

d-e' c Ai\Ac:vctVCVEOU£• VEVctVEAOUHX· ayya. Alleluia Ncavc~:

e-d' D(ab) Avayyaa aovavavaova· avavaovavavaova. (NEavc:c;)** Alleluia

g-e' AvaAAcxwuyyc: cvcxcvcouEouc·Aouvou·layya.

3. Conclusion of the Improvised '0 LlL6:Kovo~. Tf]c; Tiavaylac; .. . XQLCJ~'fl ~0 Deacon: Commemorating .. to Christ Litany, Prayer and cantillation and El£0 TWQa8WflC8a. our God. Ecphonesis congregational '0 Aa6~ . l.:ol, KDQL£. People: To you, 0 Lord.

response '0 '!cQEDt; ... . vuv Kala cl Kal EL<; roue; Priest .. . now and for ever, and to the aiWvac: rrWv aiWvwv. ages of ages.

A' '0 LlOflECJTLKO~ . ['Aflr'JV.] The Choir Leader: Amen. 4. Antiphon Solo Melismatic chant

d-d' NcavE~. The heavens declare the glory of God Intonation #2 ~ Ps Ol ouQavol btTJYOiivtat b6E,av Elwu.

18:la A:vay'ia.

Axaoua xaoua AAcxwu<yyE cvavE .VEVE Alleluia GROT and MES: The c-b B'

choir of psaltai enters cAouvou'iayya.

at 'i'lLT]youv~at' (Ntxw:vf!C.) The firmament proclaims the work of TiolT]CJLV b£ XELQWV mhou itvayy£An ~6 d-b A"

S. Antiphon a<fQtwvwvw~tayya. A vaykt his hands. Stichologia

AAAcvavcvc:ouc· vc:vavc· AoUvou'la. Alleluia. d c' c d-b A"' (Ncxwvc~) . 'HflEQa u'] TlflEQ<;t EQcDyc~at Day to day produces speech and night

Qi)fla Kal vu[ VUK~L £ivayy£Aa to night proclaims knowledge.

y \'WvW\I")VW<1lY)'lV. N W:V£<;.

e-d' D(a'b')' Avaova avavaoua avavaoua Alleluia. (Nmvc~.)

g-e' avaAA£XCOUc EVEXEVCOUE XCOU£ AoUvou·lvLa

d-e' A"" (Ncxmvcc;). OuK clcrl AaALal, oui'l£ There are no sayings or words in which

A6yoL, Wv oUxL itKoUovTal al cpwval their voices are not heard.:

ava.mWY)'wv. Avay'ia.

B" Axaoua xaoua Atxcou<yyc cvav£ vc Alleluia c-b

Aouvouia. (N~x~av£c;).

d-e' A'"" El~ n cwav ~~v yf]v £1;T]A8tv 6 Their sound has gone out into all the

cp86yyoc; au~wv, Kal de; ~(x 1IEQa~a earth, and their words to the ends of

~i]s olKouflEVTJ~ ~ix Qr']flam the world:.

a vQVllVIJ.Vc.t\IT<OJyyW\1.

C" AAAcvavtvcouc- vcvavc Aouvoviv~a. Alleluia. db

d-e' A'"" (Ncxmvc~.) 'Ev ~0 r'JAL'fl i'8no ~6 He has pitched his tent in the sun; and

CJKrjVWfla au~OU, Kal at'nO~ W<; VUflcjlLOt; he is like a bridegroom who comes

fK7IOQCU6!J.EVoc;; Ex naarroD itvavaVrroiJ. out of his marriage chamber.

(Nt avtc;.J

e-d' D(a" b" )" Avaouavavaoua·avavaoua Alleluia. (Ncavt<;)

g-<e' AvaAcxwvE cv<xwuc xcouc Aouvou'cvLayya.

(Sa . Optional (c--<e') (ABCD(ab))' Eha anxoi\uyetTCtl n) Enli\oLTIOV TOll And then the stichologia of the rest of the continuation of tj;aAflOU psalm is performed [or, in MES and the Stichologia) [MES (~GROT): GROT: And he performs as many verses

Kai Myu cnixou~ ocrou~ 81'Au.] as he wishes.]

6. Doxology and Coda d-e' A"'"'' (Ncxwvcc.) !1M,a TiaTQl, Kai ric~, Kal Glory to the Father and to the Son and Ay t4J TivEU)-!avavauyyL to the Holy Spirit.

c-b B"' Axaoua xaoua c\:AAcxwucyye cvavc Alleluia . vcvc:vc:i\oUvou·Layy a .

d-e' A"''''' (Ncxwvcs.) Kal vuv, Kal d, 1cal Both now and ever and Els: ToU c; o:ic0vac T~JV a.LcJvcvv. to the ages of ages. Amen.

AvavavavaflT\rrfJV. Avo:y'La.

d-e' C'" Ai\i\c:va.vavcouc: c:vcvavc: Alleluia, i\o0vou·lvLVLvL£xyya

Ncavcc .

e-d' D(a'" b"')' " A vavcwvavavaova avavaova Neavec Alleluia.

g--<e' AvaAAcxcoueyyc EVEXEVEOUE xmue Aouvou'l£Xyya .

H0eg (ed .), Contacarium Ashbumhamense, fols 259r-64v; 0. Strunk (ed.), Specimina notationum antiquiorum: Folia selecta ex variis codicibus saec, x, xi, & xii phototypice depicta, Monumenta musicae Byzantinae 7 (Copenhagen, 1966), plates 38-42; and M. Arranz, Le Typicon du monastere du Saint-Sauveur a Messine: Codex Messinensis gr. 115, Orientalia Christian a Analecta 185 (Rome, 1969), p. 279.

Intonations in parentheses are indicated in the manuscript by martyriai (intonation signs).


In this festal Teleutaion the standard format for Constantinopolitan antiphonal psalm dy serves as a framework for a cycle of modified repetitions of a equence of three AUeluias -each of which has been extended through the

interpolation of additi nal yllables, a styli tic trait d1aracteristic of melismatic eh ral chants in the repertories of the Great Church - that is heard without interruption only once as the conclusion to the first solo intonation. This threefold Alleluia is constructed in three distinct musical segments, the third of which (D) is divided into two parts (a and b) that together are roughly equal in length to the fir t two segments combined (Band C). When sung in sequenc (BCD(ab}), the Alleluia execute a gradual ascent in vocal register (te itura) to a cadence a sixth above their starting pitch. When the antiphon resumes after the diaconal litany, its econd intonation is elided both mtJSicaJ'Iy and textually into the stichologia of the psalm, where the components of the triple Alleluia appear separately with minor melodic variations as refrains to successive verses. Psalm verses following the second solo intonation begin with a traditional choral psalm-ton , but substitute the ne t florid Alleluia in the sequence for the customary simple choral refrain. At the end of every third refrain the music reache a onic and registral limax, after which the melodic ascent begins anew with further melodic variations.

Before moving on to Palestinian traditions, it is worth pausing here briefly to consider how listeners whose musical and temporal expectations had been shaped by the daily psalmody of the Constantinopolitan athedral rite might have perceived this extraordinary antiphon for Pentecost vespers, which lasts nearly thirty-five minutes on a recent recording by Cappella R mana.45 On ferial occasions, as we have noted above, antiphons sung during th opening section of Sung Vesper (and, incidentally, Sung Orthros as well) consisted mainly of a highly repetitive stichologin in whid1 the choirs altemated in rendering verses syllabically to a imple mu ical formula that led always to the same (and u ually brief) refrain. Congregants familiar with ordinary asmatic antiphonal psalmody who attended Pentecost vesper would have had their stylistic e pectations initially satisfied when they h ard a oloist begin the Teleutaion's fir t intonation at the usual point in the diaconal litany, but might well have experienced some disorientation as the music continued to unfold and ascend in tessitura over the approximately six minutes required for its performance.

45 Cappella Romana, Byzantium in Rome: Medieval Byzantine Chant from Grottaferrata, dir. Ioannis Arvanitis and A. Lingas (Cappella Romana 403-2CD, 2007), Disc 2. Although the manuscript offers the option of repeating music to achieve a complete rendition of the psalm in the stichologia, the recording features only the notated six verses actually provided with musical notation. Ioannis Arvanitis edited the music for modern performance without recourse to the traditions of 'long exegesis' employed by Greek cantors during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which would have produced a musical work at least quadruple in length.


Yet it was only once listeners were well into the antiphon's stichologia that they would have begun to apprehend its unusually expansive sonic and temporal proportions. Although each psalm verse after the second intonation was rendered musically with a traditional syllabic psalm-tone, it was dwarfed in scale by the Alleluia appended to it. The normal function of a stichologia -that of efficiently conveying the bulk of a psalmic text in a musically repetitive (and therefore, arguably, affectively unobtrusive) manner- was not so much ignored as overshadowed by the goal of offering extravagant praise to God. This purpose would, of course, have been inherent to any antiphon that featured 'alleluia' as a refrain due to the literal meaning of the word, but here in the Teleutaion it was being pursued through primarily musical means. One sign of this was the way in which 'alleluia' was brought to the edge of intelligibility with ecstatic melismata and the intercalation of so-called 'asmatic' letters. Another was the presence in the antiphon of elements of musical design that operated independently of its psalmic text: the unusual formal construction of the first solo intonation, its division into a cycle of three Alleluias during the stichologia, the repeated slow ascent in tessitura, and the melodic variations that distinguished each cycle of Alleluias as being in some way unique.

Byzantine liturgical commentaries unfortunately do not explicitly deal with matters of musical form and style, but it seems reasonable to assume that the reactions of listeners to this Pentecost antiphon would have been shaped by what Metropolitan Kallistos Ware calls the 'dominant "model"' of liturgical interpretation in Byzantium: an anagogical vision in which earthly worship is seen as an icon of heaven through which human beings participate in the perpetual angelic ministry of praise.46 Bearing this in mind, it is not hard for one to see the elaborate music of the Teleutaion as an attempt to depict in sound the notion that 'The heavens are telling the glory of God' with music that is more angelic than human in form and scale. Reflections of the interpenetration of heavenly and earthly worship in this antiphon may be discerned not only in such obvious features as the periodic suspension of normal speech, but also in its combination of cyclical and teleological formal devices. The three Alleluias ascend melodically to a particular goal, the achievement of which brings about a repetition of their sequence accompanied by melodic variations. A limit is placed on their potentially endless repetition by the text of Psalm 18, the doxology of which is interwoven with the final modified recapitulation of the refrains.

46 Bishop [now Metropolitan] Kallistos of Diokleia, 'The Meaning of the Divine Liturgy

for the Byzantine Worshipper', in Morris (ed.), Church and People in Byzantium, pp. 8-11.

General introductions to the origins and importance of anagogical vision within Byzantine

liturgy arc J.A. McCuckin, Standing in God's Holy Fire: The Byzantine Tradition, Traditions of

Christian Spirituality Series (London, 2001), pp. 23-32 and 131-49; and R.F. Taft, S.J., 'The Liturgy of the Great Church: An Initial Synthesis of Structure and Interpretation on the Eve

of Iconoclasm', Dumbarton Oaks Papers 34-35 (1980-81), pp. 45-75, at pp. 59-62.


The Palestinian Divine Office in Middle and Late Byzantium

The catechetical homilies of St Cyril of Jerusalem (d. 386) and the diary of the Spanish pilgrim Egeria show that by the end of the fourth century A.D. the Holy City of Jerusalem had developed its own distinct system of public worship.47 At its centre was the great cathedral of the Anastasis constructed by Constantine I, which served as hub for a stationalliturgy that recalled events in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus through the performance of prayers, readings and psalmody at sites associated with those events. Monasticism flowered during the same era both in Jerusalem itself and in the Palestinian deserts that surrounded it, with the Great Lavra of St Sabas soon emerging as the preeminent extramural community.48 Whereas some ascetics cultivated musically austere forms of prayer and worship, others embraced to varying degrees the popular and melodious psalmodic practices of the cathedral. The monks and nuns (monazontes and parthenae) that Egeria witnessed chanting at the Anastasis were forerunners of the Spoudaioi, a resident community of monastics that, like the asketeria of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, contributed to the cycles of cathedralliturgy.49

Despite the upheavals and losses of imperial control brought about by the Persian and Arab conquests of the seventh century, Jerusalem retained and further developed its own system of cathedral worship throughout the first millennium and in so doing profoundly influenced other liturgical traditions, including those of Constantinople, Rome, Armenia and Georgia. 5°

47 Compact surveys of the sources and forms of early Hagiopolite liturgy are J.F. Baldovin, Liturgy in Ancient Jerusalem, Alcuin/GROW liturgical study 9 (Bramcote, Nottingham, 1989); and S. Verhelst, 'The Liturgy of Jerusalem in the Byzantine Period', in 0. Limor and G.G. Stroumsa (eds), Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land: From the Origins to the Latin Kingdoms, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 5 (Turnhout, 2006), pp. 421-62. See also the explanatory essays and commentary in J. Wilkinson, Egeria's Travels, 3rd edn (Warminster, 1999).

48 On these monasteries, see Y. Hirschfeld, 'The Monasteries of Palestine in the Byzantine Period', in Limor and Stroumsa (eds), Christians and Christianity in the Holy Land, pp. 401-19.

49 Their establishment is briefly described by J. Patrich, Sabas, Leader of Palestinian Monasticism: A Comparative Study in Eastern Monasticism, Fourth to Seventh Centuries, Dumbarton Oaks Studies 32 (Washington, D.C., 1995), p. 5. On their contribution to cathedral psalmody in the centuries after Egeria, see J.-M. Garrigues, 'Les carach~ristiques du monachisme basilica! (Ve-VIIIe siecle)', in J.-M. Garrigues and J. Legrez (eds), Moines dans l'assembll!e des fideles a l'epoque des Peres, IVe-VIIIe siecle (Paris, 1992), pp. 151-221, at pp. 166-8.

50 Armenians and Georgians adopted the urban rite of Jerusalem with only fairly minor structural modifications, leading to the survival in their languages of Palestinian liturgical sources representing stages of development for which evidence in the original Greek is fragmentary or non-existent. It is from the Georgian sources in particular that the nature and extent of influence of Hagiopolite worship on the liturgical practice of the Late Antique


Whilst a detailed account of the dissemination of Hagiopolite liturgical forms is beyond the scope of this study, it is worth noting two musical innovations that profoundly altered the soundscape of Byzantine worship.

Like the Great Church of Hagia Sophia, the cathedral of the Anastasis possessed a Divine Office rooted in biblical psalmody. The scriptural core of Hagiopolite worship was expressed in the Palestinian Psalter (which differed from that of Hagia Sophia in its shorter verses and division not into antiphons, but kathismata and doxai), the fixed psalms and canticles of the Book of the Hours (Horologion), and seasonally appropriate psalmodic chants attached to the temporal cycles of its Jectionaries.51 Whereas, as we have already seen, the Sung Office of Constantinople continued to provide its worshippers with a fairly strict diet of biblical psalmody, the musical repertories of Jerusalem were transformed at an early stage by a movement to adorn its psalms and canticles with ever-increasing quantities of newly composed hymns that served not only as vehicles of praise, supplication and thanksgiving, but also of scriptural exegesis and catechism. The development of hymnody moved in parallel with the adoption in Jerusalem of a system of eight musical modes (the Octoechos), the first signs of which Froyshov discerns in the fifth (or perhaps even as early as the later fourth) century. 52 The Octoechos provided Palestinian churches with a shared vocabulary of scales and melodic formulas to be exploited by cantors and composers, as well as a principle of liturgical organisation manifested most prominently in the establishment of an eight-week cycle of Sundays on which one of the modes would predominate.53 An initial

and early medieval Greek East and Latin West are now being revealed. Key studies of these patterns of influence include C. Renoux, 'De Jerusalem en Armenie. L'heritage liturgique de l'Eglise armeniem1e', in T. Hu mmel, K. Hi.ntlian and U. Carmesund (eds), Patterns of the Past, Prospects for the Future: The Christian Heritage in the Hol y Lmtd (London, J 999), pp. 114-23;

S.S.R. Fwyshov, 'The Geo1·gian Witness to the Jerusalem Lihugy: New Sources and Studies', in B. Groen, S. Hawkes-Teeples and S. Alexopoulos (eds), Inquiries into Eastern Cltristin11 Worship: Selected Papers of the Second Interna tional Congress of the Society of Oriental Liturgies, Rome, 17-21 September 2008, Eastern Christian Shtdies 12 (Leuven, 2012), pp. 227-67; and P. Jeffery, 'Rome and Jerusalem: From Oral Tradition to Written Repertory in Two Ancient Liturgical Centers', in G.M. Boone (ed.), Essays on Medieval Music: Inl-lonor ofDavid G. 1-l11ghes (Cambridge, MA, 1995), pp. 207-47.

51 See C.R. Parpulov, 'Toward a History of Byzantine Psalters' (Ph .D. diss., University of Chicago, 2004), pp. 11- ·12 (on the Palestinian Psalter); and Fmyshov, 'The Georgian Witness', pp. 244- 56 (Horologia and lectionaries).

52 S.R. FnJyshov, 'The Early Development of the Lihngical Ei ght-Mode System in Jerusalem', St Vladinzir's Theologicn/ Quarterly 51 (2007), pp. 139-78.

53 Regarding the musical aspects of the early Octoechos and the dissemination of the eight-mode system to Syriac, Latin, Byzantine and Slavic traditions of chant, seeP. Jeffcry, 'The Earliest Okt6echoi: The Role of Jerusalem and Palestine in the Beginnings of Modal Ordering', in P. Jeffery (ed .), The Study of Medieval Chant: Paths nnd Bridges, East and West. In


synth i of these deveJ pment is pr served in the 'An ient Iadgari', a Georgian translation of a l st ixtb- entury Greek hymnal that include a m dally ordered gr up of eight ets of Sunday hymns eel brating the resurr ction of Christ.54

Christian efforts to regroup following the Per ian ack of jerusal m in 614 brought Palestinian cathedral and monastic traditions into even closer alignment, adding n w mom ntum to the proces of musically and textually enriching Pal tinian Uturgy. The out tanding early (igure in this second wave of liturgical creativity was Pab"iarch Sophronio (d. 63 ), a bishop with mona tic formation who contributions to Hagiopolite worship includ h milies, prayer and hymns with original melodies (idiomela) .55 Among the latter are chants for the services of Great Friday, Christmas and Theophany that are still used today in the Byzantine rite (alb it with newer melodies).

S phronios proved to b the first of many of eponymous 'melodists' (po t-compo ers) associated with the church of Jerusalem, the list of which includes Andr w of Crete (d. 720), John of Damascus (d. 749) and Ko ma of Ma·iouma (d. 787). Their hymns w r · incorporated during the eighth century int a r vised hymnal for the H ly Oty that in the original Greek bore the generic tit! 'Trop Jogion', th er wning glory f which were the complex str phic poem known today as kanons.56 For insertion betwe n th verses of the canticle or ' odes' of Pal stinian morn ing prayer (up to the full set of nine might be appointed on a given day), the Anci nt ladgari had only provided heterogeneou coJJections of thematically appropriate hymns comparable to those till u ed in th modern Byzantin rit for Lauds

Honor of Kenneth Levy (Woodbridge, 2001), pp. 147-209. Jeffery's discussion of the emergence of the Octoechos in Hagiopolite liturgy should be read in the light of Fmyshov, 'The Early Development', pp. 164-9.

54 French translation and commentary in C. Renoux, Les hymnes de la Resurrection: I. Hymnographie liturgique georgienne. Introduction, traduction et annotation des textes du Sinai" 18, Sources Liturgiques 3 (Paris, 2000).

55 A summary of his life and works is C. v. Schi:inborn, Sophrone de ft'rusalem: Vie monasitque et confession dogmatique, Theologie historique 20 (Paris, 1972), pp. 53-117. Regarding the conflicting attributions for the Royal Hours of Great Friday, see S. Janeras, Le Vendredi-Saint dans la tradition liturgique byzantine: Structure et histoire de ses offices, Studia Anselmiana 19; Analecta Liturgica 13 (Rome, 1988), pp. 250-59.

56 The surviving Georgian sources of the Tropolo ion (th 'N w fadgari') and the fragmentary counterparts of their Greek originals discovered among th New Finds of Sinai are surveyed in Fmyshov, 'The Georgian Witness', pp. 237-40; and R. Krivko, ' HnafiCKO

cAaBi!HCKHe fHMHorpaqm:'leCKHe rrapaAlleAH', Bec/IIHI/K npa110C.\Il6110l 0 CtiJI/110-TU.\"0/IOOCKOZO zy.\1aHumapHozo yHuBepcumema. CepuJI 3: ClJu,\OAOlliJI l (200 ), pp. 56-102. Kr(\•ko (pp. 73-4) observes that the appellation Kavwv was originally a Palestinian ·ynonym for ' · rvice'

('c\:JwAou8ia'), which explains why both terms are attached to th hymnographic g•nre in early sources.


and the Lamplighting Psalms. 57 With the advent of the kanon, however, a single author assumed the ta k of writing and perbap compo ing music for a single multi- ection po m in which each de wa suppli d with a et of hymn ('troparia') that were m tricaUy and mel dically identical to a mod I stanza ('heirm '). Th beirm i could be either originally composed .for that kan n (as wa usuaJ on gr at feas ts), or borrowed from the extant rep rtory of m del tun s. Listeners to the performanc of a kanon would hew · been oblivious to acrostics formed by the initia l I tters of it troparia, but they would have discerned as marks of tmity th developm nt f a single topic in its te t and th us of a ingl m de - and, according to Arvanitis, dupl meb·e58 - in it musi . At th same time, they would hav be n c nscious of th variety created by the equence of biblical canticles, the efforts of the po t to echo the scriptural language of each ode's host anticl , the use f multiple tunes, and shjfts between pitch and stress

accent as heim1oi wer applied to successive tropru:ia.59

57 The nine canticles (odes) of Palestinian orthros are: (1) Exodus 15:1-19; (2) Deuteronomy 32:1 - 43; (3) 1 Kings (~I Samuel) 2:1 - 10; (4) Habakkuk 3:1-19; (5) Isaiah 26:9- 20; (6) )onah 2:3-10; (7) Danie\3:26-56; (8) Daniel3:57-88; and (9) Luke 1:46- 55, 68- 79. Eventually the Second Ode fell from use on non-penitential occasions, about which see L. Bernhard, 'Der Ausfall der 2. Ode im byzantinischen Neuenodenkanon', in T. Michcls and A. Rohracher (cds), Heuresis. Festschrift fiir Andrens Rohrncher, 25 ]ahre Erzbischof V. Salzburg (Salzburg, 1969), pp. 91- 101; and R. Krivko, 'K ucTOpmr wropot'I necmt rHMHOrpa<pwrecKOro KaHOHa: yTparhi Il ItHTeprro.IIHLIHII', in D. Christians, D. Stern and V.S. Tomelleri (eds), Bibel, Liturgic und Friimmigkeit in der Slavia Byznntina. Festgabe fiir Hans Rothe z11m 80. Geburtsta;.;, Studies on Language and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe 3 (Munich, 2009), pp. 229-42. For an example of a heterogeneous collection of anonymous hymns intended for use with the full Palestinian sequence of Nine Od es, see the texts for Palm Sunday translated by Renoux from the Ancient ladgari: C. Renou x, L'hymnnire de Saint-Snbns (Ve-\II/e siecle): Le mrmuscrit georgiett H 2123. 1. Du Sa medi de Laznre il In Pentec8te, Patrologia Orientalis 50, Fascicule 3, No. 224 (Turnhout, 2008), pp. 298- 312.

58 1. Aw<mitis, '1l1e Rhythmical and Metrical Structur of th Byzantin Heirmoi and Stichem as a Means to and as a Result of a New Rhythmical lnterpretati n of th Byzantin

h;:mt', Acta Mttsicne Byznntinae 6 (2003), pp. 14-29; and, in much greater detail,}. Arvaniti , oufJpl>c; 't~lV ' KI0\1]<711l(J'[LI((;)V j.t£1\C~V J.lCO'Gl CtTC ·ni 1liXAIX L(lYQ£X<Jlll<~ i!QtUV Iml TIJV

t~'lYilO'Il T~c; 7H:\A uxc; <TilJ.ll>lOYQCiq>i.ac;. 'H ~l 'tQLK~ KGl QUf:lJ.liKTJ bopij 'fC~V TtaAaLc;,v

CTHXllQCOV 1ml clQ~Lci.lv' (Ph .D. diss., Ionian University, 2010). Several decades before, Jan van Bie:c.en had reached a similar conclusion about the use of duple rhythms in kanons in his study The Middle Byzantine Kmwn -notation of Mmm script H (Bilthoven, 1968).

59 For a theological analysis of three kanons (those for Easter, Transfiguration and the Dormition of the Mother of God) by John of Damascus, see A. Louth, St. John Damascene: Tradition nud Origiunlily iu By:znntiue 17reolo;.;y, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford and New York, 2002), pp. 258-82. The rhythmical and metrical issues arising from the

application or m dieval heirmoi to their troparia are analysed in Arvanitis, ''0 QU8f1Clc; TCOV

i:KJ(I\qmnOTI1<ci.lv p t t\(i.lv', pp. 277-328.


The cumulative effect of these developments in hymnody was a reordering of the liturgical soundscape in the cathedral rite of Jerusalem, as well as in those nearby monasteries where melodious chanting was view d w ith favour. 60 O riginally, as witness d by Egeria, the antiphonal p alms and canticles of Hagiopolite worsh ip bad resembled those found in th Sung Offic f Constan ti nople, consi ting mainly of their scriptural texts with the addition of a small number of r frains. With the emergence o£ the hymnodic repertories compiled in the Tropologion, biblical psalmody in the festal offices of Palestine was demoted textually and musically to a supporting role of providing a framework for ever-increasing quantities of through-composed or strophic prop r hymns. Tbe consistency and familiarHy afforded to worshippers by the chanting of important fixed scriptural el ments of morning and ev ning worship- the nine canticles and Laud (Psalm 148-50) at o.rthros, and the Lamplighting Psalms (Psalms 140, 141, 129 and 116) at vespers61

- was increasingly replaced by variability and novelty, characteristics tha t Stoudite monasticism !at r extended systematically to ferial offices.

Patriarch Germanos I of Constantinople (reigned 715-30) not only aligned himself with 0 1alcedonian Christians of the Holy Land by sharing their opposition to Monoth li tism and Iconoclasm, but he also composed hymn that appear in the Jerusalem Tropologion.62 Palestinian hymnody b came a permanent feature of th · Constantinopolitan liturgical scene

60 As famously portrayed in Narration of the Abbots John and Sophronios, some Middle Eastern ascetics of the sixth to eighth centuries resisted the importation of musical repertories and practices from cathedral liturgy, arguing that they were worldly and generally inappropriate to monastic life. For the text of the Narration and analyses of its liturgical content and relationship to other witnesses of resistance to the musical enrichment of monastic liturgy, see A. Longo, 'I! testo integrale della "Narrazione degli abati Giovanni e Sofronio" attraverso le 'EQfllJVELC<L di Nicone', Rivista di studi bizantini e neoellenici n.s. 2-3 (1965-{)6), pp. 223-{)7; B.M . .ilypbe, "TioaeCTBOBamte OTI..\OB MoaHHa 11 CO<ppomtR' (BHG) KaK AI-!TyprwrecKl1M HcToqmtK', Vizantijskij Vremennik 54 (1993), pp. 62-74; and S. Froyshov, 'La reticence a I'hyrnnographle chez des anachoretes de I'Egypte et du Sina'i du Se au Se siecles' , in J. Claire, A.M. Triacca and A. Pistoia (eds), L'hym nographie: Conferences Saint-Serge, XLV!e Semaine d'etudes liturgiques, Paris, 29 juin-2 juillet 1999, Bibliotheca Ephemerides Liturgicae Subsidia 105 (Rome, 2000), pp. 229-45.

61 Regarding the use of these items as core elements of public evening and morning worship in Late Antiquity and the early middle ages, G.W. Woolfenden, Daily Liturgical Prayer: Origins and Theology (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 280-91.

62 On the life and works of Germanos, see L. Lamza, Patriarch Germanos I. von Konstantinopel (715-730): Versuch einer endgiiltigen chronologischen Fixierung des Lebens und Wirkens des Patriarchen mit dem griechisch-deutschen Text der Vita Germani am Schluss der Arbeit, Das ostliche Christenhtm n.F. 27 (Wiirzburg, 1975). The contributions of Germanos to the Tropologion as reflected in copies of the Georgian Iadgari are discussed in Jeffery, 'The Earliest Oktoechoi', pp. 198-202.


after 799, when Abbot Theodore of Sakkoudion in Bithynia moved his community to the monastery of St John of Stoudios and began celebrating in its church the monastic Divine Office of St Sabas.63 Like Germanos before him, St Theodore the Stoudite (as he later became known) was a prominent iconophile and his embrace of the hymns of the Tropologion was motivated in part by his admiration for their doctrinal orthodoxy.

Yet Theodore and his monks did not rest after transplanting the Saba'itic Divine Office to Stoudios, but used its Horologion and Tropologion as the basis for a creative synthesis incorporating elements of the rite of Hagia Sophia and vast quantities of new hymnody. 6

" From the Great Church they borrowed the office prayers of its Euchology, the readings and responsorial psalmody of its lectionaries, the florid solo and choral chants of its elite choirs, and the paraliturgical cycles of kontakia sung at its vigils. To varying degrees they also adopted cathedral traditions of melodious antiphonal psalmody, most completely in some Stoudite monasteries on Pentecost when the Kneeling Vespers (Gonyklesia) was, as we noted above, celebrated according to the rite of Hagia Sophia.65

Having thus enriched their worship with music from the Sung Office, Stoudite monks then made seminal contributions to a multi-generational project to fill out the repertories of the Tropologion, especially its provision £or lesser feasts and ferial days.66 Although St Theodore the Stoudite is

63 T. Pott, Byzantine Liturgical Reform: A Study of Liturgical Change in the Byzantine Tradition, Orthodox Liturgy Series Book 2 (Crestwood, NY, 2010), pp. 118-42.

64

65

On the musical aspects of the Stoudite reform, see Lingas, 'Sunday Matins', pp. 145-9.

Pott, Byzantine Liturgical Reform, pp. 132-3. The celebration of Pentecost vespers in the

Stoudite communities of Southern Italy is addressed in Spyrakou, 0[ xopoi Vmthrilv, p. 227; M. Arranz, S.J., 'L' office del' Asmatikos Hesperinos ("vepres chantees") de !'ancien Euchologe

byzantin, !le Partie: La psalmodie', Oriental in Christinnn Periodica 44 (1978), pp. 391-419, at pp. 412-15; Conomos, 'Wllitsunday', pp. 457-69; and Harris, 'Office of the Genuflexion'.

66 The contents of the so-called 'Typikon of the Anastasis'- Jerusalem Hagios Stauros 43, a Creek manuscript dated '1122' but containing Holy Week and Eastertide services celebrated

in the cathedral rite of Jerusalem prior to the year 1009- suggest that efforts to expand the repertories of Palestinian hymnody were initially not limited to Stoudite monasticism, but

involved more complicated patterns of artistic production and exchange. Evidence for this

may be seen in the inclusion of Stouditc hymns in Hagiopolite services, variations between

the two regional traditions in the liturgical assignment of certain shared texts, and the relative

superabundance of hymns for some occasions in the Typikon of the An.astasis. Hagios Stamos 43

provides, for. example, not only idiomela but also a set of three prosomoia for Lauds on Great

Friday for a tota I of ten stichera. See 'TuTiucov ·n1c; i::v 'Icgorro;\u~Lmc; 'EKKAllCJ[ac;. fi.LaTa/;Lc;

Tcov iEQC~J\' aKoAouEhc;JV Tllc; wyaA11c; Ef~llof1G'!Iloc; T00 KUQLOu 'i~Lc~JV 'IllCJO\) XQLCJT00, IWTCt TO aoxai:ov TllC: i::v 'IEQcmoMJ~LoLc; tiCI<AllCJ[ac; i8oc;, ljTOL TO i:v TC~ vm~1 Tile; AvaaTaau,,c;',

in A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus (ed.), AvaAEKTLl 'Icpoaot\VIILTUCI]s I:Ta;o:uot\oyiac; 1j I:v;\t\oyl)

AvcKOOTCuV 1WL CJ7TLlViCuV [;\;\I)VLIULJV auyypo:cjx,)Jt 7Icp1 TCt!V KLtTIY Tl/v '[c_{Jitll 6pf!oi56[cov

EKK;ti)CJLCDv 1wi !ici:Jt/CJTLl T7jc; TWl' lla;\mrJTLJir0v (St Petersburg, 1894), pp. J-254, at pp. 141-4.


credited with the creation of the antiph ns of the Octoechos, he and his successors mainly wrote in e.xjsting Palestin.ian genres.67 The task of filling th liturgical cycles with hymnody wa essentially complete by the twelfth century, the time by which fift en volumes of proper hymnody employed in the modern Byzantin rite had come into xisten,ce - the Parnkletike or Great Octoed1os, the twelve volum s of Menaia (one for each calendar month), and for the movable Penitential and Paschal seasons, the Triodion and the Pentecostarion. Containing a total of over 60,000 hymns in their published forms, these collections consist mainly of contrafacta sung to a circumscribed body of model melodies that were transmitted either by ear or, in the case of kanons, with the aid of an Heirmologion, a musically notated reference book of model stanzas (heinnoi).68 The Sticherarion, another notated chantb o.k, wa a v hicle for dis emjnating stich ra and other office hymn with unique melodies (idiomela).69 Th proportion of idiomela to prosomoia app inted to be sung was generally a function of lihugical significance, with the most important occasions featuring tb highe t p rcentage of through-compo ed stichera and weekdays without a major commemoration the !owe t.

In adapting for monastic u e hymnody from the dev loped mba.n rite .f Jerusalem, the Stoudites xt nded certain principle of liturgical design to theh· I gical conclusion . Thank to the proliferation of pr per hymn , Hagiopotite ervices came to b marked by musical variety, textu.al particularity and

exegetical 1 quacity. As th Stoudit s continued to augment the repertories of hymnody attached to the Hor logi n, a form of reductio ad absurdum was eventually reach d when every day of th year came to possess multiple sets of proper hymn and p alms. The ne d to eh ose from among this surfeit of material stimulated the er ati n of liturgical Typika, separate books of rubrics

67 Strunk, 'The Antiphons', pp. 165-90. The prolific Joseph the Hymnographer is an example of a poet who seems to have written only contrafacta, with all 466 of the hymns attributed to him by Tomadakes relying on existing melodies. See E.I. Tomadakes, Twai)</J 6 Y~woypa</Jo<;: Bioc; Kai lpyov, A811ViX ouyyQ£Xf-lf.l£X TIEQLOClllCOV '[~<; i:v A8ijvm<;

'EmoUJf.lOvucij<; 'E'rmQEia<;. EuQCt bta'rQL(3wv Kal J.-l EAE'rf]f.lchwv 11 (Athens, 1971). 68 The number of proper hymns in the liturgical books in the modern Byzantine rite is

from K Levy and C. Troelsgard, 'Byzantine Chant', inS. Sadie and J. Tyrell (eds), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London, 2001), p. 743. Model melodies for hymns other than kanons are 'automela', with their contrafacta called 'prosomoia' . A small number of manuscripts include notated versions of automela, about which see C. Troelsgi\rd, 'The Repertories of Model Melodies (Automela) in Byzantine Musical Manuscripts', Cahiers de I'Institut du Moyen-Age grec et Iatin 71 (2000), pp. 3-27.

69 C. Troelsgard, 'What Kind of Chant Books Were the Byzantine Sticheraria?', in L. Dobszay (ed.), Cantus planus: Papers Read at the 9th Meeting, Esztergom & Visegrad, Hungary, 1998 (Budapest, 2001), pp. 563-74.


that governed the selection of proper chants and readings by establishing relative priorities among their liturgical cycles. 70

The influence of the Sung Office was evident in the way that some Stoudite houses sought to make their offices musically seamless by chanting almost everything?1 It was customary in some places, for example, for the entire community to sing at the beginning of every orthros its fixed set of Six Psalms (the Hexapsalmos: Psalms 3, 37, 62, 87, 102 and 142).72 Stoudite monasteries also imitated the Rite of the Great Church in their arrangement, albeit on a much reduced scale, of their designated singers into semi-choirs around a central ambo. These choirs were assisted in their renditions of hymns by a canonarch, an official whose role was to prompt them audibly from a scroll or book with their next line of text, a practice similar to 'lining out' in some Protestant traditions of hymnody?3 Respites from the steady patter of texts rendered in syllabic or neumatic styles were occasionally provided by interludes consisting of either catechetical readings or melismatic chants, both solo and choral, borrowed mainly from the rite of Hagia Sophia: kontakia, hypakoai, prokeimena, Alleluiaria and the great responsories of Christmas and Theophany?4

711 E. Velkovska, 'Byzantine LihHgical Books', in A.J. Chupungco (ed.), Introduction to the Liturgy, Handbook for Liturgical Studies Vol. 1, tr. E. Hagman (Collegeville, MN, 1997),

p. 232. 71 M. Arranz, 'Les grands etapes de la Liturgie Byzantine: Palestine-Byzance-Russie.

Essai d'apen;u historique', Liturgic de l'eglise particuliere et liturgic de l'eglise universelle, Bibliotheca Ephemerides Lihugicae, Subsidia 7 (Rome, 1976), pp. 43-72, at p. 64. Rubrics

directing the melodious chanting of festal psalmody occur frequently in the Typikon of the

Stoudite monastery of San Salvatore in Messina: Arranz, Le Typicon du monastere du Saint-Sauvcur a Messine: Codex Messinensis gr. 115, pp. xxxvi, 186, 328 and 85.

72 Spyrakou, Oi xopoL ~Jcti\'[({JV, p . 227. 73 Spyrakou, Oi xopoi t)!akuZJv, p. 462-66; Troelsgard, 'What Kind of Chant Books', pp.

565-70; and, on the similar Protestant practice, 'Lining Out', in Grove Music Online. Oxford

Music On/ ine, at http://www .oxfordmusicon I ine. cam/subscriber/ article/ grove/music/16709 (accessed 21/09/12)

74 Their melodies were transmitted with musical notation in the Psaltikon and

Asmatikon. Interestingly, kontakia (and possibly hypakoai as well) were originally syllabic

chants that had been transformed through musical elaboration- a medieval counterpart to

'long' exegesis? - into occasions for musical contemplation. Some idea of the differences

between the syllabic and melismatic styles may be gained by listening to the two versions of

the kontakion for St Bartholomew of Crottaferrata included on Cappella Romana, Byzantium in Rome, disc 1 ). The ordinary version sung to a melody from MS St Petersburg gr. 674 (fol.

14r) takes only 2:34 to perform, whilst the florid setting from the Psaltikon Ashburnhamensis

64 lasts 9:40. If the even longer oikos for St Bartholomew that follows the kontakion in

Ashburnhamensis had been performed at the same tempo, the lihugical unit of Kontakion

and Oikos would have provided a musical interlude of approximately twenty-three minutes between Odes 6 and 7 of the kanon.


The turn towards more rigorous forms of monasticism evident in some Byzantine founders' typika (ktetorika typika) of the later eleventh century was accompanied in liturgical documents by what Taft ha identifi d to b 'a large infiltration of second-generation Saba"itic material into the monasteries of Constantinople' ?5 Two trends shaping the sound. cape f worship may be observed in this new layer of Saba"itic material: a tenden y to substjtute solo recitation for choral singing in renditions of non-festal psalmody, and the revival of the Palestinian all-night vigil (agrypnia) on Saturday nights and the eves of major feasts?6 A few of the reform ktetorika typika also revive suspicions about the danger or efficacy for monastics of chanting, especially when practised in its more mu icaUy elaborate forms, that previously we saw articulated by Sina"it and Palestinian ascetics of the sixth to eighth centuries.77

A closer look at the sources reveals that late Byzantine monks celebrating a reformed 'Neo-Saba"itic' rite managed both to share certain presuppositions about the need for performing psalmody with complll1ction, and to display significant diversity in thought and practice regarding their lituxgical s undscapes. One end of the ideological spectrum was represented by the great h sychast St Grego1y of Sinai (c. 1265-1346), who viewed melodious chanting as something, along with discursive language, that spiritually matw·e ascetics should ultin1ately b-anscend.78

Yet before we are seduced by the etymology of hesychasm (= 'quietude') into assuming that the soundscapes of Neo-Saba!tic offices were uniformly less varied or musical than their Stoudite counterparts, it is necessary to consider what was actually being sung at Athonite all-night vigils.

Thanks to musical developments advanced by the cantor, composer, theoretician and Athonite monk St John Koukouzeles (c. 1280-c. 1341), the

75 R.F. Taft, S.J., 'Mount Athos: A Late Chapter in the History of the Byzantine Rite', Dumbarton Oaks Papers 42 (1988), pp. 179-94, at p. 190. On the reforms advanced by these ktetorika typika, see 'Early Reform Monasteries of the Eleventh Century', eh. 4 in J.P. Thomas, A.C. Hero and G. Constable (eds), Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents: A Complete Translation of the Surviving Founders' Typika and Testaments, Dumbarton Oaks Studies 35 (Washington, D.C., 2000), pp. 441-53.

76

77

Taft, 'Mount Athos', pp. 187-92.

Spyrakou, 0[ xopoi 1/Jr.:dtTwv, pp. 212-17; R.T. Dubowchik, 'Singing with the Angels: Foundation Documents as Evidence for Musical Life in Monasteries of the Byzantine Empire', Dumbarton Oaks Papers 56 (2002), pp. 277-96, at pp. 289-90.

78 Gregory of Sinai, 'Different Ways of Psalmodizing', translated in G.E.H. Palmer, P. Sherrard and K. Ware, The Philokalia: The Complete Text compiled by St Nikodimos of the Holy Mo11ntain and St Makarios of Corinth (London and Boston, 1995), pp. 266-74; discussed in A. Lingas, 'Hesychasm and Psalmody', in A. Bryer and M. Cunningham (eds), Mount Athos nnd Byzantine Monasticism: Papers from the Twenty-eighth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Birmingham, March 1994, Society for the Promotion of Byzantine, Studies 4 (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 155-68, at p. 158.


restored agrypnia became in late Byzantium a showcase for sonic variety.79 As codified in the rubrics of the Diataxis of Divine Service attributed to the Athonite abbot and later patriarch Philotheos Kokkinos (c. 1300-1379), the Neo-Saba'itic all-night vigil was largely an amalgamation of the festal versions of Palestinian vespers and matins.Ho It rested on a musical foundation of the received repertories of anonymous psalmody and Stoudite hymnody as recently edited by Koukouzeles. 81 Overlaying these revised traditional chants were new musical works composed as their alternates or supplements. Usually bearing the names of their composers, some are distinctly personal re-workings of earlier material, whilst others employ original melodies that in some cases also set new texts. Many are lengthy compositions cast in a virtuosic 'kalophonic' ('beautiful sounding') i.diom marked variously by textual repetition or troping, melismatic passages, and vocalisations on nonsense syllables ('teretismata').H2

Mature kalophonic works first appear in significant quantities integrated with traditional material in a new chantbook attributed to the editorship of Koukouzeles entitled the 'Akolouthiai' or 'Orders of Service', the earliest surviving copy of which is Athens EBE 2458, dated '1336'.83 Subsequent generations of late and post-Byzantine composers further enriched the repertories of Koukouzelian chant, leading not only to the compilation of

79 On Koukou%eles and his musical innovations for the Byzantine Divine Office, sec E.V. Williams, 'John KoukmLzeles' Reform of Byzantine Chanting for Great Vespers in the Fourteenth Century' (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1968); and E. V. Williams, 'A Byzantine A1·s

Novn: The 14th-cen tury Reforms of John Koukouzeles in the Chanting of Great Vespers', in H . !lirnbaum and S. Vryonis, Jr. (eds), Aspects of the Bnllwns: Crmtiuuity nud Chnnge: Co11trilmtiolls to the ln!emnlionnl Bnllwn Conference held nt UCLA, October 23-28, 1969, SJavistic Printings and Rcprintings (The Hague and Paris, 1972), pp. 211 - 29; and Lingas, 'Hesychasm', pp. 159-68.

811 'L'whn~LS Tljc; LCQolnmcovim;', Migne, Pnlrologin Gmem 154, cols 745-66; 21nd Taft, 'MountAthos', pp. 191-2.

HI Discussions of Stoudite collections of hymnody edited by Koukouzeles are S.S. Antoniou, 'La tradition de l'Heirmologion de Jean Koukouzeles', Byznntion: Revile fntemntionnle Des Etudes Byzn11lines 74 (2004), pp. 9-16; and J. Raasted, 'Koukouzeles' Revision of the Sticherari on an d Sinai gr. 1230', in J. Szcndrei and D. Hiley (eds), Lnbomre frn!i·es in U1711111: festschrift Lnszl6 Dobszny Z/1111 60. Gclmrtstng, Spolia Berolinensia: Berliner Beitrage zur Mediiivistik (1-lildesheim, 1995), pp. 261-77.

82 The emergence of these techniques in 'proto-kalophonic' reperto ries of the earlier thirteenth century is discussed in C. Troelsgard, 'Thirteenth-century Byzantine Melismatic Chant and the Development of the Kalophonic Style', in G. Wolfram (ed.), I'nlneobyznntine Notat ions III: Actn of the Congress held nt Heme11 Cnstle, The Netherlnnds, ill Mnrch 2001 (Leuven, 2004), pp. 67- 90.

83 This manuscript is described in G.T. Stathis, "J-1 aopcnuo'1 btctcj:)(JQOTioiquq OTI<vc

Kt-YHT)'QCtcpnm o'l:(Jv Lc(:Jbum EBE 2458 TO\J h:ou.; 1336', Xpt.arwvuct) 61·aal1'i\oviKIJ.' n(T!l11'10iloy6o~ tTlO;(I ). llrYT(ll l\'fl,\U(OV R>pvpa ffll'TC(JI I(UJI' M[;tniDI', 'hpa MoV/) Bllll'Ti.'rbitil',

29-31 OKTI<i{Jpiov '1987 (Thessalonica, 1989), pp. 167- 241. F01· a brief general treatment o£ the

contents of Akolouthiai manuscripts, see Doneda, 'I manoscritti', pp. 108-10.


expanded versions of the Akolouthiai, but al o to the appearance of specialised collections devoted to particular genres of kalophonic chant: the Kalophonic Sticherarion (Mathematarion), the Oikoimatarion and th Kratematarion.84

The use of particular musical styles and genres in Stoudite and Neo-Saba"itic versions of festal vespers is compared in Table 17.4, from which it can be seen that both traditions shared a common core of psalms and hymns generally set in closely related musical idioms.85

84 The emergence of these books is discussed by C. Adsuara, 'Textual and Musical Analysis of the Deuteros Kalophonic Stichera for September' (Ph.D. diss., Universidad Complutense, 1998), pp. 127--43.

85 The extent to which continuity of musical style in a repertory or genre may be securely documented varies widely according to the availability of notated sources. Continuities of musical style in stichera and prokeimena may be verified by comparing their neumations in manuscripts copied before and after the b ginning of lhe fourteenth century. 011 the prokeimena, see Hintze, Das byzantinische Prokeiml!.lrn-Reperloire; and Harris, 'Prokeirnc.na'; and C. Troelsgard, 'The Prokeimena in the Byzantine nite: Performance and Tradition', in L. Dobszay (ed.), International Musicological Society Study Group Cantus Planus: Papers Rl!llrl at tire 6th Meeting Eger, Hungary 1993 (Budapest, 1995), pp. 65-77. Since lhe lnvltatorium 'Come, let us worship' (' il.Etl't£, TIQOaKuvi]awflEV') and the music for many psalms first appea r with notation in fourteenth-century manuscripts, the reconstruction of their performance in earlier periods must rely on a combination of these n taled sources {mainly Akolouthiai manu cripts such as Athens EBE 2458) and Middle Byzantine rubrics. The earliest notated settings of the lnvitatorium and Psalm 103, however, appear as appendices to copies of the Koukouzelian Heirmologion in MS Sinai 1256 (dated '1309') and MS Sinai 1257 ('1332'). See Williams, 'John Koukouzeles' Reform', pp. 109--42; and M. Velimirovic, 'The Prooemiac Psalm of Byzantine Vespers', in L. Berman (ed.), Words and Music, the Scholar's View: A Medley of Problems and Solutions Compiled in Honor of A. Tillman Merritt (Cambridge, MA, 1972), pp. 317-37. Music for the Lamplighting Psalms is surveyed in A. Jung, 'The Settings of the Evening and Morning Psalms According to the Manuscript Sinai 1255', Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen-Age Grec et Latin 47 (1984), pp. 3-63 (Sinai 1255 is mainly a Kalophonic Mathematarion, but also includes traditional settings of the eight-mode cycle of Sunday stichera with their psalm verses); and S. Kujumdzieva, 'The Kekragaria in the Sources from the 14th to the Beginning of the 19th Century, Eger 1993', in Dobszay (ed.), International Musicological Society Study Group Cantus Planus, pp. 449-63. On the late Byzantine neumations of simple forms of psalmody and their relationship to earlier oral traditions, see Strunk, 'The Antiphons', pp. 170-74; and S. Harris, 'Byzantine Psalmody: An Interim Report', in L. Dobszay (ed.), Cantus Planus: Papers Read at the 7th Meeting, Sopron, Hungary, 1995 (Budapest, 1998), pp. 273-81; and C. Troelsgi\rd, 'Simple Psalmody in Byzantine Chant', in L. Dobszay (ed.), Cantus Planus: Papers Read at the 12th Meeting of the !MS Study Group, Lillnfi.ired/Hungary, 2004. Aug. 23-28 (Budapest, 2006), pp. 83-92.

Jroni ally, the melody {what is probably the m t ancient extra-scriptu:ral hymn of th Palestinian evening office, 'Joyful Light' ('<De~ iJ\aQ6v'), ornetimes entitled the 'Thank giving at the Lighting of the Lamps' ("Enu\.uxv1oc; EVXO"QIO'rtet'), is not transmitted by any source from the middle age , evid ntly having been so well known as to have rendered its written transmission ·uperfluous. 111e simple melody that finally does appear with notation in seventeenth-century manuscripts would not have been out of place in the sound


Most chants in the Stoudite office were rendered in syllabic or neumatic styles in which the text remained clearly audible. Monotony over the course of the service was avoided by periodic changes of musical mode and melodic idiom from the simple, syllabic and repetitive patterns of psalm-tones to through-composed idiomela. Additional variety was provided by frequent alternations between the semi-choruses, their soloists, and - in responses to litanies and ecphoneseis not indicated in Table 17.4- the higher clergy. Stoudite vespers reached a peak of sonic and visual interest with the interwoven hymnody and psalmody of the Lamplighting Psalms, the singing of which was followed by the hymn cD0x; v\lXQOV and the ritual entrance of the higher clergy into the sanctuary. Sonic interest was sustained after the entrance when a soloist ascended the ambo to lead the solemn chanting of what was probably the most elaborate music used in most Stoudite celebrations of festal vespers: a melismatic prokeimenon borrowed from the repertories of the Sung Office of Hagia Sophia.

Table 17.4

Sung Item

Invitatoriun1 'Come, let us

worship'

Psalm 103

Musical styles in festal vespers celebrated according to the Palestinian Horologion; musical styles in brackets have been inferred from rubrics and/or later notated sources

Stoudite Neo-Sabai:tic Comments (through the 13"' c.) (from the 14'" c.)

[Neumaticj Neumatic

[Psalm-tone with florid A psa lm-tone is Most psalmody introduction and coda. employed until the evidently remained In some traditions the Anoixm1taria, which unnotated until verses are performed are melodically the appearance of with cathedral-style elaborated verses Akolot1thiai MSS in

refrains.J with Trinitarian the 1411' c.

tropes in neumatic or melismatic styles . These commence at verse 28b and are

followed by a florid coda.

world of medieval Byzantine psalmody, being limited in its vocal range and constructed

from the repetition of a few short motives. Modern chantbooks transmit a rnel ismatic version

of this melody label led 'Ml't\oc; c'tQxa[ov ' that has been transcribed into the Chrysanthine

'New Method' of Byzantine notation through the application of exegesis. See Williams, 'Jobn Koukou ze\es' Reform', pp. 403-11.


Sung Item Stoudite Neo-Saba'itic Comments (through the 13'h c.) (from the 14'" c.)

Stasis 1 of the [Psalm-tone, in some Through-composed 1" Kathisma traditions with refrains] neumatic settings

of the Psalter: of individual verses Psalms 1-3 with Alleluia refrains

('Blessed is the proliferate, as do man') optional kalophonic

versions for selected verses of Psalm 2

Opening 2 [Semi-florid settings with Semi-florid settings Verses of the a cathedral refrain sung with a cathedral refrain Lam plighting in the mode of the first sung in the mode of the

Psalms sticheron] first sticheron (140, 141, 129

& 116)

Stichologia [Psalm-tone in the mode Psalm-tone in the mode of the of the first sticheron with of the first sticheron

Lamplighting cathedral refrains] sung without cathedral Psalms refrains

Up to 10 Syllabic (most prosomoia) As in the Stoudite Melodies for Stichera or neumatic (idiomela) rite with optional idiomela are

settings interpolated kalophonic substitutes transmitted in the between psalm verses. Sticherarion; the

Modal variety is common model melodies in sets of idiomela. (automela) of

prosomoia appear as appendices in

a small number of MSS.

Introit ('Phos [Neumatic] [Neumatic] Notnotated hilaron') until the 17'" c.

Prokeimenon As in th rite of Hagia Melismatic with TI1e traditional Sophia: Melismatic optional kalophonic anonymous

responsorial psalmody cod as melismatic settings led by a soloist from the are borrowed or

ambo adapted from the Great Church

OT Readings Cantillation from [Cantillation?] Borrowed from the lectionary notation Prophetologion of

the Great Church

Stichera of the Neumatic idiomela As in the Stoudite Melodies from Lite rite with optional the traditional

kalophonic settings or kalophonic Sticherarion

348 FROM EA RTH TO HEAVEN

Sung Item Stoudite Neo-Sabaltic Comments (through the 13"' c.) (from the 14'" c.)

Apostic/w Syllabic (most prosomoia) As in the Stoudite ldiomela are or neumatic (idiomela) rite, but with optional tran milted in settings, all but the first kalophonic substitutes the tid1erarion;

of which are preceded by Prosornoia scrip tu ra 1 verses set to a model rnel dies

syllabic psalm tone (autom la) appear a append ice in

a mall numb r of MSS.

Apolytikin [Syllabic, with some Syllabic, with som e exceptions] exceptions

A substantial portion of the music for Neo-Saba'itic vespers contained in notated manuscripts of the Paleologan period consists of more or less lightly retouched versions of hymns from Stoudite collections and psalms rendered according to traditional melodic formulas. On feast days, however, the sonic contours and temporal dimensions of the service's opening psalmody could be radically altered by the performance of new compositions intended as festal alternatives to traditional psalm-tones. Drawing on thirteenth-century precedents for through-composed melismatic psalmody in the Sung Office, their composers transformed the concluding section of Psalm 103 - the Anoixantaria, thus named because it commences with verse 28b, 'AvoiE,avT6c; aou Tt1v X£iQa'- and Stasis One of the First Kathisma of the Psalter(= Psalms 1-3) into sprawling and stylistically heterogeneous suites of traditional and innovative music. 86 Their traditional elements consist of anonymous verse settings that are sometimes labelled' old' or supplied with such titles indicating geographic provenance as Hagiosophitikon or Thessalonikaion. Most verses, however, are attributed individually to Koukouzeles, his contemporary Xenos Korones and other late Byzantine composers. Almost all settings begin with a traditional psalm-tone that soon dissolves into original and often virtuosic music.

Eponymous composers of Anoixantaria generally augmented the psalm's original refrain' .6.6E,a am 6 8£6c;' ('Glory to you, 0 God') with Triadika, tropes in honour of the Holy Trinity. Those ascribed to Koukouzeles in MS Sinai 1257 are:

86 The precedents include the Pentecost Tcleu/aion discussed above and stylist ica lly

si milar collections of melismatic verses for the first antiphon of the Sung Office of or thros

transmitted in South Italian manuscripts. I discuss the settings for Constantinopolitan

cathedral orthros and their relationship to the Trinitarian tropes of the Koukouzelian

A11oixantaria in 'The First Antiphon of Byzantine Cathedral Rite Matins: From Popular Psalmody to Kalophonia' , in Dobszay (ed.), Crmtus Pln11us: Papers Read at the 9th Meeting, pp. 479-500.

ALEXANDER LINGAS

V. 29b- Av'l:avcAc:Lc; n) nvcuf-la a-Lnwv, KaL £KA£(ljloum. !'.6E,a aoL Ila'rEQ, b6E,a CJOL Ylc, b6E,a CJOL 1:0 IlVCUf-la '"[Q ayLoV, b6E,a CJOL. (F. 169r, 'You will take

away their spirit, and they will perish. Glory to you, 0 Father, glory to you,

0 Son, glory to you, 0 Holy Spirit. Glory to you!')

V. 31a - "Hnu !'] b6E,a KUQLOU clc; muc; alwvac;. !'.6E,a CJOL ayLc· b6E,a CJOL

KVQL£· b6E,a am, ~amAcu OUQCtVLE. !'.6E,a am, b6E,a am 6 E>c6c;. (F. 169v,

'May the glory of the Lord endure to the ages. Glory to you, Lord, glory to

you, heavenly King, glory to you, glory to you, 0 God!')

V.35a- 'EKAE(nmcv Ctf-lctQ'rWAoL a no 1:fjc; yfjc;. !'.6E,a am TQLCt<; avaQXE· b6E,a am6 E>E6c;. (F. 169r, '0 that sinners might perish from the earth. Glory to you,

Trinity without beginning, glory to you [0] God!')87

349

Composers limited themselves to the biblical text and its traditional refrain 'Alleluia' in their music for the psalms of Stasis One, the verses of which they set in what were essentially two musical styles. The first is a semi-florid melodic idiom comparable to that of the Anoixantaria that they applied to verses of all three psalms. Their 'Alleluia' refrains, like those of the older Pentecost Teleutaion, are variously lengthened through melismata, textual repetitions - audibly prompted in some cases by the sung commands 'A£yc:!' ('Say!') or T1aALv!' ('Again!') - and the insertion of small groups of extra syllables. A setting attributed to Koukouzeles on folio 15r of the Akolouthiai Athens 2458, for example, renders the word 'Ai\i\TjAOliLct' as 'aMTJ- aAATJAOU'Lct· avaAi\T]Aov·Lavaxaxa aAATJXTJVctAATJAou·La' .88

Marked by the application techniques of musical and textual extension on a grand scale to produce longer examples of kalophonia, the second style was employed by Koukouzeles and his colleagues in Stasis One only when composing settings of selected verses from Psalm 2. These vast compositions, which functioned as ad libitum substitutes for ordinary semi-florid settings of the same psalmic text, would in some sense have stood outside the normal liturgical order as constituted in both unnotated service books and the minds of congregants. This is in part due to their sheer length. With the performance of each kalophonic composition lasting, if one assumes a similar tempo,

87 In the 'Musical Supplement' appended to 'John Koukouzeles' Reform', Williams offers staff-notation transcriptions of all of the semi-florid verses for Psalm 103 and the First Stasis attributed to Koukouzeles, as well as of a pair of highly kalophonic compositions for Psalm 2. A mensura! transcription by Ioannis Arvanitis of the anonymous traditional verses and five Koukouzelean Anoixantaria of Psalm 103 has been recorded on the CD Voices

of Byzantium - Medieval Byzantine Chant from Mt Sinai, Cappella Romana, dir. A. Lingas (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012).

88 Transcribed as 'Koukouzeles melody 5' in Williams, 'Musical Supplement' to Williams, 'John Koukouzeles' Reform', p. 9.


approximately six to seven times as long as even the most expansive semiflorid verse, even a single substitution would have altered significantly the temporal flow of worship established during the singing of Psalm 1. The composers of kalophonic settings for Psalm 2 also extended or violated traditional techniques for setting texts to music that continued to prevail elsewhere in the service in order to create vast structures governed to a large extent by the formal logic of their music.89 Not only did they regularly dissolve words into teretismata, but they also manipulated the psalmic text in startling ways. Williams has identified their use of the following techniques:

1. Repetition of syllables 2. Repetition of words and phrases 3. Inversion of words 4. Juxtaposition of successive lines (in their regular or inverted order) 5. Interpolation of fragments from different lines. ~0

Koukouzeles and other late Byzantine composers employed essentially the same techniques of musical construction and textual alteration in their kalophonic stichera, some of which they based on traditional chants from the Sticherarion whilst others set new texts, including a significant number in fifteen-syllable verse?1 Those based on traditional chants often divide the hymn into two or more sections, giving the choirmaster freedom to make partial or total kalophonic substitutions . Here, for example, is the complete text of a sticheron in honour of St Katherine sung at the vespers on the eve of 25 November after the Trinitarian Doxology of the Lam plighting Psalms:

XC<Q ~lo vuc(;Jc; ·n] nC<VllYlJ QI::l, Tlic; Gcom)cpou MC.:QTUQoc; AlKaTEQLVll c;, auvbQcX ~tc,J~lEV c~J cptAopaQTUQEc;, Kn l Tetl!Tll" TOLc; i'ncxivmc;, c~)(; civ8un

KetTcWTt<j!c,J ~tEv, XcxiQmc; f3owvT Ec; auT~, ~ ccov cpAqvaqJC,Jv 'PqT6Qcuv, T~v

8QC<CYl!CJTOflLC<V i'My;<;mm, coc; itnmbcuaiac; c\vani\ccuv, KetL TOUTOuc; ITQOc;

n[a nv Odav x< LQet yt.JYllCYmm, ,. XC<iQo tc; ll TO CYWflC< noAunA6Kotc; f3cxaavou;

l!xbo0aa, bt' ity6mqv To0 IlonFOV aou, KcxL fllllWTcxf3Aq 8Eiacx, c:0c; ciK~lCJV

civiiAcu'l:Oc;, XcxiQmc; ll 1:cxic; civcu povcx'ic;, itvTaE, tcx 1:wv n6vcvv Elaoucta8 E'iocx,

l(C:Xl b6blc; cxlwviou KCXTCXTQt!cp~acxacx, llc; Ecpll' flcVOl ol upvc-}JOOL aou, Tlic; £Aniboc; ~lll EKTr£cm tpcv.

89 E. V. Williams, 'The Treatment of Text in the Kalophonic Chanting of Psalm 2', in M.M. Velimirov ic (ed.), Studies in Eas tem Chant, Vol. 2 (Oxford, 1971), pp. 173- 93.

90 Ibid., p. 180. 91 The repertories of kalophonic stichcra are surveyed in G.T. Stathis, Oi

avaypct/!!!IXTWpoi Kai Ta pa81)paTa uj~ f3u~aVTlV1/c; pouauojc; (Athens, 1979); and G.T. Stathis, 'H OEKancvTaavt\t\af3oc; V!!VO)'(JctqJia [v Tlj Bv~aVT/vl) !!Et\onot'i'cr (Athens, 1977).

ALEXANDER LINGAS

Lovers of martyrs, let us joyfully run together for the festival of the Martyr Katherine, wise in God, and let us garland her with praises as with flowers,

as we shout, 'Hail, you that confounded the insolence of the chattering Rhetors, as infected with stupidity, and led by the hand to divine faith. * Hail, you that surrendered your body to countless torments through love of your Maker, and like an unassailable anvil you were not cast down. Hail, you

that dwell in the dwelling places on high, worthy of your pains, and enjoy eternal glory. Would that we, who long for it and sing your praise, might not fail in our hope.

351

A kalophonic setting of this hymn composed by the fifteenth-century theorist and scribe Manuel Chrysaphes, who served as Larnpadarios in the chapel of the last two Paleologan emperors, divides its text into two 'feet' at the point marked above by an asterisk. Here is the text as set by Chrysaphes in the second 'foot':

b.EV1:EQOs novs· Ilo[T]f.la KUQoD MCI:vou~i\ f.laTamQos mu XQumi<j:JT]: 'Hxos

7ti\. ~

XC!:LQOLs, XCI:LQOLs 1'] 1:6 awf.la Tioi\vni\oKOLs, noAuTIAoKOLs ~aaavms

EKbovaa, OL' ciycinT]V 'IOU IlOLT]'IOU aou, Kat f.llllca'Iaf3ATJ8Eiaa, Ws aKf.lWV

!Xw:XAW'IOs, Xa[QOLc; 1'] 'Iais avw, 1'] 1:CI:ls avw f.lOVais, av'Ial;La 'IWV 7tOVWV

ElaoLKLa8Eiaa, Kat Ml;'ls alwv[ou Ka'l:a'IQV<j:J~aaaa· AtyE· ~s t<j:JLEf.lEVOL·

IlciALV· ~s t<j:JLEf.lEVOL ol Uf.lVctJbo[ aov, 'Iijs tATI[bos f.lTJ tKTIEaOLf.lEV· f.lTJ

tKTiiaOLf.lEV 'Iijs tATiibos· m'Io'Io1:0'I01:01:0'IO ... ['IEQtnaf.la] ... 'IOEetv£· 1:ijs

tATiibos f.lTJ t1mtamf-1Ev.92

Second foot, by Manuel Chrysaphes the Larnpadarios: Mode Plagal 2

Hail, hail you that surrendered your body to countless, countless torments through love of your Maker, and like an unassailable anvil you were not cast down. Hail, you that dwell in the dwelling places on high, worthy of your pains, and enjoy eternal glory. Would that we, who long for it and sing your praise, may not fail in our hope; may not fail in our hope: toto to toto ... [teretism] ... toeane: may not fail in our hope.

Here the textual alterations made to the original hymn are relatively minor: Chrysaphes chooses to repeat only selected words or phrases, doing so always with a clear sense of musical and rhetorical purpose that only becomes fully evident during a performance of this approximately eight-minute work.93

92 MS Sinai 1234, fols 125r-v. 93 As edited by Ioannis Arvanitis, this Second Foot lasts for eight minutes and twenty

four seconds in a performance Cappella Romana on Voices of Byzantium.


Each repetition brings with it a sense of increasing emotional intensity that builds gradually until reaching a climax with the teretisms that emerge out of the reiterated prayer that we 'may not fail in our hope'.

More radical manipulations of texts are found in kalophonic stichera labelled anagrammatismos or anapodismos. Composed as optional codas to hymns in traditional styles, these musical anagrams recapitulate the texts and, in some cases, elements of the melodies of the sticheron to which they may be attached. How this worked in practice may be seen from Table 17.5, which presents the texts of two versions of a hymn for the Blessing of the Waters on Theophany (6 January): (1) the original sticheron for the occasion by Sophronios of Jerusalem; and (2) the anagrammatismos written some seven centuries later by Koukouzeles to be performed at its conclusion.9

' The latter begins by proceeding backwards through the text of Sophronios, making it also an anapodismos. The remainder of its text features several repetitions as its music follows a trajectory similar to that of the Chrysaphes setting discussed above. In this case, however, the teretismata are followed not only by a return of the text, but also the recapitulation of the final phrase of its traditional setting.

94 Both versions- the traditional hymn from the Sticherarion MS Ambrosianus ]39 A

sup. (14th cent.) and the mwgrammntismos from the Kalophonic Stichermion MS Sinai 1234 (an

autograph of John Plousiadenos, dated '1469')- have been recorded 011 Cappella Romana, Epiphany: Medieval Byzantine Chant, dir. I. Arvanitis (Gothic G 49237, 2004) .


Table 17.5 The texts of a sticheron by Sophronios of Jerusalem and the Anagrammatismos based on it by John Koukouzeles

1. !:'tLXTJQOV ITQoc; 'tTJV cj:>wvi]v wu ~owv'toc; f.v 'tlj EQrli-!4! 'E'tOLf.!CWetH 'tTJV 6Mv 'tOU KvQlov· T]i\8 Ec; KVQLE, f.!OQcj:>i]v boVi\ov i\a~wv, Banna11a ai-rwv, 6 1-!TJ yvouc; cXf.!CtQ'tlaV. Elboaav aE Ubet'tet, KCtl EcpO~tl8TJOCtV" OVV'tQOf.!Oc; y£yOVEV 6 ITQ6bQOf.!Oc;, xai £~6T]aE Mywv· ITwc; cj:>W'tlOEl 6 i\uxvoc; 'tO cj:>wc;; nwc; XELQ08E'trlaEL boi.!i\oc; 'tOV Man6'tY]Vi ay[aaov Ef.!E Keti '[(X vba'ta I'.W'trlQ, 6 etLQWV 'tOU K6af.!OU -ri]v cXf.!CtQ'tiav.

'0 a[Qwv 'tTJV cXf.!CtQ'tiav 'tOU KOOf.!OU, Tji\Scc; KvQtE, f.!OQcp11v bovi\ov i\a~wv, Bamtaf.!a ai'rwv, 6 1-!TJ yvouc; cXf.!CtQ'tLCtV. Elboaav aE ubet'tet, Ketl EcpO~tl8TJOCtV" mxi\tv· dboaav OE ubet'tet, KVQLE, Keti £cj:>o~r181laav, £cj:>o~t18TJaav· avv'tQOf.!Oc; y£yovEv 6 I1Q6bQOf.!Oc;, Keti £~611aE Mywv· ITwc; cj:>W'tlOEl 6 i\uxvoc; 'tO cj:>wc;; nwc; XELQ08E'ttlOEl boi.!i\oc; 'tOV Man6'tllVi aylaaov Ef.!E Keti 'r:Ct vba'ta, Keti 'r:Ct ubet'ICt I'.W'ttlQ" nn ... ['tEQE'tlOf.!Ct'Iet]· aylaaov Ef.!E, I'.W'trlQ, Keti'ta vba'ta ...

[ ... 6 CtlQWV 'tOU KOOf.!OU 'tTJV cXf.!CtQ'ILetv.J

Conclusion

1. Sticheron At the voice of the one crying in the desert, 'Prepare the way of the Lord', you came, Lord, having taken the form of a servant, asking for Baptism, though you did not know sin. The waters saw you and were afraid. The Forerunner trembled and cried out, saying, 'How will the lamp enlighten the Light? The servant place his hand on the Master? Saviour, who take away the sin of the world, make me and the waters holy'.

2. Anagrammatismos

You Lord, who take away the sin of the world, came in the form of a servant asking for baptism, though you did not know sin. The waters saw you and were afraid; again: the waters saw you, Lord, and were afraid, were afraid. The Forerunner trembled and cried out, saying, 'How will the lamp enlighten the Light? The servant place his hand on the Master? Make me and the waters holy, and the waters, 0 Saviour; titi. .. [teretismata]; make me holy, 0 Saviour, and the waters,

[retuming to the original hymn by Sophronios: ... who take away the sin of the world'.]

We have seen how the nearly constant performance of song in Byzantine traditions of urban and monastic worship formed soundscapes consisting of a number of elements. Fundamental to the aural qualities of any given service or rite were its singing personnel, whose identity, training and number determined its sonic palette of vocal timbre, register and volume. The cathedral


rites of Late Antiquity possessed rich and varied vocal resources: soloists chosen from among the higher and lower clergy chanted in alternation with men, eunuchs, children and women who sang either together as congregations or were deployed in ensembles of various sizes and competencies. At the opposite end of the spectrum of sonic variety wer the dwellings of ascetics living alone or in small sketes, whose inhabitants were repeatedly discouraged by spiritual authorities fr m partaking in the sorts of singing cultivated in cathedrals. Falling som where in between were pru·odtia1 churche , about which we know very little, and coenobitic monasteries, about which we know a great deal.

Foundational and liturgical typika reveal that the musical establishments of monastic communities waxed and waned according to their economic resources, contemporary piTitual trends, and th litmgical preferences of their found r or admini trator .95 The performance of Stoudite worship in strict accordance with liturgical rubrics would have required the presence of musical pers n.nel roughly qui valent in skill and organisation to the ensembl of spedalist cantors at the Great Churd1, whose lectionaries and call ctions f florid solo and choral psalmody the Stoudites had borrowed. A Neo-Sabai:tic vigil celebrated according to the Diataxis attributed to Philotheos Kokkinos requir d a musical foundation resembling that of a Stoudite house, consisting of a priest, a deacon, a canona.rch, two reader , and a pair of choirs led by soloists.96 oticeably missing in both monastic traditions, however, were the opportunities for sonic contrast afforded by the multiplicity of choirs that were permanent or seasonal fixtures of a cathedral soundscape, although one might catch echoes of Hagia Sophia's large ensemble of readers in the chanting of psalms by an entire Stoudite community.

If singers provided the range of colours available for acoustic design in Byzantine worship, the sonic contours and temporal dimensions of individual services were determined largely by their texts, rubrics and music. The ConstantinopoHtan Sung Office remaii1ed throughout its long history textually and musically con ervative at heart, with the melodically chanted portions of its services f vespers and orthros consisting almost exclusively

f antiphonal and responsorial biblical psalmody.97 Sonic variety witltin these archaic p almodicforms was created chiefly through the carefully eo rdinated alt rnation f multiple soloists and groups of i.ngers, ach of which was

95

96

97

Dubowchik, 'Singing with the Angels', pp. 278-96.

Migne, Pntrologia Graeca 154, cols 745-66.

Arranz, 'Les grandes etapes', p. 45 has observed that the Divine Offices of

Constantinople and Palestine, despite copious borrowing from each other, were ultimately

irreducible. For examples of such borrowings in the rite of the Great Church, see Parenti, 'TI1e

athedral Rite', pp. 454-66; and A. Lingas, 'Late Byzantine Cathedral Liturgy and the Service of the Fumacc', in R.S. Nelson and S.E.J. Gerstel (eds), Approaching the Holy Mountain: Art nnd Liturgy a/ SI Calheriue's Mounstery in the Sinai (Turnhout, 2011), pp. 183-230.


allotted music suited to their vocal gifts and hierarchical rank. Aural contrast between units of psalmody relied in part on differences of modal assignment, textual form, choice of vocal personnel, and prevailing melodic idiom. Melodic styles could be distinguished from one another by a host of means, including extensions or contractions of ambitus, changes to the pr valenc f conjunct or disjunct intervals, and modificati n to the relative prominence of text or music. In some instances, especially imp rtant. or solemn points within individual services or liturgical cycles of the Great Chmch were marked by the singing of chants that were, as is the case with the Pentecost Teleutaion, extraordinary in their vocal demands, musical form, and length.

The cathedral rite of the Anastasis in Jerusalem initially shared patterns of musical organisation with its Constantinopolitan cow1terpart that were, for urban churches throughout the Roman world, the common legacy of the Late Antique 'psalmodic movement': a hierarchically arranged multiplicity of musical ministries, the singing of biblical texts with congregational participation facilitated through the addition of refrains, and the involvement of urban monastics.98 In the Holy City and its surrounding monasteries, however, this inheritance underwent profound musical and textual development marked by the introduction of the Octoechos and the gradual replacement of fixed refrains with successive layers of extra-scriptural hymnody. Modal variety and textual variability having already become well established in the urban and monastic rites of Palestine, at the turn of the ninth century St Theodore the Stoudite initiated the further musical enrichment of the Sabai:te Divine Office at his monastery in Constantinople by fusing to it elaborate chants from the Great Church and continuing with renewed vigour the process of filling out its liturgical cycles of hymnody. As the Palestinian morning and evening offices were approaching total saturation with kanons, stichera, and other hymns, important new currents emerged in Byzantine worship and chant: the consolidation of Neo-Sabai:tic liturgy, the perfection of Middle Byzantine Notation, and the rise of kalophonia. On the basis of these developments, Koukouzeles and his colleagues renewed the soundscape of Paleologan worship by re-working established repertories and, more importantly, creating new ones of unprecedented melodic and formal complexity. Their suites of eponymous compositions for the festal psalms of the all-night vigil created new centres of musical gravity within the Neo-Sabai"tic Divine Office, whilst their vast repertories of optional kalophonic substitutes and codas for traditional chants introduced significant contingencies to late Byzantine liturgy. Each kalophonic hymn was invested with latent potential to suspend and restructure the customary musical, textual and temporal orders of worship, but this would only be actualised when a choirmaster, ecclesiarch or celebrant authorised its performance.

98 About which, see McKinnon, 'Desert Monasticism' .


There were, of course, other variable factor that help d to shape the sonic landscape in particular bmes and places. The urban rites of Constantinople and Jerusalem, as we briefly noted abov , were closely wedded to their re pectiv native physical envh·onments through the meditun f stational litLLrgy. That of Jerusalem was closely integrated with the Holy City's network of shrines commemorating vents in th life of 01rist and his followers, whilst worship in the capita l acqt1ired distinctive characteristics in tandem with th development of its own acred topography and churcl1 architecture.

Transpo ition of ither dte to a new environment inevitably altered th ound cape of worship, affecting it perhaps throt1gh the us of other singers

or by b ing situated within the acoustics of a differ nt cl1urcl1. Compromises f variou sorts were also inescapable, particularly when local resource fai led

to match those required for the celebration of a rite in its native environment. In the case of the Stoudites, their transplantation of usages from Palestine and Constantinopl to their urban mona tery proved to b a fruitful synthesis, eventually yielding offices richly adorn d hynmody and cath dral psalmody that were perform d in d1.urches that wer physically and, with their iconographic programmes, visually matched to their eel bration.99 Other such adaptations accompanied the consolidation of N!:!o-Saba'itic liturgy, including the building of monastic cl1urches without an ambo, which had been the traditional location of the singers in Hagia Sophia and in arller Stoudite worship. Thu displaced from their former cenh·al location, the two choirs normally stood apart in N o-Saba"itic se1·vices, facing ach other across tl1e nave from new positions along opp sing walls. 100

There would, of course, have been other sorts of discrepancies betw en the ideal presentati.on of Byzantine wor hip in service books and its sonic r ali ations. Temporary ones wou ld have arisen from such vagaries of life as singers who fell ill and were therefore either absent or vocally impaired on a particular day. Although we know very Littl about Byzantine parochial w r b.ip prior to the influx of Palestinian hymn dy, it is probably safe to a sum that in smaller churd1 s the elaborate antiphonal and r spons rial formats of Late Antique cathed1·aJ p almody would have been adapted to local resources, perhaps even to the lowest common musical denominator of syllabic call-and-response I d by a single cantor (a occu rs today in some village or mission churches celebrating the m dern Byzantine dte). AJong the ame lines, it wa probably no more likely in th middle age than it is today

that very chLLrch performing Stoud.ite or Neo-Saba!tic vespers ()r orthros po ses ed the .full complement of musically trained personnel presuppo ed

99 Taft, 'The Liturgy of the Great Church', pp. 67-74, ha ident-ified a 'Middle Byzantine Synthesis' embracing iconography, church architecture, and post-Iconoclast- liturgical piety. I address the theological links between this 'Middle Byzantine Synthesis' nnd Stoudite hymnody in 'Sunday Matins', pp. 151-4.

100 Spyrakou, Oi ;ropoi V'C1';1 Tui v, pp. 432-43.


by their rubrics and n tated hantbooks. We find confirmation of thi fr m Symeon of Thessaloni.ca, who, in the preface to a defence of the Sung Office, observed somewhat sarca tically that one advantage the Palestinian Divine Office po sessed over that of Hagia Sophia wa that it could be performed by a single person:

In the monasteries here, and in almost all of the churches, the order followed

is that of the Jerusalem Typikon of Saint Sabas. For this can be performed by

one person, having been compiled by monks, and is often celebrated without

chants [xwQlc; 4aflcnwv] in the cenobitic monasteries.101

Given what we have already learnt ab ut the music of a eo-Saba'itic allnight vigil, these remarks shouLd not read as being universally applicable to the sound cape of late Byzantine monastic liturgy. The absence of chanting, however, d es correspond well to what we know of ascetic devotions. Gregory of Sinai, for example, advises,

When you stand and psalmodiz by yourself, recite the Trisagion and then pray in your sotd or your i.ntellect, making your intellect pay attention to your heart; and recite two or three psalms and a few penitential troparia but

without chanting them [rivw fltAovc;]: as St John Klimakos confirms, people at this stage of spiritual develop m nt do not chant. 102

Since the devoti nal per:fonnance of hym11S, psalms, and ev n entireoffic s with little or no singing was also facilitat d in 'Byzantium, as Parpulov has shown, by the production of Psalt rs and Horologia for private use, we should not assume that chants were always rendered melodically, let alone in sh·ict accord with their notated exemplars. 1030n the other hand, thei'e would have been Uttle point in devoting so mud1 effort towards the d.ocum ntation of worshjp if their texts, rubl'ics and chants fmmd in Byzantin litlll'gical manu cript were not performed with di ligence in at least some Byzantin chlll'ches.

The potential for the existence of significant gaps between acoustic design and actual practice that we have just identified can perhaps be .most profitably viewed as another variabl for the student of Byzantine litw-gical soun.dscapes to consider alongside th ign.ificant changes ovel· time we have alxeady noted

101 Symeon of Thessalonike, Treatise on Prayer, p. 22, Migne, Patrologia Graeca 155, col. 556. I examine the claims that Symeon makes in his comparison of the two rites in Lingas, 'How Musical was the "Sung Office"?'

102 Gregory of Sinai, 'Different Ways of Psalmodizing', tr. in Palmer, Sherrard and Ware, The Philokalia, p. 267.

103 G.R. Parpulov, 'Psalters and Personal Piety in Byzantium', in P. Magdalino and R.S. Nelson (eds), The Old Testament in Byzantium, Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine Symposia and Colloquia (Washington, D.C., 2010), pp. 81-93.


in musical forms and styles, vocal resources, and physical settings for worship. Due in part to the wide geographic and chronological span of this information, in this study we have been able to engage only in passing with the question of how particular soundscapes might have been perceived as promoting or manifesting particular theologies. To do so more fully, we would need first to consider the interpretive frameworks that shaped the experiences of participants in Byzantine worship, which ranged from the notion, inherited from Ancient Greek philosophy and science, that music possesses important ethical and cosmic properties to theological traditions of interpreting earthly worship anagogically as a living icon of the perpetual heavenly liturgy served by angels. 1 0~

I have argued elsewhere that the proliferation of Palestinian hymnody and kalophonia are, for their resp cl:ive eras, developments that reflected contemporary th ological under tandings, best known to modern readers from writings on icons, of how the material world might serve as an agent of theopbany. 105 The vast repertorie of Hagiopolite a.nct Stoudite hymns did thi by rendering Cod and his aints incarnate in exegetical songs sung by human voice , the t xts of which supplemented or replaced Old Testament psalm dy in which events relating to Christ's new dispensation could be evoked only indirectly throt1gh typology. The transformations of th usual temporal, musical and textual orders of Byzantine liturgy effected by kalophonia, on the other hand, offered a musical analogue both to hesychast theology's vigorous reassertion of divine immanence and to the tendency in late Byzantine iconography to collapse the boundaries between human and angelic worship, most strikingly when singers transcended human speech in the performance of teretis1nata. 106 Despite employing different musical and textual means, the soundscapes of Stoudite and Neo-Saba"itic liturgy shared a common goal of leading worshippers from earth to heaven.

104 Starting points for considering these frameworks an~ : A.T, Vourles, 'H iEpct

l{JcrilfLWbia we; pt aov ct)'(<J)' Ij<; (l-IGLKOflOV(]£1(();\oytK1) J.IEMTI)! (Athens, 1995); A.T. Vourles,

LloypcrTLJW!]OLJmi iit/JEL;;; Tlj<; 'OpBob6/:;ov l{Jcri\III!J r'Sica; (Athens, 1994); E. Ferguson, 'Toward

a Patristic Theology of Music' , Stud in Patristica 24 (J 993), pp. 266-83; E.A. Moutsopoulos, 'Modal "Ethos" in Byzantine Music: Ethical Tradition and Aesthetical Problematic', Jnhrlmch der Osterreichiscl!en Byzantinistik 32 (1982), pp. 3-6; C. Stapert, A New Song for 1111 Old World: Musical Thought in the Early Clwrc/1 (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge, 2007), pp. 42-59, 105-

8 and 203-9; and J. Begbie, Resou11ding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music (Grand

Rapids, MI, 2007), pp. 77-95. 105 Lingas, 'Hesychasm', pp. 167-8; and Lingas, 'Sunday Matins', pp. 137-54. 106 The connection between teretismata and angelic praise is finally made explicit in

a post-Byzantine treatise by the Cretan Hieromonk Gerasimos Vlachos. 'D1e theological and

pastoral history of kratemata is summarised in G. Anastasiou, T1r IC(Jil:T1J/111'Tcr. cn1)v tfm;\TtKI)

TEXV1], Institute of Byzantine Mu i ology Studies 12 (Athens, 2005), pp. 98-119.

Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies

Publications 18

EXPERIENCING BYZANTIUM

Papers from the 44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Newcastle and Durham,

April2011

edited by

Claire Nesbitt Durham University, UK

and

Mark Jackson Newcastle University, UK

ASH GATE

© Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Claire Nesbitt and Mark Jackson have asserted their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.

Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Wey Court East

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The British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies (44th : 2011 : Newcastle upon Tyne, England ;

Durham, England) Experiencing Byzantium: Papers from the 44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Newcastle and Durham, April2011 /edited by Claire Nesbitt and Mark Jackson.

pages cm. - (Publications of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies) 1. Byzantine Empire -Civilization- Congresses. 2. Byzantine Empire- ReligionCongresses. 3. Byzantine Empire- Social life and customs- Congresses. 4. Art, Byzantine -Congresses. 5. Cultural landscapes -Byzantine Empire -Congresses. 6. Identity (Pyschology) -Byzantine Empire -Congresses. I. Nesbitt, Claire, editor of compilation. II. Jackson, Mark, 1973- editor of compilation. Ill. Title. DF52l.S67 2013 949.5'013- dc23

ISBN ISBN ISBN

9781472412294(hbk) 9781472416704 (ebk-PDF) 9781472416711 (ebk-ePUB)

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SOCIETY FOR THE PROMOTION OF BYZANTINE STUDIES- PUBLICATION 18

MIX Paper from

responsible sources

~~s FSC® C013056 Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall.

Contents

List of Illustrations and Tables List of Contributors Editors' Preface

1. Claire Nesbitt & Mark Jackson

Section I: Experiencing Art

2. Liz James

3. Warren T. Woodfin

Section II: Experiencing Faith

4. Beatrice Caseau

5. Andrew Louth

6. Nikolaos Karydis

Section III: Experiencing Landscape

7. Nikolas Bakirtzis

Experiencing Byzantium

Things: Art and Experience in Byzantium

Repetition and Replication: Sacred and Secular Patterned

vii xi

xiii

1

17

Textiles 35

Experiencing the Sacred 59

Experiencing the Liturgy in Byzantium 79

Different Approaches to an Early Byzantine Monument: Procopius and lbn Battuta on the Church of St John at Ephesos

Locating Byzantine Monasteries: Spatial Considerations and Strategies in the Rural Landscape

89

113

From Experiencing Byzantium Copyright© 2013 by the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road, Farnham, Surrey, GU9 7PT, Great Britain.

V

vi CONTENTS

8. Katie Green Experiencing Politiko: New Methodologies for Analysing the Landscape of a Rural Byzantine Society

9. Vicky Manolopoulou Processing Emotion: Litanies in Byzantine Constantinople

Section IV: Experiencing Ritual

10. Heather Hunter-Crawley The Cross of Light: Experiencing Divine Presence in Byzantine Syria

11. Sophie V Moore Experiencing Mid-Byzantine Mortuary Practice: Shrouding the Dead

Section V: Experiencing Self

12. Scott Ashley How Icelanders Experienced Byzantium, Real and Imagined

13. Myrto Hatzaki Experiencing Physical Beauty in Byzantium: The Body and the Ideal

14. Oion C. Smythe Experiencing Self: How Mid-Byzantine Historians Presented their Experience

Section VI: Experiencing Stories

15. Margaret Mullett Experiencing the Byzantine Text, Experiencing the Byzantine Tent

F

16. Georgia Frank

17. Alexander Lingas 133

153 Index

175

195

213

233

251

269

CONTENTS

Sensing Ascension in Early Byzantium

From Earth to Heaven: The Changing Musical Soundscape of Byzantine Liturgy

vii

293

311

359

..

List of Illustrations and Tables

Figures

2.1 A demonstration of the difficulty in carrying Projecta's Casket (author's photograph) 20

2.2 Interior view of Projecta's Casket (author's photograph) 21 3.1 Diptych portrait of Stilicho with his wife Serena and

son Eucherios, c. 400, Cathedral Treasury, Monza (Alinari I Art Resource, NY) 40

3.2 Green Chasuble of St Ulrich, tenth century, Augsburg, Parish of SS. Ulrich and Afra (Pfarramt St Ulrich und Afra, Augsburg) 45

3.3a Silk with scenes from the Infancy of the Virgin, late fourth or early fifth century, Riggisberg, Abegg-Stiftung (© Abegg-Stiftung, CH-3132 Riggisberg, 1988; photograph: Christoph von Vidtg) 48

3.3b Reconstruction drawing of silk with scenes from the Infancy of the Virgin, late fourth or early fifth century, Riggisberg, Abegg-Stiftung (©Abegg-Stiftung, CH-3132; Riggisberg drawing: Barbara Matuella) 48

3.4 Epitrachelion of Photios, late fourteenth- or early fifteenth century, Moscow, Kremlin Armoury (© State Historical and Cultural Museum-Preserve, 'The Moscow Kremlin', photograph by V. V. Blagov, 2009) 51

3.5 Fragments of embroidery from the Chungul Kurgan burial, early thirteenth century, Kiev, Archaeological Museum (photograph courtesy of Yuriy Rassamakin, Kiev) 52

3.6 Christ as High Priest, silk and metallic textile, sixteenth century, Washington D.C., Dumbarton Oaks(© Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection, Washington D.C.) 53

4.1a Curtain pushed by the hand, Mosaic of the Visitation, Basilica Euphrasiana, Porec, Ravenna (author's photograph) 65

4.1b Curtain pushed by the hand, at San Vitale, Ravenna (author's photograph) 65


ix

X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES xi

4.2 Curtain hook in situ at the Basilica Euphrasiana, Porec 7.4 General view of the monastic complex from the East (author's photograph) 66 (author's photograph) 129

4.3 Doorway of the narthex at Hagia Sophia, Istanbul 8.1 Retrogressive landscape analysis of Politiko (author's photograph) 68 results(© author) 145

4.4 Curtains shown in the mosaic panel at Sant' Apollinare 8.2 Historic Landscape Characterization (HLC) of Politiko in Classe (author's photograph) 68 (©author) 147

4.5 A bread stamp showing a cross and a blessing for a 9.1 Anamnesis of the great earthquake: Commemorative litany family reading: 'Eulogia eu ef hmas ke epi ta tekna hmvn' illuminated in the Menologion, Vat.gr. 1613, fol. 142 (© 2012 translated 'Blessing of the Lord on us and our children' Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana) 161 (author's photograph) 75 9.2 Anamnesis of the fears of the great and unexpected

6.1 Church of St John, Ephesos, reconstructed plan of earthquake: Illumination of the historic litany that is 'Justinian's church' at ground level, showing main described in the text of the same folio. Vat.gr. 1613, phases (author's copyright) 92 fol. 350 (© 2012 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana) 161

6.2 Church of St John, Ephesos, west cross arm, north aisle, 9.3 Litanic use of sites in Constantinople related to view of mid-twentieth-century restorations (author's civic events, according to the Typicon of Hagia Sophia photograph) 94 (author's copyright) 166

6.3 The main vault fragments of the church of St John at Ephesos 10.1 Sion paten, 58 cm diameter, sixth century, Dumbarton (author's photograph) 94 Oaks, Byzantine Collection, Washington, DC BZ.1963.36.2

6.4 Church of St John, Ephesos, axonometric reconstruction (author's photograph) 180 (author's copyright) 96 10.2 Processional Cross, 154 x 102.9 x 5.1 cm, sixth century,

6.5 Church of St John, Ephesos, plan of the fifth-century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund, 1950 'pre-Justinianic' church according to H. Hormann (left), (50.5.3) (author's photograph) 182 and cut-away axonometric of the initial Mausoleum that 10.3 Bronze open-work standing lamp with cruciform handle was later incorporated in the fabric of the cruciform, from Egypt, 32.1 cm high, sixth-seventh century, timber-roofed basilica (author's copyright) 96 Benaki Museum, Athens, fE 11509 (© 2006 Benaki

6.6 Church of St John, Ephesos, detail of the south colonnade Museum Athens) 185 of the nave; the Imperial monograms of Justinian and 10.4 Cruciform window, monastery at southern Dana, Theodora can be distinguished on the faces of the Ionic Jabal Zawiyye, Dead Cities (©Department of Art & impost block capitals (author's photograph) 103 Archaeology, Princeton University) 186

6.7 Church of St John, Ephesos, detail of the passage between 13.1 Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and Empress Zoe the southwest pier of the crossing and the southeast pier before Christ, mosaic, Church of St Sophia, Constantinople of the nave (author's photograph) 105 (1042-1055) (photographed by Flavia Nessi) 235

6.8 Church of St John, Ephesos, first phase of the vaulted 13.2 Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and Empress Zoe church and Baptistery (author's reconstruction of plan) 106 (detail) (photographed by Flavia Nessi) 247

6.9 San Marco, Venice, view of the nave looking east (author's photograph) 109

7.1 Map of the region of Paphos noting the location of the Tables monastery of St Neophytos (© Nikolas Bakirtzis and Woody Hanson) 118 17.1 Musical styles in the chants of festal vespers celebrated

7.2 The site of the old encleistra of Neophytos according to the rite of the Great Church of Hagia Sophia (author's photograph) 120 (the 'sung' or 'asmatic' office) 324

7.3 General view of the Skete Prodromou with Aliakmon river 17.2 Outline of the Invariable opening psalm of asmatic vespers 326 in the background (author's photograph) 125

xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES

17.3 The final Antiphon ('Teleutaion') prior to the Lamplighting Psalms as sung at the asmatic 'kneeling' vespers of Pentecost according to the Psaltikon MS Florence Ashburnhamensis 64. With additional rubrics from the Euchologion MS Grottaferrata f.~. 35 (GROT) and the Typikon of San Salvatore di Messina MS Mess. gr. 115 (MES) 330

17.4 Musical styles in festal vespers celebrated according to the Palestinian Horologion; musical styles in brackets have been inferred from rubrics and/or later notated sources. 346

17.5 The texts of a sticheron by Sophronios of Jerusalem and the Anagrammatismos based on it by John Koukouzeles 353

Musical Examples

17.1 Choral refrains for Psalm 85 from MS Athens EBE 2061 17.1a For the Feasts of Saints (fol. 50r) 17.1b For Easter Sunday (fol. 48r) 17.1c For the Saturday Evenings (and Feasts of the

Holy Cross) (fol. 21 r)

329 329 329

329

List of Contributors

Scott Ashley, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University

Nikolas Bakirtzis, Assistant Professor and Marie Curie Fellow, The Cyprus Institute

Beatrice Caseau, Universite de Paris-Sorbonne

Georgia Frank, Colgate University, USA

Katie Green, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University

Myrto Hatzaki, The A. G. Leventis Foundation, Athens

Heather Hunter-Crawley, University of Bristol

Mark P.C. Jackson, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University

Liz James, Professor of Art History, University of Sussex

Nikolaos D. Karydis, Lecturer in Architecture, University of Kent

Alexander Lingas, Centre for Music Studies, City University London

Andrew Louth FBA, Professor Emeritus of Patristic and Byzantine Studies, Durham University, Visiting Professor of Eastern Orthodox Theology, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam

Vicky Manolopoulou, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University


xiii