Psalmody & Hymnography
9 topics
ImportantPsalmody & HymnographyByzantine ChantThe psaltic art, the singing of the Greek Church, and the root of every Orthodox chant tradition. It is a single melody, without harmony or instruments, sung over a held note, the ison, and it moves in the eight modes of the Octoechos, four authentic and four plagal, each with its own scale and character. Its notation, the neumes, marks the steps of the voice rather than fixed pitches, and was simplified into the New Method by Chrysanthos of Madytos and his colleagues in 1814, the form cantors still read. There are three ways of singing: the quick syllabic heirmologic style of the canons, the fuller sticheraric style of the Vespers hymns, and the slow, ornamented papadic style of the Cherubic Hymn and the communion verses, whose great master was St John Koukouzelis, called the angel-voiced. The Slavic chants grew from it. In 2019 UNESCO listed it as part of the world’s heritage, which is a fair description of how the Church has always treated it.ImportantPsalmody & HymnographyByzantine NeumesByzantine chant is not written on a stave. Its signs record intervals and movement rather than pitches: each neume says how far to go from where you are and how, so the notation is relative and a melody can be sung from any starting note. Older layers of it, from the tenth century onward, also carry great signs governing tempo, expression and whole formulae. The system in use now is the New Method devised by the Three Teachers, Chrysanthos, Gregory and Chourmouzios, around 1814, which simplified the signs and made the older repertory transcribable without replacing the principle.ImportantPsalmody & HymnographySt. John KoukouzelisThe greatest of Byzantine composers, a boy from Dyrrachium taken into the imperial choir at Constantinople for his voice, who fled the court and hid on Athos as a goatherd until someone recognised the singing. He reformed the notation, composed and arranged an enormous repertory, and his name is bound up with the kalophonic or beautified style, in which a short text is unfolded at very great length with wordless syllables woven into it. The Theotokos is said to have appeared to him in the chapel where he chanted and to have left a gold coin in his hand. Feast: October 1.ImportantPsalmody & HymnographyThe Ison (The Holding Note)One or more singers hold a single note while the melody moves above it. The ison is not a harmony and not a bass line: it is the tonic of the mode made audible, so that every interval the melody sings is heard against the ground it belongs to. It moves only when the mode moves, and a good isokrates changes it late and quietly. Theologically it is the closest thing the psaltic art has to an argument about itself, since the many voices sing one melody over one unchanging note, and the Byzantine tradition has never wanted a texture in which the voices go their own ways.ImportantPsalmody & HymnographyThe Three Genres of ChantByzantine chant sings at three speeds, and the speed is a decision about what the text is for. Heirmologic is close to one note a syllable, brisk, and used where a lot of text has to pass: canons, the ordinary of the Liturgy. Sticheraric is slower and more ornamented, for the stichera that comment on a feast. Papadic is slow, melismatic and may take several minutes over a single line, and it belongs to the moments when the words matter less than the standing still: the Cherubic Hymn, the communion verse. The same mode and the same text sound like different pieces in the three genres.ImportantPsalmody & HymnographyZnamenny ChantThe chant of the Russian Church from the conversion until the seventeenth century, written in hook notation, the kryuki, and sung in unison without harmony or instruments. It is built from formulae rather than from scales: a singer learns the popevki, the melodic turns proper to each of the eight tones, and a chant is assembled from them. Polyphony arriving from the West in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries very nearly killed it, and it survived among the Old Believers and in a few monasteries. It has been recovering since the late nineteenth century, and many Russian parishes now sing at least the tones from it.Psalmody & HymnographyKontakion & TroparionTroparion: a short hymn summarizing the feast or saint being celebrated. Kontakion: originally a longer poetic sermon (St. Romanos the Melodist wrote the greatest examples); now usually a single stanza. Every feast and saint has assigned troparia and kontakia. The Akathist Hymn to the Theotokos is the most famous kontakion.Psalmody & HymnographyOctoechos (Eight Tones)The system of eight modes (tones) used in Orthodox worship, rotating weekly over an eight-week cycle. Each tone has a distinct character and associated hymns. Attributed in its liturgical form to St. John of Damascus. Governs the Sunday hymns, troparia, and kontakia throughout the year.Psalmody & HymnographySlavic Church SingingThe singing of the Slavic Churches, which began as Byzantine chant carried north with the Slavonic books of Sts Cyril and Methodius and their disciples. In Russia it grew into Znamenny chant, a single melodic line in its own notation, and for five centuries that was the sound of the Russian Church. From the seventeenth century singing in parts came in through Ukraine, and in the eighteenth an Italian style of concert writing, of which Dmitry Bortniansky was the master. The nineteenth century fixed a plainer common chant, the Obikhod, and at its end the Moscow Synodal school, Kastalsky, Chesnokov and Rachmaninoff, whose All-Night Vigil of 1915 is its crown, turned back to the old chants and set them for choir. The Old Believers still sing Znamenny in unison, and monasteries such as Valaam and the Kiev Caves keep chants of their own.