Byzantine Music and Its Place in the Liturgy

Author(s): Egon Wellesz

Source: Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 81st Sess. (1954 - 1955), pp. 13-28
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Musical Association
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 14 DECEMBER I954

Byzantine Music and its Place

in the Liturgy
EGON WELLESZ

Chairman
FRANK HOWES, C.B.E. (PRESIDENT)

TWENTY-TWO YEARS AGO I had the privilege of talking to the

Royal Musical Association about Byzantine music. At that
time, Professor Tillyard and I had succeeded in transcribing
some Byzantine hymns, after spending long years in trying to
solve the riddle of their musical notation. I soon realised that
Byzantine liturgical music was not inferior to plainsong and
that it was well worth pursuing these studies more widely in
order to compare the treasury of Byzantine hymns-hidden in
a large number of manuscripts dating from the ninth to the
fifteenth century-with the melodies of the Western Church.
Such a task, however, could be carried out only on the basis
of a comparative study of the principal manuscripts. Fortun-
ately in 1931 Professor Carsten Hoeg of Copenhagen, a
classical scholar who had become interested in our studies,
invited us on behalf of the Royal Danish Academy, to come to
Copenhagen. Here the MonumentaMusicae Byzantinae was
founded. With the generous support of the Danish Academy
Professor Hoeg went in I932 to Athens, Mount Athos,
Jerusalem and Mount Sinai, and brought back a large number
of photographs of the most important hymnological manu-
scripts. Then only were we able to begin transcribing and
publishing on a large scale. The war interrupted our publica-
tions, but not our work.
Enough material was now available to prove the close con-
nection between the Byzantine melodies and those of the
Western Churches, particularly the Ambrosian Church of
Milan and that of Benevento.
The result of my studies in the relationship of Byzantine and
Latin Chant appeared in my book EasternElementsin Western
13
r4 BYZANTINE MUSIC AND ITS PLACE IN THE LITURGY

Chant.' Here I showed that the close affinity of some of the

Byzantine melodies with those of the Western Church leads us
to assume that both derived from a common source, the
Church ofJerusalem. One step in the clarification of my views
on this most intricate subject was provided by the investiga-
tion into the bilingual chants in Beneventan Antiphonaries.
These chants give evidence of the introduction of Greek
chants into the Beneventan liturgy during the sixth to the
ninth centuries, that is the period when Sicily, South Italy and
large parts of Middle Italy were in the hands of the Byzantine
conquerors. But we must bear in mind a great difference in the
treatment of these chants in the East and in the West. Whereas
liturgical music in Byzantium changed considerably from the
seventh to the twelfth century and became increasingly florid,
these melodies on Italian soil were kept unchanged, like
sacred relics.
One of the most striking examples of bilingual chant is the
Antiphon Ote to stavro-'O quando in cruce', sung on Good
Friday during the 'Adoration of the Cross', which we have
recorded for Vol. II of the Historyof 1Musicin Sound.
It is the complaint of Christ to the Jews who have crucified
Him, and the poet in the role of the Narrator introduces the
voice of Our Lord. This chant rises in dramatic expression, as
Christ accuses the Jews of their ingratitude: 'What return do
you make to me? Evil for goodness. In return for a pillar of
fire, you have nailed me to a cross. In return for a cloud, you
have dug me a tomb.' The chant was sung in Greek by the
choir on the left, and repeated, to the same melody, in Latin,
by the choir on the right. We shall hear the Latin version.
(HeretheLecturer playeda recordingof'O quandoin cruce'.2)
And now we shall hear the version as it was sung in Con-
stantinople and the Byzantine churches at the same time as
the Beneventan manuscript was written, that is in the twelfth
century. This melody is much more ornamented, but de-
veloped from the simpler, original melody. This later version
shows all the sumptuousness of late Byzantine liturgy, where

' Issued in Monum. Mus. Byz., Amer. Ser. i (Copenhagen, 1947).

2
Examples I, 2, 3 and 5 are recorded in Vol. II of the History of Music in
Sound, H.M.V., on sides I and 2, and transcribed in the Handbook to
the volume pp. 11-14.
BYZANTINE MUSIC AND ITS PLACE IN THE LITURGY I5
the words are almost swallowed up by the lavishness of the
ornamentation.
(HeretheLecturer playeda recording of 'Ote to stavro'.)
This is the Chant of the Eastern Empire at the period when
its civilisation had made its imprint on Bulgarians and
Russians: when it had suffered and overcome the conquest of
the Crusaders and, in face of all political dangers, had begun
a spiritual revival which was to prove so strong in the monas-
teries that it survived through the Turkish conquest and the
fall of Constantinople and has lived on to the present day in the
Slavonic countries which have preserved their Byzantine
inheritance. From the sources which tell us about music in
the Byzantine Empire we know that secular music played a
great part in daily life. Nothing of this music, however, has
survived; parchment was too precious a material to be used
for such an ephemeral art. It is the music of the liturgy alone
which has come down to us, and this music must be treated in
the context, and as part of, the liturgy.
Let us speak first of the style of Byzantine music. There are
three different types of chant in Byzantine liturgy: The first
group consists of mainly syllabic chants in which one note
corresponds to each syllable of the text. This type is used for
the nine Odes of the kanons,in which all the stanzas of an Ode
have the same metre, and are sung to the tune of the first
stanza, the model stanza, called heirmos.Later on we shall
hear an example of such a tune.
The second group consists of chants in which one, or two,
or even three notes, and eventually a short melisma, cor-
respond to a syllable. Such melodies are composed to monos-
trophic poems of 8-I2 lines which are called stichera.Though
they are in a metrical form they can be compared to the
Antiphons in Latin liturgy. I give as an example the chant
'Doxa en hypstistois'-'Gloriain Excelsis'.
(HeretheLecturer playeda recording of Doxa.)
The third group comprises the melismatic chants which
seem to have had a richly ornamented character from the
beginning. They are the liturgical chants proper, namely the
Alleluias, the Doxologies, the Trisagion(The Western Sanctus),
the Cheroubikos,the Angel-song sung during the 'Great
Entrance' at Mass, the Communion chants and the Akathistus,
B
i6 BYZANTINE MUSIC AND ITS PLACE IN THE LITURGY

sung during the night of the feast of the Annunciation on

25 March.
I give as an example a Trisagion:
(HeretheLecturer playeda recordof' Trisagion'.3)
The chants in the first, the 'hirmological' style, remained
unchanged from the ninth century, from which our first manu-
scripts date, to the fifteenth. Those of the second group, the
Stichera,gradually became more ornamented, as we have heard
from the two versions of the 'Ote to stavro-Oquando in cruce'.
The greatest change took place in the melismatic chants of
the third group, the liturgical chants proper. I have just
finished the transcription of its most important piece, the
Akathistus, from a South Italian codex, dating from the
second half of the thirteenth century. The melody of the
Akathistushymn is very florid, though not too richly orna-
mented; but we possessa fragment of the hymn, written in the
notation of the tenth century which shows a much simpler
style. We possess, on the other hand, manuscripts of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries which show a lavishly rich
ornamentation, so lavish indeed that it is impossible to under-
stand the words.
In all three types, however, the core of the melody remains
unchanged. We have definite proof-at least for the melodies
of the Heirmologion-thata continuous musical tradition existed.
In I932 Carsten Hoeg made two sets of photographic copies
of a Heirmologion in Jerusalem; one in the usual way, the other
through filter. The first set shows the melody in the so-called
'round notation' of the thirteenth century, which we can now
decipher. The second set, that taken through filter, reveals an
archaic stage of early Byzantine notation, in which syllables
occur without neumes.
This shows that in the ninth century the chanters used the
music books as an aide-memoire: they knew the music by heart.
But when the repertory increased, it was found necessary to
have a notation in which each interval of the melodic line
was clearly indicated. Why waste parchment and write a new
Heirmologion? The scribe added all the new neumes to the old
ones, supplied every syllable with a sign, and the revised
manuscript gave all the necessary detail to the precentor who
conducted the choir.
3 Record from the Phonoth6que Nationale in Paris.
BYZANTINE MUSIC AND ITS PLACE IN THE LITURGY I7

No better evidence for the continuity of the melodic

tradition could be found than that provided by this manu-
script.
We can go even further and assume that melodies whose
texts date from the beginning of kanonwriting, from the days
of Andrew of Crete, John Damascene and Cosmas of Jerusa-
len, may have survived in their original shape. It is not the
conservative attitude of the Orthodox Church which I would
cite to support this hypothesis (the Greek Orthodox Church is
more dynamic than is generally assumed) but rather its
mystical theology, which gives us the explanation for the
veneration of the Icons as well as for the conception that the
melodies which we hear in the Divine Service are 'echos'
(apechemata) of the songs which are sung in heaven through the
ranks of the angels and made audible to human ears through
the Prophets, the Saints and God-inspired musicians. The
shape of these hymns, therefore, is sacred; the composer's
task can only be to embellish the framework; the main idea of
melody must be transmitted unchanged.
This is, as you well know, Pseudo-Dionysian theology, based
on Plotinian philosophy. There is, however, a fundamental
difference between the two. In the Enneads of Plotinus the
musician is led by means of philosophy to the perception of
Intelligible Beauty. The Christian author, who wrote under
the name of Dionysius the Areopagite regards the musician as
a recipient of the hymns sung in heaven, which become
perceptible to him by divine grace.
The Dionysian conception of sacred chant as divinely
inspired-even more than that: as the earthly realisation of
the chant of the angels-helps us to understand the importance
of its place in the liturgy, the mystical atmosphere which
surrounds the service, its ecstatic, its dramatic character, so
different from the soberness of the Roman rite, particularly
the Roman rite from the middle of the fourth century to the
time of Gregory the Great, whose reform of the liturgical
books can be fixed between 595 and 598.
This is exactly the period in which the Patriarch of Con-
stantinople, who came fourth in the ecclesiastical hierarchy
(the order is: Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople)
gradually rose to the first place in the East; it is the period
in which the spirit of the Byzantine rite develops, making the
Emperor the supreme authority in all ecclesiastical and
I8 BYZANTINE MUSIC AND ITS PLACE IN THE LITURGY

secular functions, thus creating from the beginning a double

anni circulusof feasts and ceremonies. Unlike the West, the
Orthodox Church retained in the Mass the early Christian
character of congregational service. One can see from the
Mass formularies of the fifth to the seventh centuries that
during the 'Entrance' of the Clergy the TrisagionHymn was
sung, between the lessons from the Prophets and the Epistle
an antiphon, and between the cantillation of the Epistle and
the Gospel an Alleluia. The reading of the Gospel was fol-
lowed by the chanting of a homily in which the text of the
Gospel was expounded. This homily in poetical prose was
replaced by Romanos, who went to Constantinople in the
days of Anastasios I (491-518), by a poetical form, the
kontakion.
The connection between the kontakionand the preceding
lesson from the Gospel was often explicitly established in the
first sentence. Thus, for example, Romanos begins the kontakion
of the Ten Virgins, expounding Matthew XXV, v-14, with the
following words:
'Hearing the holy parable of the Virgins from the
Gospel, I was distraught, revolving thoughts and reason-
ings; how it came about that the ten virgins preserved the
virtue of undefiled virginity, while for five their toil was
barren.'
Such an opening can be traced back to Basil of Seleucia in the
fifth century, to Ephraem the Syrian in the fourth, to Melito,
Bishop of Sardes in the second. The recently discovered Greek
text of Melito's Homily on the Passion has a very similar way
of opening to that of Romanos: 'The Scripture of the Hebrew
Exodus has been read, and the words of the mystery have been
explained; how the sheep is sacrificed and how the people are
saved.'
Romanos was a Syrian by birth, Ephraem was a Syrian,
and Melito's homily seems to have been written originally in
Syriac. We are facing the problem that has been passionately
discussed during the last fifty years without a satisfactory
solution-was the kontakionas a poetical genre of Greek or of
Semitic origin, and is the language of Romanos the finest
development of Neo-Atticism or of Semitic poetry, translated
into Greek?I should like to reaffirm the view which I expressed
in my History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography,supported by
the evidence which I have gathered since its publication.
BYZANTINE MUSIC AND ITS PLACE IN THE LITURGY I9

Christian worship, its liturgy and chant, have taken over,

particularly in the Office but also in the Mass, essential
elements from the Jewish service of the Synagogue. We must
remember that the psalms and the canticles, hymns and
spiritual songs (the Trisagion,the Alleluia and similar melis-
matic chants) derived from the Synagogue, and so did the
cantillation of pericopes from the Books of Moses and the
Prophets which in Byzantine liturgy, as well as in the Ambro-
sian, Gallican, and Mozarabic rites were read as the first of
the three lessons. Even in its present debased form the solemn
readings of the Jews from Babylon and from Yemen show
clearly the closest relationship with both Byzantine and
WVesterncantillation.
Let us now turn to the question of the origin and growth of
the kontakion.It is well known that hymn-writing flourished
in Syria in the fourth century and that Saint Ephraem, one of
the greatest Syrian poets, was famous for his poetical homilies.
Romanos, born at Beyrout of Jewish parents, is separated
from Ephraem by nearly one and a half centuries and in this
period the transformation of the Syriac poetical homily, the
mimrd, into the Byzantine form of the kontakionmust have
taken place. Comparisons between mimrdsby Ephraem and
kontakiaby Romanos have shown that Romanos was un-
doubtedly Ephraem's disciple, but a disciple who surpassed
his master; measured by the highest standards, Romanos must
be regarded as one of the greatest poets.
In answering the problem of the origin and character of the
kontakionI would say that it was of Syriac origin and that
Romanos, who mastered the form, followed Syriac patterns
in the choice of his themes and his expression. Finally, in
answer to the question whether Romanos was dependent on
Greek models, I can think of no better reply than that given
by Emereau: 'Romanos, fils de la Syrie, pensait en syrien et
chantait en grec.'
Towards the end of the seventh century the kontakiadis-
appeared from the liturgical books and were replaced by a new
poetical form, the kanon.We find in all books and essays on
Byzantine literature words of regret at the sudden change of
taste which caused the abrupt disappearance of the kontakiaof
which only a few stanzas remained in the service books. The
reason for such a fundamental alteration cannot be explained,
I think, on artistic grounds; we must look for a change in the
20 BYZANTINE MUSIC AND ITS PLACE IN THE LITURGY

liturgy which would explain why it was impossible to continue

to sing the kontakiain the Office.
We find an indication in the nineteenth decree of the
Council in Trulloof 692 which in its hundred and two decrees
codified the entire organisation of Eastern religious life. The
nineteenth Canon of the Council advises the heads of churches
to expound daily the words of the Gospel to the clergy and
laity, and makes the sermon obligatory on Sundays. The
sermon must be preached after the reading of the Gospel.
This was the place of the kontakion,the sung homily. To
include both would have meant a duplication. The kontakion
had therefore to be replaced by the spoken sermon. A single
kontakion,however, was saved complete and has kept its place
in the service down to our own times; this is the Akathistus,and
the reason for its preservation is that the legehd connected it
with the miraculous liberation of Constantinople from the
siege of the Avars by the Blessed Virgin.
The service, however, now needed a new genre, similar in
importance to the former kontakionand this was provided by
the kanon, modelled on the pattern of the nine Odes, or
Canticles, in the Morning Office. The first use of the new
genre is ascribed to Andrew, Archbishop of Crete, who was
born about 660 in Damascus. The origin of the form, how-
ever, goes back to the early Christian practice of inserting
responses between the verses of the psalms or canticles, and
gradually enlarging these insertions to short stanzas called
troparia.The next step was to link the tropariaof each Ode
together, and finally the Odes themselves, and to give all a
common theme.
Let us take, for example, the Canon for Easter Day by
John Damascene, which is called 'The Golden Canon' or
'The Queen of Canons'. The theme is the Resurrection of
Christ, the rising from death to life which all enjoy who live
in Christ. The task of the poet was to work out this idea in
every Ode and to connect it with the original theme of each
of the nine canticles. Thus, since the first canticle was Moses'
'Song of Victory' from Exodus XV, v. 1-20, the combination
of these two themes had to be established. And we shall see
in how masterly a way the problem was solved. I take Neale's
prose translation of the first stanza.
'On the Day of Resurrection let us, o people, be clothed
with gladness; it is the Pascha, the Pascha of the Lord;
BYZANTINE MUSIC AND ITS PLACE IN THE LITURGY 2I1

for from death to life, and from earth to heaven, has

Christ Our Lord caused us to pass over, singing the
Hymn of Victory.'
The musical rendering is perfect. The melody of the hymn
expresses the jubilant mood of the Church after the unending
steam of mournful chants which had been heard during Lent.
Christ has risen, and the tune breathes the gladness of the
faithful who enter the new Jerusalem. Just as Moses had led
his people through the Red Sea, so Christ leads the faithful,
step by step-listen to the five descending notes of diebibasen-
through the sea of sins to heaven.
(Here the Lecturerplayed a recordingof 'Anastaseos Imera'.)
Musically the kanon brought a greater variety into the
service, since each of the nine Odes had its own melody.
Moreover, in order to intensify the effect, the number of
stanzas of each Ode which had to be sung was soon reduced to
four or three-this explains the name triodiongiven to the
Service book which contained the hymns from the Sunday of
the Publican and Pharisee till Easter Eve, and during this
period of the ecclesiastical year the first three stanzas of each
Ode were sung.
To increase the splendour of the service various monos-
trophic chants were inserted between the Odes, and after the
Sixth Ode a chapter from the Synaxarium, the book of the acts
of the saints, was read. Thus a most elaborate structure was
created in which the melodies of the kanonwere preceded and
interrupted by others of a more melismatic character.
Among these the sticheraare the most interesting group from
the musical point of view. They are monostrophic tropariaof
an elaborate type for the whole of the ecclesiastical year, and
are midway between the syllabic heirmoi and the richly
ornamented liturgical chants.
An element characteristic of the sticherais their dramatic
character and the introduction of direct speech. This type of
hymn goes back to the Syriac poetical genre of the 'S6githa',
hymns in the form of a dialogue, which flourished from the
fifth century onwards.
The Byzantine hymnographers who wrote sticheratrans-
formed their Syriac models in a way which arouses our
highest admiration. I have in mind particularly the twelve
Nativity stichera,ascribed to Sophronius, Patriarch of Jeru-
22 BYZANTINE MUSIC AND ITS PLACE IN THE LITURGY

salem from 634 to 638. This cycle proves that there was only
a small gap between the great period of the Syriac Biblical
play of the fourth and fifth centuries and the beginnings of
the Byzantine Nativity play in the seventh century. The
dramatispersonaeare Joseph and Mary, and the narrator, who
also acts as chorus, as in Greek tragedy.
It is interesting to find that the first development towards a
mystery play occurred in the Eastern Church at such an early
date, and that its origins are again connected with Syriac
liturgical poetry. No attempt, however, was made to develop
the semi-dramatic form into an actual liturgical drama. One
might say that the Syro-Byzantine Nativity cycle was dramatic
in the same sense as the Italian oratorio at the beginning of
the seventeenth century; it was never intended for repre-
sentation on the stage. The development in the West was
different. The Syriac patterns influenced hymnwriters in
Western Europe where, from the sixth century onwards, the
Syrians who had the monopoly of transcontinental trade, had
flourishing colonies in Italy, France and Spain. The great
achievement of the West consisted in carrying the semi-
dramatic form of the East on to the stage in the medieval
mystery play.
The melodies of the stichera, particularly those of the
Nativity and Holy Week, are comparable in quality to the
most accomplished Graduals and Offertoria of the Western
Church. When I first began to decipher and transcribe Byzan-
tine melodies from the Heirmologion as well as from the Sticher-
arion I was aware that the melodies, composed in one of the
eight modes, were built up of a number of formulae character-
istic of the mode. Already in 1913 Idelsohn had drawn atten-
tion to this principle of composition in Arabic music. A few
years later I happened to study the melodies of the Serbian
Oktoechosand found there the same principle of building up
melodies from formulae.
Serbia's religious and artistic relations with the Byzantine
Empire are well known. But we must also take into account the
close connections between the monasteries in the East and
Serbia. Serbian monks went on the pilgrimage to Jerusalem
and there copied codices for their monasteries; the route of
these pilgrims went over Mount Athos where the Chilandar
monastery, founded by King Stephen I Nemanja, when he
retired to the Holy Mountain in 1195, had become an
BYZANTINE MUSIC AND ITS PLACE IN THE LITURGY 23

important Serbian religious house. Further investigation

showed that this principle of composition, based on formulae
typical of the mode, is a feature characteristic of the Near and
Middle East.
The mode in which a melody is written has nothing to do
with Greek musical theory, but designates a group of chants,
all of which contain the same formulae. The introduction of
the Oktoechosin Byzantine liturgical chant goes back, as
A. Baumstark has shown, to Severus of Antioch who between
512 and 518 organised Syriac chant on calendarian principles,
and recently E. Werner has shown that the Oktoechosgoes
back before Gnostic and Neo-Platonic ideas to cosmological
speculations which probably originated in Babylonia.
Let us take the eleventh troparionfrom the Nativity cycle
which brings the Virgin's answer to Joseph's complaint,4 and
see in what way the Byzantine musician's mind worked, in
what the artistic, creative function consisted. The formulae
which are given, are adapted in the most subtle way to the
words; and there are connecting passages, leading from one
formula to another. Here it is that the musician was allowed
to work freely; here he found ways of creating something new:
above all he could exercise his art in setting the melodic
formulae to the lines and words where they fitted best.
You may ask if I am not introducing modern conceptions
into the melodies of the Byzantine composers in assuming the
use of formulae as the basis of their technique. I do not think
I am. For example, in the twelfth century Antiphonarium
Ambrosianum, Add. MS 34,209 of the British Museum,
ff. 52, 53, we find that the scribe marked the formulae of an
Alleluia with Roman ciphers: I, I, II, III, II, III, IV, V, I,
etc. This shows that he was fully conscious of the principle of
composition in these melodies.
In the same way the Byzantine hymn writers applied the
formula technique of composition which was taught as part
of the training in singing. Nothing, indeed, was left to chance
in these hymns. Music and poetry were written with the same
skill, with the same mastery in handling the material. The
same is true of the music of the ceremonies, of the acclama-
tions or, to use the Greek term, the potychronia.A few examples
only have so far been found and these are acclamations with
4 See E. Wellesz, A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography,Oxford
1949, PP. 306-8.
24 BYZANTINE MUSIC AND ITS PLACE IN THE LITURGY

which the Emperor was greeted when he visited a monastery

or a church. One of these acclamations, which Professor
Mode II Cod. Dal., fol. 92r
a

^ ')J)
X3; - ',' 5
....
'O - TE - -
Ta rap-
p - -' - TI -
a!

Trpc - xKE - TO, TTrp6 Br - XE

OE d rrr- ci - powV,

6 -ca - T6v Ti 6- pcv P 'y -

E- -rp6s ac
a2 b

? - j- h
"-.-" L' 'r r _F~
q6
.-. --yvo -&-..Try
govv-- A-co -
bi c

TO i -L oi 9p - KT-V _U-" - v.
pt - oV, AoI - TTbV,, . .
d
A n A\

_>Yrou
I
Tr6
I -v -
n- hh
y 1) rav - Ta ---_--------

- TO aa PCdim. acc.
'
^
-p-^jn
=?l~~~~~~~~~ r' c_c'th
"g
? --- 76LTO
ina - - - o - ~ov v -
p

c
f\A __ I - I

l;-J-,';-r
-vo - CV eE - 65 KT--e -_t y- &p
LFr
' ._--
._--
Tillyard has deciphered, was sung at the Pantokrator Monas-
tery on Mount Athos in honour of the Emperor John VIII
BYZANTINE MUSIC AND ITS PLACE IN THE LITURGY 25

Palaeologus (1425-48) and of the Patriarch Joseph II

( 425-39)-
Dom Huglo of Solesmes has rightly drawn attention to the
close relationship of this Acclamation to the Kyrie 'Jesu
Redemptor' (no. I4 of the Vaticana).

rlTo - XC TaC -
TT- T V Ba - at - i Ov

Ky - ri- e - - le - i-son
This cannot have been an isolated case. We may therefore
assume that the music of the ceremonies too was worked out
on the same principles as liturgical chant. There is, in fact, no
strong division between religious and secular ceremonial; the
Byzantine Emperor is, as you know, at once Imperatorand
summussacerdos.
To sum up: the study of Byzantine chant gives us an insight
into the development of Byzantine liturgy, since the cantilla-
tion of the lessons, the chanting of the psalms, and the singing
of hymns and liturgical melodies play an ever increasing part
in the Office and in the Mass. The poetical forms from the
monostrophic tropariato the complex structure of the kanon
cannot be studied from the philological and literary side alone:
one must take into account the fact that the hymnographer
was poet and musician in one; even if a new poem was set to
a given melody or, at a later stage, new melodies were set to
a hymn already in liturgical use, he had to be composer as
well as poet to fit one to the other.
Studies in Byzantine music started at the beginning of this
century. The difficulty of finding the clue for the deciphering
of the notation made it necessary to concentrate first on this
problem. The second stage was to transcribe as many melodies
as possible, in order to survey all the types and their variants.
Now, however, I think we have reached the point at which
we can say that we have acquired a fairly good knowledge of
the shape, the characteristics and the quality of Byzantine
music5; and from this knowledge I should say that Byzantine
5 The editors of MonumwntaMusicae Byzantinaehave published six volumes
of Byzantine melodies in the series 'Transcripta': two more will follow
in 1955-56.
26 BYZANTINE MUSIC AND ITS PLACE IN THE LITURGY

music holds place equal in greatness to that of plainsong.

I should also like to emphasise that the study of early medieval
music is incomplete unless Byzantine chant is given its proper
place.
May I illustrate this by a few points:
(i) The Mozarabic Alleluia has no jubilus, that is, the
long melisma attached to the final vowel 'a' as the
Gregorian Alleluia has, and various theories were put
forward in order to explain why it is missing. The
simple explanation is that its structure is identical
with that of the Byzantine Alleluia, and that both
derive from the Hebrew Alleluia, which also has no
jubilus.
(2) The origin of the sequence remains obscure if we
believe that it originated in the West. When the
transcription of the akathistusis published it will be
seen that both have the same strophic structure and
similar cadences.
(3) Byzantine chants were accompanied by a drone bass.
The sustained notes of a plainsong fragment which is
found in the twelfth century organa have a similar
effect. In old Slavonic chant which, as we now know,
derives directly from Byzantine chant, the same
technique must have been used. I should like you to
hear at the end of this talk an Ukrainian liturgical
chant in which the drone is harmonised. Here the
spirit of Byzantine chant lives on and bears witness
to the grandeur of Byzantine piety which created it
fourteen hundred years ago.
(HeretheLecturer playeda recordof 'UkrainianChant'.)

DISCUSSION
The Chairman said it was quite clear that this new study of
Byzantine music was long overdue, if only as a necessary
corrective to our Western bias. Until the early twentieth
century, it had apparently occurred to no one to ask about the
nature of the music, although the rite itself had been studied
for many centuries. He had four points to raise: first, regarding
the drone, which was most remarkable, as Byzantine music
was generally thought to be monodic. Secondly, the matter of
mnemonic notation reminded him that he had once heard on
BYZANTINE MUSIC AND ITS PLACE IN THE LITURGY 27

Mount Athos a celebrant being 'reminded' by another singing

at a higher pitch, the effect suggesting a dissonant counter-
point in canon. Thirdly, had it ever occurred to the Lecturer,
in the absence of secular Byzantine music, to leap over the
centuries and study modern Clephtic ballads? Lastly, how
much of the chant consisted of psalms? Were they reserved for
a special part of the service?
The Lecturer replied that we had no reference showing
when the drone, the Ison, was introduced into Byzantine
music; presumably the practice came from the East and may
date back to the time of the Arab conquest of Palestine and
Syria; that he thought that the organum derived from the
Eastern drone. He agreed that the effect of'mnemonic' singing
caused occasionally a distortion of the melody. The Chair-
man's suggestion about the Clephtic ballads was tantalising
but hardly probable. Under the Turks the Greek Church had
no money: the priests had to make their living by teaching the
sons of the Turkish Overlords to sing Turkish music, and so
gradually took up their way of singing. The present style of
singing in the Greek churches therefore differs widely from the
the Byzantine tradition. The Lecturer found an article by
Mahmoud Raghib in the Revue de Mlusicologie6, based on the
report of a Turkish traveller, which proved that the Byzan-
tines, contrary to our former information, had organs in their
churches; but the traveller said that the Turks could not use
them, because they produced intervals larger than those in
Turkish music. This shows that the present singing in Greek
churches based on the Turkish small intervals is of a relatively
late date. As to the singing of the psalms, the Lecturer said
that their cantillation was more florid than that in the West.
In reply to Dr. Edward Allam, the Lecturer said that the
art of reading Byzantine notation was practically lost in the
seventeenth century; the subsequent decline was halted at
the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Chrysanthos
introduced a new notation. Dr. Allam also asked if the Greek
Orthodox Church had an oral tradition deriving from Byzan-
tine music. The Lecturer answered that this could perhaps be
detected in certain monasteries, particularly in the use of the
psalms, which dated from about I500, the era of the great
Byzantine composers.
Miss Rosemary Hughes asked if the transcription of Byzan-
6 'Descriptions d'orgues', etc.
1930.
28 BYZANTINE MUSIC AND ITS PLACE IN THE LITURGY

tine music involved problems comparable to those of Gregorian

chant, and whether it threw any light on the controversy
involved in the Solesmes theory? The Lecturer thought not,
because of the very precise rhythmical indications in the
notation and their explanation given in contemporary
treatises.
Dr. Inglis Gundry asked whether the method of composing
Byzantine music from formulae was not unlike that of the
Indian Ragas. The Lecturer agreed, but denied any influence
of the one on the other.