Is Byzantine Octoechos a musical system?
495097#7
The early Byzantine church developed a system of eight musical modes (the octoechos), which served as a model for medieval European chant theorists when they developed their own modal classification system starting in the 9th century. The success of the Western synthesis of this system with elements from the fourth book of "De institutione musica" of Boethius, created the false impression that the Byzantine octoechos was inherited directly from ancient Greece.
Dorian mode
37804492#1
From a Phanariot point of view, the re-formulation of the Octoechos and its melodic models according to the New Method was neither a simplification of the Byzantine tradition nor an adaption to Western tonality and its method of an heptaphonic solfeggio, just based on one tone system (σύστημα κατὰ ἑπταφωνίαν). Quite the opposite, as a universal approach to music traditions of the Mediterranean it was rather based on the integrative power of the psaltic art and the Papadike, which can be traced back to the Hagiopolitan Octoechos and its exchange with Oriental music traditions since more than thousand years.
Neobyzantine Octoechos
37804492#3
Unlike Western tonality and music theory the universal theory of the Phanariotes does not distinguish between major and minor scales, even if they transcribed Western polyphony into Byzantine neumes, and in fact, the majority of the models of the Byzantine Octoechos, as they are performed in Mediterranean churches by traditional singers, would lose their proper intonation and expression, if they were played on a conventionally tuned piano. Exactly the familiarity with microtonal intervals was an advantage, which made the Chrysanthine or Neobyzantine notation as a medium of transmission more universal than any Western notation system. Among others even Western staff notation and Eastern neume notation had been used for transcriptions of Ottoman classical music, despite their specific traditional background.
Neobyzantine Octoechos
2091468#0
Oktōēchos (here transcribed "Octoechos"; Greek: ; from ὀκτώ "eight" and ἦχος "sound, mode" called echos; Slavonic: Осмогласие, "Osmoglasie" from о́смь "eight" and гласъ, Glagolitic: , "voice, sound") is the eight-mode system used for the composition of religious chant in Byzantine, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Latin and Slavic churches since the Middle Ages. In a modified form the octoechos is still regarded as the foundation of the tradition of monodic chant in the Byzantine Rite today.
Octoechos
37804492#23
The difference between the "diapason" and the "trochos system" corresponded somehow with the oral melos transmission of the 18th century, documented by the manuscripts and the printed editions of the "New Music School of the Patriarchate", and the written transmission of the 14th-century chant manuscripts (revised heirmologia, sticheraria, Akolouthiai, and Kontakaria) which fit rather to the Octoechos disposition of the "trochos system". Chrysanthos' theory aimed to bridge these discrepancies and the "exegetic transcription" or translation of late Byzantine notation into his notation system. This way the "exegesis" had become an important tool to justify the innovations of the 18th century within the background of the Papadic tradition of psaltic art.
Neobyzantine Octoechos
38078804#4
Students of Orthodox chant today often memorize the history of Byzantine chant in three periods, identified by the names John of Damascus (675/676-749) as the "beginning", John Koukouzeles (c. 1280-1360) as the "flower" (Papadic Octoechos), and Chrysanthos of Madytos (c. 1770-c. 1840) as the master of the living tradition today (Neobyzantine Octoechos). The latter has the reputation, that he once connected in his time the current tradition with the past of Byzantine chant, which was in fact the work of at least four generations of teachers at the New Music School of the Patriarchate.
Hagiopolitan Octoechos
2091468#1
The names ascribed to the eight tones differ in translations into Church Slavonic. The Slavonic system counted the plagioi echoi as Glas 5, 6, 7, and 8. For reference, these differences are shown here together with the Ancient Greek names of the octave species according to the Hagiopolites and to the chant treatises and tonaries of Carolingian theorists. Fifteenth-century composers like Manuel Chrysaphes, Lampadarios at the Court of Palaiologan Constantinople exchanged the Phrygian with the Lydian. The Armenian names and their temporal cycles are represented in the article about the hymn books octoechos and parakletike.
Southern Slavs use the Byzantine musical system and, nonetheless, use the variant numbering that is always found in Church Slavonic texts.
Octoechos
38078804#37
The introduction of the eight mode system in Western chant traditions was part of the Carolingian reform. Officially, it was motivated by Pope Adrian I's confirmation of an earlier Eastern chant reform during the synode in 787, during which he accepted the reform for the Western traditions as well. Nevertheless, a Carolingian interest for the Byzantine octoechos can already be dated back to a visit some years earlier, when a Byzantine legacy introduced a series of antiphons sung during a procession for Epiphany. These antiphons served as a model for the eight modes according to the Hagiopolitan system.
Hagiopolitan Octoechos
988707#39
Concerning the octoechos, the Hagiopolitan system is characterised as a system of eight diatonic echoi with two additional phthorai (nenano and nana) which were used by John of Damascus and Cosmas, but not by Joseph the Confessor who obviously preferred the diatonic mele of plagios devteros and plagios tetartos.
Byzantine music
37804492#119
The Chrysanthine notation and the New Method, which were also used in the field of "exoteric music" in "makam" publications like "Pandora", "Evterpe", "Kaliphonos Seiren", and "Apanthisma e Mecmue", and the redefinition of the Byzantine tradition adapted to the common tone system of the tambur frets, had been a great temptation to fill the gaps of the four Octoechos cycles with new melodies and intervals which had been imported from other music traditions of the Levantic community of musicians. "Makam" compositions were not always identified as "makam", and especially related genres, like compositions of the "heirmologic melos" in kalophonic elaboration, rather defined as papadic melos and sung during the Divine Liturgies for instance as "koinonikon" (while the heirmologion was a traditional part of the daily morning service), became the favorite genre for these experiments. The "heirmos kalophonikos" was made popular by Petros Bereketis during the 17th century, despite the fact that it already existed since the rise of "psaltic art" in the last 150 years of the Byzantine Empire.
Neobyzantine Octoechos