Byzantium
The origins of Byzantine music, as with the liturgical chanting of other eastern Mediterranean traditions, are lost in the mists of time. The earliest notated music (with the single exception of the hymn found in the late third century Oxyrhynchus papyrus, which is probably the latest piece to be recorded in the notation of ancient Greece) comes from the 10th century, and it is only in the 12th that properly decipherable notation appears. The liturgical foundations had been laid during the fourth century, and the two most frequently-used liturgies—the word Liturgy specifically meaning what in the West is called the Mass—in the Orthodox Church today are named after their traditionally presumed authors, St John Chrysostom (c.347-407) and St Basil the Great (c.330-379). These became standard within the following few centuries, and were essentially complete by the time that musical notation began to appear in written sources.
Between the 5th and the 11th centuries, the basic corpus of liturgical texts was completed by such outstanding figures as St Romanos the Melodist (5th-6th centuries), Sophronios, Patriarch of Jerusalem (638), St Andrew of Crete (7th century) and St John of Damascus (7th-8th centuries). To the latter—o ymnographos, the hymnographer—is traditionally attributed the creation of the eight tone system (oktoikhos), which is of course paralleled in the eight modes of western plainchant.
The so-called “Middle Byzantine” notation, used from just before 1200 to about 1500, which had developed from the earlier “Coislin” type of early Byzantine notation (the other was the “Chartres”; these notations are named after two manuscripts in which they are exemplified) is susceptible to transcription. With a knowledge of the melodic formulae and echoi (modes) one can overcome the lack of indication of exact sizes of intervals (major and minor). This system remained essentially unchanged through the period of Late Byzantine notation, from the mid 15th to the early 19th century, the time of the Chrysanthine reform—a complete revision of the notation, depending for the first time on printed books, initiated in 1814 by Archbishop Chrysanthos, Hourmouzios Hartophylax and Grigorios Protopsaltis. This monumental undertaking is the basis of the system in use in Greek churches today.
It should be pointed out that in Greece, the term “Byzantine” is used to cover all ecclesiastical chanting of the past or present of the Greek Orthodox Church. Western musicologists tend to use this term with reference only to Greek chant up the 15th century; that between the 15th and 18th centuries is termed “neo-Byzantine”, and that of the reform of the early 19th century as “neo-Greek” or “Chrysanthine”. It should also be noted that instruments are traditionally forbidden in Orthodox worship, the human voice being considered the best and only suitable means of praising God. In the United States of America it has, however, unfortunately become standard practice in many churches of the Greek Archdiocese to employ organs; similarly in Greece there are a few churches which do so for complicated historical and political reasons [Disc 7 provides a unique historical perspective on this issue, including as it does early recordings complete with harmonium and military band!].
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