The Greek folk and ecclesiastical (church) Music

1.         Definition

            The term “Byzantine Music” or better “chanting music” is used to define the expression of the Orthodox experience through vocal music from the very first Christian years incessantly to present. This music, which started being registered  since the 8^th or 9^th century is preserved alive up to day in the Easter Orthodox Church. On the contrary, the Western Church changed the ancient Traditional Music, introducing in the worship the polyphony and instrumental music.

2.   The Purpose of “Chanting Art”

            The chanting art is not purporting to arouse with the grandiose or bombastic style the emotional world of man, but with its complete circular motion to serve the speech and address to all potentialities of human being: to emotion, with melody; to intellect with poetry and the entirely complete musical form, and to volition with its beautiful and, many times full of passion, melodic lines or “thesis”, as they are usually called.

3.   The eight Modes-The three Genus

            In Byzantine Music there are three Genus: the diatonic, the chromatic and enharmonic and the eight Modes: The first, the second, the third, the forth as well as their plagal. That is, plagal first, plagal second, varis and plagal forth. The three genus as well as the eight modes have their origin in the ancient Greek Music and more specifically in the three Genus and the eight ancient Greek Modes.

There are four Sounds in the diatonic Genus: the first, the forth, the plagal first and the plagal forth; in the diatonic, two, the second and the plagal second; and in the enharmonic also two, the third and varis. The last one is called varis and not plagal third because it has the lowest (deepest) basis, the note Zo, (B, Si).

4          Early Influences on Byzantine Music

Byzantine Music started since the early Christians years, taking and assimilating a lot elements from the Greek as well as from the Jewish Music

5          Rhythm-Tempo

Another significant item in Chanting Art are the mixed rhythms, which it uses. In a Melody one can find mixed the Time-Signature of two, three and four-four or five-eights and nine-eights and so on and so forth. That is why the rhythm is called tonal. The accented syllable always coincides with the strong beat of the bar, that is, the thesis. This element makes it even more lively, because the rhythmic changes are considered a basic element of the folk Music as well.

6          Monophonic Music- Pedal

Since the early Christians years ecclesiastical music is characterize by simplicity and plainness and basically it was monophonic accompanied by pedal single or in many cases double, that is, holding the note of the tonic or the tonic and dominant. The beautiful and at times intricate move of melodic lines or Thesis didn’t allow it to evolve into a polyphonic music, but it remained monophonic with the accompaniment of a simple pedal in order to help and support the melodic lines, which the chanter or the choir sang.

Saint John the Chrysostom reefers to those pedal-holders who held the basis usually an octave lower on the tonic note of the mode.

It is said that in the 5^th or 6^th century in Constantinople the chanting-choir used to stand right before the temple and in a different room there used to be bass voice funnels which worked either hydraulically, with water, or with air and produced a very low pedal.

7          Vocal -Instrumental Music Church Organ

Quite early the use of musical instruments in warship, during holy services and liturgies was forbidden with Apostolic Decrees. Harmony, in its contemporary connotation was unknown as it was in the ancient music and only the diapason Symphony was in use (8ve to sharp or to bass).

            In spite of this different instruments close to the way that the Byzantine Modes were moving, were used outside church for teaching purposes or for different rituals etc. In is significant that Easter  Church used the Church organ first, which donated later to Pope Pious B’.

8          Choir-Monody (Solo)-Female Choir-Antiphonal Music

Already as early as the first century all the congregation used to chant together in Church. Because, there was a hiatus more often than not, the right and left choirs were formed which sang antiphonally (interchangeably). It is mentioned that during the time of Saint Ignatius the Antiohean there was a right male semi-church choir and a left female semi-church choir.

The historian and philosopher Philo the Jew mentions that the Christians were divided into two choruses, male and female in the center of the place of prayer, and at times one choir would sing and at times both of them antiphonically (interchangeably) and still at other times all of them simultaneously as one choir. Psalmody, in other words, was executed combinely by men women and children.

            Up to the 4^th century Church music was simple and the diatonic Genus was prevalent. Due to the fact that a lot of heretics, especially followers of Areius, use to use hedonistic melodies from attractive sailors, travelogue, altar songs that’s why the church stresses new melodies in chromatic and mixed genera, whose content was antiheretical

10        Secular Music

The Ancient Greek Tradition, the priestly round dances, in pair dancing or ballism (mbalos), the exclamations of the dancers, the songs sung during feasts, the love songs, the wedding songs, the chamber songs, the serenades, the wishing songs, the labor songs etc. carry on steadily in constant evolution. An example, which survives to present, is the “dance of Isaiah”.

There were also the lamentations for the dead. The church giving a tone of sadness intertwined with joy and hope, established in funeral services the use of plagal a’ mode, which is joyful key. There were also orchestras with wind, percussion and string instruments which played with the fiddlestick in order to accompany the wedding processions, the dances and in order to invite to the dinners of the dignitaries.

11.       Great composers- Music Notation

Saint Ambrose Mediolanon (of Milan) was a great theoretician and devised a special music method, based on ansient Greek music. He used the diatonic modes, as can be seen from his Musical “Antiphonary” which was used as a basis for the further development of ecclesiastical music in the west. He always remained, however, a devotee of the eastern Ecclesiastical Music Tradition.

12.       Hymnographer-Composers

            The first composers or Hymnographers were supreme state or church dignitaries, as Hierarchs or Emperors, as Leon the 6^th the wise and his son Constantine.

Until about the 7^th and 8^th century the composers were called poets and Hymnographers, mainly because same person used to write both the melody and the verse. From the 8^th century on the poet is called hymnographer and the composer Melodist. Musical notation up to the 7^th century is called “alphabetical”.

            From the 8^th to the 12^th century we have the “ecphonetical” notation, in which the pitch of the voice is marked with aspirations signs and accents during a melodical recitation (like prosodic Greek language). There were also even developed forms of notation for chanting, having always a comprehensive style, i.e., a single sign corresponded to a whole phrase or “thesis”.

13.       Octoechos

            Saint John of Damascus was the first to write the octoechos, and to arrange the modes into eight ones, as we have then today, and then he grouped them into three genera. There is also a reference to the Cypriot Octoechos of the 7^th century, which is at the library of the Brithish Museum.

            In the 5^th century, during the emperor Justinian, there were twenty-five chanters and a hundred readers. In the racetrack and in the palace the pneumatic Organ was in use, which was an evolution of “hydraulis” of the Alexandrean era. The organ accompanied the acclamations to the kings. Some of these melodies we have in Eucharistic liturgies, such as the Megalynarion (Magnificat) of the Candlemas.

            Very frequently in the fractions of the racetrack chanters use to sing the “Vasilikia” and “Apelatikia” hymns, which were praising the “Apelats”. Similar songs are nowadays the klephts.

            The notes of the chanting Art originated in the first seven letters of the Greek Alphabet. ABCDEFG. In the first Christian years the psalms of David, the nine biblical odes, as well as the exclamations “Hallelujah”, “Lord, have mercy on us” and “Thank God, Thank God” were used as hymns.

            The first Christian Music was characterized by simplicity and plainness of structure, something which was dictated not only by the difficult conditions in which the Christians of the first three centuries used to live, but also the spirit of the new revelational religion.

            The language both of the Christian texts and the Ecclesiastical poetry was from the very beginning the Greek language. The music, therefore, as a natural consequent, should fit the prosody of the language.

            Two of the elements which the ecclesiastical music loaned from ancient Greece and assimilated organically was the simplicity according to the platonic ideal concerning the morality of music and the submission of melody to speech, which prevailed in its strictest form, the vocal music.

14. Musical manuscripts of the first centuries AD

The only surviving musical manuscript from around the first three centuries, i.e., the hymn to the Holy Trinity, which was found on a papyrus Oxyrhichus from Egypt (3rd century AD), even though it doesn’t belong to the Orthodox Church, but to a heresy, the Gnostics, is written in the ancient Greek notation in a lydian mode and a spondaic rhythm. Melody is submitted to and serves speech, something which is clearly Greek.

            The incessant continuity of the Tradition in the Greek Orthodox Church can also be seen from the fact that a lot of hymns are still in use today.

            The antiphonal way of interpretation was also known in the ancient Greek secular music, in the feasts songs and chorostasia (ballrooms).

            Church admonishes the chanters to chant plainly,

with attention and devoutness.

            The institution of choirmaster or “chorolectis” also appears in church music.

15        Contemporary Greek Composers

            Nikos Scalkotas was one of the few Greek composers who excelled in the sector of classical Music. His contribution to music was similar to that of Bella Bartok and Anton Dvorak. He was a student of Veil, Zarnah and especially Schoenberc. In Greece he lived in oblivion. He collected Greek traditional Music and composed a lot of pieces for orchestra, chamber music and other kinds of music, based on the twelve-note system, and the Greek traditional music.