Orthodox Music: Chant

By Rev. Dr. Ivan Moody

It is not surprising to read that, according to the chronicles, it was the beauty of the liturgy which attracted the attention of Prince Vladimir’s emissaries to Constantinople in the 10th century. “We did not know whether we were in Heaven or on earth”, they said after attending a celebration at Aghia Sophia.

Liturgical art in Orthodoxy is an expression of prayer, which in turn is a means of living eschatologically, ever conscious of the Revelation (Apokálypsis in Greek): the transfiguration of our everyday lives in order to prepare the coming of the heavenly Kingdom. Without bearing this in mind, it is impossible to understand the essence of Eastern Orthodox art, or to understand quite why their visit to the City (as Constantinople was traditionally known) made such an impact on the two Russian visitors that in 988 the Grand Duke of Kiev, Prince Vladimir, chose to be baptised into the Orthodox Church.

The aim of this article, in the absence of easily accessible general books on the subject, is to provide a brief introduction to the chant of the Orthodox Church, principally as found in the Greek and Russian traditions, and to explain something of its ethos, background and development with reference to currently available recordings.

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!].

There is scholarly dispute concerning the use of the ison, the drone so typical of the chanting heard in Greek churches today, and also the use of microtonal decoration, often dismissed outside Greece as merely a later innovation from further east. In terms of repertoire too, western scholars, from the pioneering work of Egon Wellesz onwards, have largely been concerned with the earlier layers of Byzantine chant and have ignored what they consider to be later accretions. From the Greek point of view, however, and consonant with the Orthodox concept of Holy Tradition, this is the wrong way to look at it. The cantor and musicologist Lycourgos Angelopoulos, who is protopsaltis of the church of St Irene in Athens and director of the Greek Byzantine Choir, has played a fundamental role in placing later music within a broader context. His recording of the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom [Disc 1] provides an excellent example of this, containing as it does music from the 14th century composer Ioannis Koukouzelis to melodies notated down from oral tradition as performed on Mount Athos today.

Koukouzelis is one of the most celebrated names in the history of Greek music, and is, indeed, a Saint of the Orthodox Church (The controversy concerning whether Koukouzelis was of Bulgarian origin is dealt with in resumé in Angelopoulos’s notes to disc 5). He was not only a composer but a theorist and maistor (master of music) at the imperial palace in Constantinople. His music is characterized by the new “kalophonic” style, highly melismatic and protracted. It was at this time too that the kratime appeared. These are nonsense syllables (“te-ri-rem”, “me-ne-na”, etc.) which are sung instead of a poetical text and which were later defended as being an expression of the incomprehensibility of the Godhead, a kind of angelic song. One astonishing example by Koukouzelis, a kratima in the fourth plagal mode, lasts for more than thirty minutes [It has been recorded by Angelopoulos, disc 5].

The modern repertoire of Greek chant owes a great deal to Petros Lampadarios (c.1730-1777), who as well as composing himself, undertook the transcription of nearly all of the music for the Church offices, ie, the oral tradition as he knew it [Disc 3]. And in spite of the printed books of the Chrysanthine reform, chant today in Greek churches continues to be subject to local variation and to be very much a part of oral tradition [Disc 6 provides a magnificent glimpse of the celebration of the Easter Vigil and other Holy Week services at the Xenophontos Monastery on Mount Athos; disc 9 is a recent compilation of dazzlingly beautiful recordings also from the Holy Mountain. Discs 20-27 contain music from a number of non-Greek traditions, either recordings of live celebrations or studio recordings made by Soeur Marie Keyrouz, and which would ideally require a separate article all to themselves. Disc 23, entitled Chant Byzantin, is in fact sung principally in Arabic; 21 and 22 are deeply impressive anthologies of live recordings of Syriac chant.]

Russia: the beginnings of sacred music

The acceptance by Russia of the Orthodox faith from Greek- speaking Byzantium meant that initially liturgical practice was inevitably strongly Greek in orientation, but Byzantium was by no means the only influence operating in Kievan Russia during this period. Early chroniclers mention that the Patriarch of Constantinople sent to Prince Vladimir Metropolitan Mikhail, a native of Bulgaria, together with four bishops, numerous priests, deacons, and emestvenniki (singers: the Slavonic translation of the Greek domestikoi) “from among the Slavs”. Church singing may thus have had a Slavic influence from the beginning; in any case, it rapidly took on a Russian style. Though the aristocracy were ministered to by Greek clergy, the people were guided by Slavonic-speaking Bulgarian clergy (Church Slavonic is to this day the liturgical language of the Russian and other Slavic Orthodox Churches). There arose from this mixture a peculiarly Russian kind of neumatic chant, called znamenny, from the word znamia, meaning sign or neume.

The earliest manuscripts with musical notation appeared in the late 11th or early 12th century, though they have proved far from being totally decipherable: at the most one can say that such melodies appear to be very simple and syllabic, and employ much repetition. Very few of these manuscripts survive; the most famous of those that do is the Ostromir Gospel, dating from 1052. Continued development of the liturgy meant that, whereas initially notation was simply written above the texts, little by little special musical books began to appear —the Stikherarion, the Oktoikhos (“book of eight tones”), the Irmologion, and the Obikhod, special collections for great feasts and Sunday offices. (These books are of course paralleled in the Byzantine tradition. For concise explanations of the liturgical books of the Orthodox Church, see Milos Velimirovic, “Byzantine Chant”, in New Oxford History Of Music, Vol.II, 2nd edition, Oxford, 1990, pp. 41-45 and The Festal Menaion, translated by Mother Mary and Bishop Kallistos Ware, London, 1969, pp. 535-544. Both also contain substantial information regarding liturgical structure and practice.)

Parallel with znamenny there grew up a second kind of musical notation, now called kondakarny, or kondakarian, differing from znamenny both graphically and in the kind of text which it was employed to accompany. The evidence from the few manuscripts that survive is that kondakarian singing, highly melismatic in style, was employed for the performance of kondakia, lengthy homilies constructed from a prooemion or koukoulion (“opening stanza”) followed by a series of up to twenty-four oikoi, stanzas ending with the same refrain as the first. Recent research indicates that this notation was modelled on that used in Byzantium during the 10th and 11th centuries. This style disappeared during the 14th century.

The 15th century was a period of great expansion and tremendous creativity in the field of liturgical singing in Russia. Moscow began to grow while Kiev declined, never fully recovering from Mongol occupation. Russian desire for independence from the Oecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople increased, the Russians seeing themselves as natural successors to Byzantium. Because of their refusal to accept the Council of Florence (at which a transparently feeble union between the Eastern and Western Churches had been agreed in 1438), the Russian bishops had since 1448 appointed their own Metropolitan; from 1453, with the Fall of Constantinople, Moscow and Constantinople were again in communion, but the Russian Church was now autocephalous (in addition to which Russia was the only nation capable of taking on the role of leader in eastern Christendom, most of Bulgaria, Serbia and Rumania already having been conquered by the Turks).

The liturgical and artistic expansion which accompanied this emancipation, beginning with the great flourishing of musicians in Novgorod between about 1480 and 1564, and then continuing at the Imperial Court when Ivan IV (“The Terrible”) brought these singers to Moscow, tended to emphasize national characteristics. For liturgical chant, this meant that the repertoire of signs for znamenny increased, and manuals (azbuki) began to be written explaining the neumatic system.

The 16th century

Znamenny chant was now at its height. It developed to the point that each of the eight tones had its own distinct musical expression. Each tone is constructed from the juxtaposition of different musical motifs proper to it, the popevki, of varying length and elaboration. Znamenny melodies are divided into three groups according to their place in the liturgy. Bolshoi rospev, or “great chant”, was used on great feasts as well as during the most important moments of the office. Maly rospev, “lesser chant”, was used during the weekday offices. The remaining chants form a third category called znamenny rospev, “neumatic chant”. [Beautiful examples may be heard sung under the direction of Anatoly Grindenko on discs 10, 12 and 15]

During the course of the later 16th century developed a new kind of chant derived from znamenny, called putevoy, literally “chant of the road”, or “chant of the way”. It differed in having a new notation and in employing a more complex rhythmic structure. Parallel with this there appeared yet another kind of chant, but standing outside the system of the eight tones of the oktoikhos. This chant is known as demestvenny, the name deriving from demestik, the chief chanter of the chapel; its golden age was during the 17th century. The system of melodic construction is similar to that of znamenny, based on the popevki, but there is a fundamental difference in its independence from the oktoikhos, which means that its melodic and modal scope is expanded. In addition, even more than in the putevoy repertory, there is a tendency towards rhythmic complication and the use of much shorter note values. The correspondence between the spirit, if not the letter, of this repertory and the earlier kondakarian chant is striking, and it too was probably also performed by soloists.

Later development of the chant tradition

During the course of the 17th century there appeared three new types of liturgical chant. Firstly the Kievan chant, in essence a drastically simplified form of znamenny, then the so-called “Bulgarian” chant, highly melodic and rhythmically supple; and thirdly what are known as “Greek” chants, originating in southern Russia, and bearing evidence of folk influence. The straightforward melodic character of these latter made them ideal for harmonized performance, and indeed all three of these repertories are in use today in harmonized versions in the Russian Church, the basis of the repertoire which most western listeners will immediately characterize as typical of Russian sacred music. The precise origins of the latter two repertories is still the subject of controversy.

The most surprising development within the znamenny tradition was the appearance of polyphony—strochnoie penie (“line singing”). The earlier pieces in this tradition were written in a “descant” style (whereby a chant was harmonized by two voices, one above and one below) called troiestrochnoie penie (“three-line singing”), but the harmonic sense in these works is, by western standards, very wayward. There is no use of imitation or canon in the manner of western renaissance composers, and no hierarchy of consonance and dissonance—polyphony here is quite simply a division of the unison. It was this attitude to harmony which led those who originally began to work on this repertory to lose confidence in the fruit of their researches. Comparison with indigenous folk repertoires, however, helped to encourage the work anew in the early years of this century (the level of dissonance in Georgian folk singing is often considerably greater than here, for example). Unprepared dissonances, parallel fifths, sevenths, octaves and ninths, are all part of this style of composition. The precise origins of this early polyphony continue to be disputed by pro- and anti-western factions, but the abundant links between Novgorod, source of the earliest surviving evidence, and western Europe (the city was a member of the Hanseatic League and has a Roman Catholic church) makes it impossible to rule out western influence. [Disc 10 contains six pieces written in strochny polyphony together with examples of other styles of monodic chant and polyphony. Disc 11 is an extraordinary 17th century three-voice setting of the Panikhida (Requiem); discs 10 and 11 contain, respectively, polyphonic settings of the Easter Canon of St John Damascene written in a previously unknown notation christened novaya grecheskaya—“neo-Greek”—by the musicologist Maria Bogomolova, and the Divine Liturgy for the Feast of Sts Peter and Paul. Further examples of polyphony may be found on discs 16, 17, 18 and 19].

Epilogos

The history of Russian sacred music changes direction from the 17th century, becoming subject to a series of western influences (the Polish-Ukranian period, the Italian period, the German period) until in the later years of the 19th century Prince Vladimir Feodorovich Odoievsky (1804-1869) initiated the return to Russia’s liturgical and musical heritage which would bear fruit in the choral music of such composers as Chesnokov, Kastalsky and of course Rakhmaninov. Only now, when the spectres of the Russian Revolution have faded has it been possible to continue this interrupted tradition, as the achievements of Anatoly Grindenko show. In Greece, polyphony was never generally accepted, but there were, on the other hand, the controversial chant reforms of Yiannis Sakellaridis. In this respect, the liturgically-orientated research and performance projects of Angelopoulos parallel those of Gridenko in Russia. Both, acutely conscious of Holy Tradition as expressed in Orthodoxy, have returned to origins and—as is the case with any genuinely living oral tradition, sacred or secular—made them the source of creation.