| From the end of the nineteenth century until recently, several western musicologists and theorists have conducted research in Byzantine music. The emphasis of their studies was on various musicological aspects of this tradition from its beginnings in 330 AD until 1821 when a major set of reforms took place. Unlike these previous works, this study attempts to develop a systematic theory of Byzantine music with a special interest in the contemporary practice, which is identified in this study as the Neo-Byzantine period (from 1821 until the present).;There are four general characteristics of Byzantine music which over the centuries have assured the unity of its various forms: (1) the sacred character, (2) the vocal character, (3) the monodic character, and (4) the modal character.;The 8 modal scales used in Byzantine music are different in their structural organization from the ancient Greek modes and also the western ecclesiastical modes. A study of intervals reveals that Byzantine chant uses an untempered tuning system.;Rhythm and meter are essentially connected to the vocal character of this musical tradition giving priority to the meaning of the liturgical text and following the accents of the prosodic feet.;There are four idioms of Byzantine chant: (1) Recitative, (2) Hirmologic, (3) Sticheraric, and (4) Papadike. Each of these idioms represents different degrees of melismatic melodies, different ambitus and different tempos.;Byzantine musical notation developed totally differently than the notation of the western music, and it is based on several groups of neumes, which are added above the text. From the four notational systems used in different historical-stylistic periods, this dissertation presents in detail Neo-Byzantine notation, known historically as Chrysantean notation.;A detailed discussion of each of the 8 modes with their various theoretical concepts is accompanied in this work by an examination of over 80 Byzantine chants. |
