Research Of Byzantine Music And Hymnography

Byzantine, as a strong empire of middle ages, which cross the Asia, Europe and Africa, depending the special and complicated position and situation, become a conservator of ancient civilization. Byzantine spread their knowledge got from ancient Greece to Europe unconsciously in Renaissance.After Byzantine was beaten by Turk in the year of 1453, western People looked down on Byzantine civilization increasingly. In their mind, Byzantine is only a conservative and uncultured country. Edward Gibbon considered the whole history of Byzantine lasting over 1000 years as a miserable experience. In The Concise Oxford History of Music, Gerald Alraham make conclusion that Byzantine music never form their system.With the character of precision of modern staff, maybe we have forgotten its ancestral form-neum, and because we compose melody using major-minor key system commonly, we always disremember the eight Mode which Gregorian chant uses in the middle ages origined from eastern worldThe history of Byzantine is not a declined course, and Byzantine music has already formed its own system which existed in its structure composed of culture, history, politics, folk, etc. Compared with Gregorian chant and counterpoint of western music, the leading characteristic is its genre of hymnography.It is focus on the music and hymnography of Byzantine in this treatise .The first part is the retrospection of course, which foreign musicologist study Byzantine music .The essential part is the third one; relate to the main genre of hymnography―― kontakion and Kanon, as well as other prevalent genre. However, the second part can be seen as the preface of the third one; besides of classifying the Byzantine chant, also definituding the sort to which hymnography belongs in Byzantine chant.In Music in The Middle Ages written by G Reese, the point of view that Jewish and Syriac music is the common origin of western ecclesiastical music is not exaggerated word. The function of Byzantine in the transition from ancient music to western ecclesiastical music is not incidental. So it is time that we evaluated Byzantine music, especially admitted its role in the development of world's music.