Lamentations of Great and Holy Saturday

[πρ. ιερεμίας]

Any feedback or suggestions are welcome!

I've used the translation from Holy Transfiguration Monastery, which fits the metering of the original melodies very well throughout. I've used the melodies of Raidestinos, since these will both sound familiar and retain the Tradition more than some other settings (Stases 1 & 2 end on δι', and Stasis 3 ends on γα', as it ought). I've also included the longer settings from Petros for the final repetition at the end of each Stasis.

EDIT: Corrected a few typos in the text and numbering of the troparia.

 

[brucewayne]

I appreciate your work in putting this together. A suggestion for the final phrase of the second stasis: the musical stress does not currently align with the stress of the syllables. In the Engomia by Raidestinos here, the first and second stases have the same final phrase. If this were used, the music would match with the words.

For example, the ALL CAPS signifies the stress:

and the STRENGTH of our dread FOE thou hast deSTROYED.
ison oligon OLIGON ison apostrofos apostrofos PETASTE apostrofos apostrofos apostrofos OLIGON

 

[basil]

A promising start. Raidestinos' orthography leaves a lot to be desired, for example using the petaste when an oligon with psefiston is called for (among many other things). As Bruce Wayne mentioned, the ending of the second stasis is inexplicably different from the ending of the first stasis, while in the 1884 edition of Raidestinos they are the same. There are various typographical issues, like the lack of a year or copyright sign in the copyright statement, straight quotes rather than typographical quotes, poor vertical spacing, and incorrect lyric hyphenation. I am pleased to see my selection of Source Sans is seeing some adoption. I have not looked at the music in detail. I would take a pull request contributing these scores to https://github.com/basil/byzantine-music if you wanted to work through these issues in more depth.

 

[πρ. ιερεμίας]

In the Engomia by Raidestinos here, the first and second stases have the same final phrase. If this were used, the music would match with the words.

Thanks for pointing this out. If I remember correctly, I took the melody for the second stasis from here. But you are absolutely correct that it doesn't make sense for the endings of the stases not to match each other.

like the lack of a year or copyright sign in the copyright statement

I'll go ahead and fix that. I was originally putting this score together just for the chanters at our parish, so I wasn't too concerned about attribution beyond acknowledging whose translation I was using. If it's being distributed more broadly, then certainly it should include more proper notice of copyright.

poor vertical spacing

Can you clarify what you're referring to here? My approach was to keep the vertical space between troparia the same. In order to do that, I used a blank text box after each troparion, then a text box with "Verse:", and then a third text box with the text of the verse. When a verse required more than one line, I removed the initial text box in order to keep the space between the troparia constant. Leaving that initial text box in results in some cases where the last line of the final troparion on a page is pushed to the next page. While that is not a problem per se, I had tried to keep the score neatly structured, with a consistent number of troparia on each page.

incorrect lyric hyphenation

This is something that I've been wanting to be more systematic about. My approach to hyphenation has been to try to anticipate issues that the chanters might have with pronunciation. As an example, stasis 2 troparion 7 includes the word "crucifixion." If I'm not mistaken, that should technically be hyphenated "cru-ci-fix-ion". I've hyphenated it as "cru-ci-fi-xion". This is not correct, but I've done it in order to make sure that the chanters sing the 'x' sound at the beginning of the ultima, rather than at the end of the penult, which would prevent the vowel sound from being properly sung. The same is true, e.g., at stasis 2 troparion 9, in regard to the word "power." The 'w' sound ought to be sung as part of the last syllable rather than at the end of the first syllable, and so I've hyphenated it as "po-wer" rather than as "pow-er", even though the latter is correct.

That being said, even if I have some philosophical qualms with what is considered 'correct' hyphenation, it is probably best to follow the standard practice.

 

[basil]

That being said, even if I have some philosophical qualms with what is considered 'correct' hyphenation, it is probably best to follow the standard practice.

Yes, it sounds like you are an educated person, or at least you want to act like one around other educated people.

 

[πρ. ιερεμίας]

Yes, it sounds like you are an educated person, or at least you want to act like one around other educated people.

That's a pretty bizarre thing to say in the context of a discussion about hyphenation rules.

 

[joel]

One advantage of sticking to the normal hyphenation rules is that it helps us to correctly pronounce English vowels even if we can't see the whole word. For example, if one sees "po-", the first inclination is to pronounce it as poʊ (as in "police"). But if we see "pow-", we will know it should be paʊ (as in "power").

 

[basil]

That's a pretty bizarre thing to say in the context of a discussion about hyphenation rules.

I fail to see a reason why it is bizarre. I do find it bizarre that someone would follow a practice that they have philosophical qualms about, because that would appear to suggest at least some lack of conviction. And I wasn't going to mention this, but since you called what I wrote bizarre, it seems bizarre that you haven't responded to my central piece of criticism about the poor orthography in the source material you are using. That seems bizarre because, well, you explicitly solicited feedback in the first sentence of your post.

---

None of us were born educated, but over time we gain experience as we enter new fields. A common rookie mistake is to make arbitrary notational decisions based on the (perceived) ineptitude of singers rather than based on an accepted convention. Most style guides, like this one, merely say "use standard dictionary syllabification." I suggest reading Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation by Elaine Gould, a standard reference in the field. It contains about 7 pages on word division and offers some nuance that goes behind the usual simplistic advice to follow the dictionary. I think you might find some of it compatible with your philosophy, although even Gould explicitly rules out your hyphenation for "po-wer":

When consonants modify preceding vowels in exceptional ways, they should not be separated from them (laugh-ter, plough-ing). This group includes w and y when they represent the second part of a dipthong (flow-er, stew-ard, voy-age).

In any case, the most important thing is not to attempt to derive these things from first principles as a beginner but rather to follow Gould's advice:

It is essential to divide words according to an accepted convention.

 

[πρ. ιερεμίας]

Thanks to everyone, and to Gabriel who I've corresponded over email with, for your constructive criticism. I've put together a new version incorporating most of the recommended changes, which I've uploaded below.

This new version includes the following changes to the melody: 1) The endings of the first two stases have been aligned to match the 1884 rendering recommended above. 2) Use of a diatonic phthora of pa' in the middle phrase of the first two stases. 3) Alignment of the treatment of the vareia in those same phrases. 4) Alteration of the middle and final phrases of the third stasis to match the most common use. 5) Whenever a troparion in the third stasis needs an extra introductory syllable, I've given that syllable a gorgon (with a rest before it). 6) I've changed the dipli at the end of each phrase to a klasma (except in the long versions at the end of each stasis, where I've kept dipli). 7) Some minor changes to the isokratima.

I've also made the following orthographical changes: 1) Petasti has been replaced with oligon over psefiston where appropriate. 2) In the second stasis, vareia before oligon/omalon/ison/gorgon has been replaced with psefiston under oligon. 3) The first neume of every troparion of the third stasis, which before had used petasti, vareia, and antikenoma, has been replaced with petasti under oligon with klasma.

And the following typographical changes: 1) Standardized the hyphenation. 2) Replaced all straight quotes with curved quotes. 3) Included a proper copyright notice. 4) Used 'thē' instead of 'the' before a vowel sound. 5) Made the drop caps red and the troparion numbering black.

Please feel free to let me know if you notice anything I've missed.

EDIT: See this post for the final version.

 

[basil]

The orthography is much better now — something which you were apparently addressing all along but didn't mention in your earlier reply to me, causing me to question whether you really understood what I was saying.

The melody for the Third Stasis is also much closer to the one I am familiar with by Fr Nicholas Malek, although his version has a one-beat petaste for the second-to-last syllable rather than the two-beat gesture you provide, and that also seems to fit better with the concise heirmologic nature of this melody (as opposed to the slow heirmologic final repetition, where the two-beat gesture is used). There's really no right or wrong answer here, as there is a huge amount of local variation for this piece, so I'm just adding a local data point to the conversation and not necessarily insisting on a change.

At the end of the Second Stasis, for the slow melody, the gorgon on the first line seems like an obvious misprint in the 1825 Heirmologion and I would omit it. That same edition also uses an oligon rather than petasti for the first note, which seems more orthographically sound to me.

The hyphen in the footer is inappropriate and should at least be replaced with e.g. • but really the whole footer is off — this isn't an arrangement, which has a specific meaning in music notation (changing something so that it can be performed by particular types of voices or instruments, which is not what you're doing here), but rather an adaptation from one language to another.

Vertical layout rhythm is still off — there is less distance between the text of a verse and the next line of lyrics than the distance between one line of lyrics and the next line of lyrics, which is certainly incorrect because these are not part of the same paragraph unit. The space should be at least equal, if not greater.

 

[πρ. ιερεμίας]

At the end of the Second Stasis, for the slow melody, the gorgon on the first line seems like an obvious misprint in the 1825 Heirmologion and I would omit it.

I thought that that gorgon seemed out of place, but I was hesitant to remove something from Petros. Of course, the error doesn't belong to Petros, but to the editor of that particular edition. I'll take it out.

Regarding the footer, I've changed it to:

Translation © 2021 Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Brookline, MA. All rights reserved. Adaptation © 2024 Fr. Jeremy Troy.

Working on the vertical spacing now. Adding another space after the verses to separate them more from the text of the troparia has the side-effect of pushing the last line of some troparia to the next page. I'd like to keep the score neatly structured, so that there is a consistent number of troparia on each page and there is no page-flipping in the middle of a troparion. I've been able to fix that issue by slightly adjusting the line spacing and margins, but I'm still not totally happy with the outcome. I'll keep poking around and see what I can get.

As a side note, I haven't been able to find an option in Neanes for adding page numbering. Do you know if there's any way to do that? With a score of this length, it would be helpful to be able to reference page numbers in addition to the troparia numbering.

EDIT: Nevermind about page numbering, I found how to do it.

 

[πρ. ιερεμίας]

Final version is attached below.

In the long version at the end of stasis 2, I've removed a gorgon and replaced the introductory petasti with oligon. I've fine-tuned the spacing between verses and troparia, and slightly adjusted the line spacing within the troparia (margins did not end up needing to be adjusted-- they are a standard 1" all around). Updated the copyright notice in the footer.

I've also added page numbering at the bottom of each page. I would have preferred to do it in the header, alternating between the left and right sides, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that while keeping "Great and Holy Saturday" centered. If I manually center it with spaces, then as soon as the page numbering goes into two digits the centering gets thrown off. I considered sacrificing the centering, and going with "2 | Great and Holy Saturday" on even pages, and "Great and Holy Saturday | 3" on odd pages, but putting the page number in the footer seemed like a more elegant solution.

 

[basil]

Can you respond to my comment about the ending of the concise heirmologic melody for the Third Stasis? Even if you don't end up making a change, I think you should still acknowledge the comment.

 

[πρ. ιερεμίας]

Yes, I had considered simply putting a petasti there as a replacement for the vareia/omalon construction that Raidestinos used. I agree that that would be a perfectly fine solution. I chose to use the more elongated phrase because it prevents the melody from ending on a three-beat measure. While that's not a problem in and of itself, I think a four-beat ending feels a little more natural here, and will be easier for congregational singing (which is of course quite popular during the Lamentations). In my experience, this ending is also more common in English-language settings, and so a different ending might throw the congregation off.

 

[basil]

That all sounds fine. The new score looks great! I would also recommend committing the uncompressed .byzx JSON file somewhere on GitHub, ideally in my open-source collection of Neanes scores at https://github.com/basil/byzantine-music (where it would have a home with other high-quality settings like yours). This has a number of benefits, including allowing people to play back the score in software. But most importantly, it allows people to collaborate by reporting issues and proposing pull requests with improvements, which can then be systematically reviewed, incorporated, and released in a public forum. The impact this crowd-sourced collaboration model has had on software development cannot be overstated, and the impact it could have on the Byzantine music community could be similarly outsized.

 

[πρ. ιερεμίας]

Thank you for your willingness to workshop this piece with me. Hopefully the types of concerns raised can guide future scores that I put together, so that they are in a cleaner state to begin with. I'm a little hesitant about including the score on GitHub, only because it appears that I would need to relinquish the copyright in order to do so. When I'm able, I'll take some time to learn more about that project and considering submitting to it.

 

[basil]

If you don't want to relinquish the copyright, then feel free to open an issue at https://github.com/basil/byzantine-music and we could discuss other licensing arrangements. Those could include granting an exemption for specific individuals, joint copyright ownership, or the use of a Creative Commons license that allows derivatives and therefore would not require copyright assignment. I initially chose a Creative Commons license that does not allow derivatives because I don't want people making derivative works without my approval. For example, I don't want people doing a search and replace of "thee" for "you" without also adjusting the verb endings and the music, as this would ruin the integrity of the score. However, I would be happy to grant exemptions to specific people or to allow derivatives that are approved by me. This could all be discussed in a corresponding repository issue on GitHub.

If you don't want to contribute to my project, then is there a reason you couldn't release the uncompressed JSON source on GitHub in your own repository, under your own license terms (for the reasons given in my previous post)?