Slavonic Music Book Collection

Dimitri

Δημήτρης Κουμπαρούλης, Administrator
Staff member
I am delighted to announce a new page on Analogion (analogion.com) with a list of psaltic books in the Slavonic language. The books were offered by Dusan Radosavljevic, to whom and his sources all thanks belong to.

Slavonic Psaltic Resources

If you would like to discuss a particular book please open a new thread for it.

Thank you.
 

basil

Παλαιό Μέλος
Thank you, Mr. Radosavljevic, for sharing these publications with us.

I glanced through several of them just now and noticed that the orthography was excellent. I didn't notice any major orthographical errors (in contrast, the Arabic Byzantine music books by Mitri el-Murr contain numerous minor but nevertheless noticeable orthographical errors).

Can anyone who knows the Slavonic language speak to how well the compositions fit the Slavonic texts in general? In other words, to what degree does the accentuation of the text match the melodic accentuation of the music? Has adherence to the formulaic rules improved, deteriorated, or remained constant from the older editions to the newer editions?

Another question I had was: Are the prosomia in these books translated according to the meter of the original Greek (either loosely or strictly)?

Thank you,
Basil
 

Π. Δαβίδ

Γενικός συντονιστής
Another question I had was: Are the prosomia in these books translated according to the meter of the original Greek (either loosely or strictly)?

Thank you,
Basil

No! None at all. The Slavonic text has some similarities in meter with Greek original eg the 1st stanza of automelon "edokas simiosin" is translated " dal esi znamenie" but this is mere co-incidence.

Subdeacon Argir Malcev a most learnt psalt in Bulgaria was telling me that prosomoia chanting is a major problem and chanters simply try their best.
 

JohnvanderHoek

Νέο μέλος
Dear colleagues,

Is anyone able to make available scanned copies of the compositions and musical books of Kalistrat Zografski? He wrote wonderful compositions is
psaltic notation and should be better known.

Regards, John
 

Dimitri

Δημήτρης Κουμπαρούλης, Administrator
Staff member
Some more Slavonic books can be found in Georgios Michalakis' collection here:

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I have not checked if some/all are the same with those recently uploaded.
 

zinoviev

Μέλος
Can anyone who knows the Slavonic language speak to how well the compositions fit the Slavonic texts in general? In other words, to what degree does the accentuation of the text match the melodic accentuation of the music?
For me the correspondence between melody and text is good. The accentuation is not matched as strictly as in the Greek compositions, but I think this is normal because Slavonic is not live but more or less artificial language. The official Slavonic accentuation doesn't follow the Russian, nor Bulgarian and even less the Serbian accentuation so the wrong accents do not always sound wrong.

Has adherence to the formulaic rules improved, deteriorated, or remained constant from the older editions to the newer editions?
I don't think the composers of 19th century knew about any formulaic rules. They lived with this music and they used it the same way we can speak our languages even if we don't know all grammar rules.

For me personally, some of the compositions for the Liturgy are too far from what I feel the tradition is. But I think this is a problem for Greek too.

From what I know, the best compositions are those in the books of Angel Sevlievetc. His Voskresnik (Anastasimatarion, 1859) was examined and approved by the chanters of the great church in Constantinople and it carried the official seal of the Patriarchy. These books are not available in the net but his compositions were reprinted in the books of Manasia Pop Teodorov (available from the 'Slavonic Psaltic Resources' on analogion) and they are de facto standard today.

Another question I had was: Are the prosomia in these books translated according to the meter of the original Greek (either loosely or strictly)?
I think no change in the established liturgical text for the sake of the melody would be approved for use in the Church. I am not sure the Slavonic language is a good example for the modern translators because it is a linguistic peculiarity. The Slavonic translations follow the Greek original word by word. In order to permit this, St. Cyril and Methodius invented Slavonic correspondences to all the complex syntactic constructions of the Ancient Greek language. I suppose at that time this wasn't a strange thing to do because if the Greek people in their everyday language didn't use the ancient syntactic constructions and yet they used them in their literary language then why shouldn't the Slavic people use the same syntactic constructions in their literary language even if their spoken language is simpler. In several cases the Greek-Slavonic correspondence is not only on syntactic but even on morphological level, for example καὶ->и, γὰρ->бо, καὶ γὰρ->ибо.

Word-by-word correspondence means no meter is possible.

Is anyone able to make available scanned copies of the compositions and musical books of Kalistrat Zografski? He wrote wonderful compositions is
psaltic notation and should be better known.
There are scanned copies of these books but they are not very useful because there are two pages per tiff-image and these pages are not adjacent (for example page 60 is combined with page 41). Go to http://www.ierodiakonjustin.info/. Then click on "Изтегляния" (on the left side) and then on "Невми". There you will find several Slavonic musical documents. Go to "1. Ежедневно и празнично богослужение" and then on page 2. The books you are asking for are these: "Зографска Вечерня", "Зографска Литургия" and "Зографска Утрена".
 

frephraim

Παλαιό Μέλος
There are scanned copies of these books but they are not very useful because there are two pages per tiff-image and these pages are not adjacent (for example page 60 is combined with page 41).
Yes, that is unfortunate. But if you are going to print them out, you can print the files double-sided, and then fold them in half. Then you will be able to easily put them all in order, by grouping them into little booklets. The only problem, though, is that you will need some way to staple all those little booklets together.
 

zinoviev

Μέλος
From what I know, the best compositions are those in the books of Angel Sevlievetc. His Voskresnik (Anastasimatarion, 1859) was examined and approved by the chanters of the great church in Constantinople and it carried the official seal of the Patriarchy. These books are not available in the net but his compositions were reprinted in the books of Manasia Pop Teodorov (available from the 'Slavonic Psaltic Resources' on analogion) and they are de facto standard today.
A few days ago I had the opportunity to look at the books of Angel Ivanov Sevlievetc in the National library in Sofia. I recognized most of the melodies from the books of Manasia but I noticed that there are also some changes. For example the stichera of first mode of Manasia never go below Zo. On the other hand some of the sticheras of Angel Sevlievetc go below Zo and they do this in pentatonic manner (i.e. the interval Zo-Ni is a whole tone). I didn't have the books of Manasia with me so I could not compare the orthography of the unchanged melodies.

My intention was to copy in the library the books of Angel Sevlievetc. Unfortunately the library has classified these books as old and rare so it is allowed to copy them only with a special machine and it is too expensive (about 1 EUR per page).
 

Shota

Παλαιό Μέλος
I discovered by chance "Textbook of Eastern Church Chanting" written by Archimandrite Amvrosij in 1935 here. The book is diveded into three parts and contains

1) Theoretikon and brief Kekragaria in eight modes
2) Slow Anastasimatarion (melodies in New Sticheraric genre)
3) Prosomoia

The scanned copy doesn't contain the theoretical part. Archimandrite Amvrosij criticizes his predecessors Angel Ivanov and Nikolai Trandafilov for squeezing Slavonic texts to Greek melodies and presents his version of the Anastasimatarion. The book got the approval of the Bulgarian Synod.
 

Π. Δαβίδ

Γενικός συντονιστής
Many thanks, Shota!
I know that Manasij pop Teodorov and Archimandrite Amvrosij hated each other and Archimandrite Amvrosij's works (from some photocopies I saw in Sophia) have a strange perception of orthography.
 

Shota

Παλαιό Μέλος
Many thanks, Shota!
I know that Manasij pop Teodorov and Archimandrite Amvrosij hated each other and Archimandrite Amvrosij's works (from some photocopies I saw in Sophia) have a strange perception of orthography.

Or absence thereof, I would say. He also uses rather strange modulations. Nevertheless his work got the synodal approval and it's not that some bishop just put a stamp on it, but it actually underwent the review process by a referee appointed by the Synod. The review is appended to the edition and from what I can figure from Bulgarian it seems to praise Amvrosij's work. Go figure.
 

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Georgijpsalt

Νέο μέλος
Dear colleagues,

Is anyone able to make available scanned copies of the compositions and musical books of Kalistrat Zografski? He wrote wonderful compositions is
psaltic notation and should be better known.

Regards, John

Respected,

I have published the CD 10 years ago, when I was still learning the chant, and for our Byzantine choir we have published book in 2003 with compositions of Kalistrat Zografski.
Last year the same Psaltic Liturgy I had translated with western notation for use of non Byzantine Choirs in my country (FY Republic of Macedonia). If someone of the mousikologiotates psaltes wants these scores, in PDF I have only the western notation translation, for now. The next time I will send the rest materials, because for that I will need help of someone here, who will upload them for me on the forum.

( The psaltic book which I am sending now is translation from the same book published in 2003 by the monastery of Treskavets, near my town Prilep.
The book contains the hymns from the Holly Liturgy, and literature I used for creating were 19ct. psaltic books from Zograph Monastery in Athos, the Liturgy of Manasii pop Todorov and also my compositions composed in Byzantine chant style., there is however some harmonisations, because like I mentioned before, this translated Psaltika is made for use of non-Byzantine choirs in our Church.
The compositions of the KALISTRAT ZOGRAFSKI are on the back of the book.
If someone has questions about the book, or the compositions inside, I will be glad to answer.)

In Christe, Georgij psalt.
 

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zinoviev

Μέλος
Or absence thereof, I would say. He also uses rather strange modulations. Nevertheless his work got the synodal approval and it's not that some bishop just put a stamp on it, but it actually underwent the review process by a referee appointed by the Synod. The review is appended to the edition and from what I can figure from Bulgarian it seems to praise Amvrosij's work. Go figure.
According to the preface of this book, the author intended to improve the existing Slavonic melodies "following the form and the spirit of the original Greek melody". The result, however, was not successful, the book is almost forgotten and in my opinion it is not going to be reprinted ever (from what I know it was never accepted by the chanters). Personally, I think some of the adaptations of the prosomia in the book are good.

By the way, in the preface of his books Angel Sevlievetz wrote about the proper orthography and there were even some examples demonstrating that one should not squeeze the Slavonic words using the original melody.
 

Π. Δαβίδ

Γενικός συντονιστής
According to the preface of this book, the author intended to improve the existing Slavonic melodies "following the form and the spirit of the original Greek melody". The result, however, was not successful, the book is almost forgotten and in my opinion it is not going to be reprinted ever (from what I know it was never accepted by the chanters). Personally, I think some of the adaptations of the prosomia in the book are good.

By the way, in the preface of his books Angel Sevlievetz wrote about the proper orthography and there were even some examples demonstrating that one should not squeeze the Slavonic words using the original melody.

I agree 100% about Amvrosi's work. I hope the works of hadzi Angel will be reprinted soon; his stihira are absolutely brilliant and show forth what a music genius he was.
 
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