proof of Simon Karas' method by Ioannis Arvanitis

Феодор

Μέλος
I know this is a really "hot topic". What can you say about this? It sounds really convincing.

I personally really like all the chants in the interpretation of Simon Karas. The melody (to me at least) sounds much deeper, sophisticated.

From an interview with Ioannis Arvanitis

Please tell us about your research interests and teaching in Byzantine chant

I have already mentioned some of my research and teaching activities. I’m presently teaching at the Philippos Nakas Music School and in the Music Department of the Ionian University. In 1982 I came in contact for the first time with Byzantine musical manuscripts. I began to study the old notation, that is that prior to 1814 when the Reform of the so-called "Three Teachers" provided us with the system used nowadays. This old notation was, and continues to be, rather unknown to the majority of the church singers or, even if some have a little knowledge of its profile, they don’t possess a deep understanding of it.

I can claim that I am almost self-taught in this field ; I mean that I had no personal guidance (moreover who could give this to me?) except from the transcriptions of the Three Teachers, my knowledge and experience of the new notation and chant and the doctrine of my teacher, Simon Karas, described by him in outline and through some examples in three papers (he didn’t teach me or anyone else directly about this). He was the first to investigate the old notation in a precise manner and suggest some fresh ideas about the meaning of the musical signs. At the same time, he proposed an interpretation (transcription) of some chants which differs from that of the Three Teachers. Byzantine musical notation has a long history and its interpretation (especially the notation of the older chants) has been a matter of controversy among Greek and Western scholars.

What constitutes the problem is the following: chants like the so-called stichera (chants with psalmic verses before them) have a syllabic appearance in the manuscripts, i.e., to each syllable of the poetical text there corresponds in most cases only one musical sign or a very small group of musical signs and consequently, as it is reasonable to imagine, one note or a very small group of notes. This was exactly the way Western scholars like E. Wellesz or H.W. Tillyard transcribed these chants. But the Three Teachers have given a highly melismatic interpretation of them, in which to each old sign there corresponds a very large number of signs, and consequently of notes, in their new notation. This results in a stenographic conception of the old notation, ie. the written chain of signs gives only a skeleton of the melody which must be ‘filled in’ through an oral, but more or less concrete, tradition to give the full melody. In other words, the old chants were, according to the tradition of the Three Teachers, extremely long.

However, something like that enters into conflict with a reasonable duration of the services (even by mediaeval standards!). So, the long way of interpretation could possibly be the tradition the Three Teachers had received from their forerunners, but it couldn’t be the case for some centuries before them. The long interpretation is certainly not something imaginary, something coming from the imagination of the Three Teachers; it’s a fact, it’s a tradition, but it must probably be, for one reason or other, a somewhat later one. My teacher, Simon Karas, investigated the notation of the old stichera and proved that many formulas of them are also contained in another kind of chants, the heirmoi. But the heirmoi were transcribed by the Three Teachers and are sung today in a syllabic or, sometimes, in a ‘short melismatic’ style, ie. mostly with two time units and short melismas (a few faster notes) per syllable.

In the same short melismatic style are also sung (and transcribed by the Three teachers) the new stichera from the 18th cent. So, Karas suggested that the old stichera would originally have had a shorter interpretation and are in fact the ancestors of the stichera sung today, revealing at the same time a continuity in the tradition in a process of a transition from more complex to simpler musical forms. And this was not only a suggestion. He gathered all the available evidence and managed to reconstruct the short melismatic interpretation of the old stichera, making this relation and continuity evident in a concrete manner. This has been also my own field of investigation. I found much more evidence in favour of this theory, organized this in a demonstrative manner and presented a paper in a symposium in 1993. But, as I will further explain, it is not a closed subject for me. I am still collecting evidence and carrying research on this.

In November 1993, one day before presenting my aforementioned paper, I received a manuscript from the 13th century containing the music of the heirmoi. The text of these chants is still used today but their music in not the same. As I have already mentioned, heirmoi are sung up today in two ways: syllabic and short melismatic. No other Greek scholar had, or has up today, given transcriptions of the heirmoi of the medieval periods. The style of the heirmoi of the 13th century or before is exactly the same as that of the old stichera. So, if the Three Teachers had transcribed them, they would have done so in a long melismatic way. But this would be completely unreasonable because heirmoi are only the musical patterns of long hymns with many musically similar stanzas. So, their music should have a shorter duration and their notation should be read in a syllabic or short melismatic way. Because of their similarity to the old stichera, it was reasonable for me to suppose that they should be interpreted in the short melismatic style already suggested by Simon Karas. I had worked on this some time ago but I wasn’t completely satisfied. When I received the 13th century manuscript, in a moment’s inspiration, I realized that not only heirmoi but stichera as well should have a syllabic original form.

This was of course not a completely new idea. Western scholars had already transcribed these chants in this way, reading the notation ‘at face value’. Yes, but with one difference : they transcribed them either without a rhythm, even without a beat, or with an ill-defined or mixed rhythm according to their individual ideas about the durations of the musical signs and their combinations. The earlier scholars, like Wellesz or Tillyard imagined that Byzantine chant should sound like Gregorian chant as sung by the Solesmes monks: free and oratorical. They couldn’t accept that a medieval chant could have a specific rhythm or at least a well defined beat. This could, of course, be true for Gregorian chant, but why should it be the case for Byzantine chant, too? (This prejudice is very common even today.) Other, later, western scholars, such as Joergen Raasted, tried to approach the subject by means of the present day conception of the rhythm of Byzantine chant, ie. the accent-based mixed rhythm which the church singers believe holds true for the chants they sing. But his, or other scholars’, interpretations suffered from incorrect interpretations of the duration of some signs or of their combinations.

So, my difference from the western scholars was that I realized that the old heirmoi and stichera should have basically a binary rhythm (or pulse) with very few exceptions of triple rhythmical feet which moreover were usually present at very specific points of the chants. Central to this conception of rhythm is the fact that an accented syllable can fall on the upbeat, if it is on a higher note than at least one of its neighbouring syllables, i.e., if it has a pitch accent. This is in opposition to the current view of the singers who believe that an accented syllable must always fall on the downbeat (accent-based rhythm). But this is sometimes applied in present-day chants; it is simply that no one has paid attention to this. It was known to me but I didn’t realize that it could be of crucial importance. It seemed to impose itself on the music of the old heirmoi. After this discovery, I subsequently worked on this and managed to formulate a full theory of the rhythm of the old stichera and heirmoi, a theory that explains not only the composition of the music of these chants but also the construction of their contrafacta, i.e., of similarly sung poetical texts. So, not only the music is revealed in its more or less original syllabic and rhythmical form but an unsolved problem of hymnography, namely the problem of the metre of the poetical texts is solved. Byzantine hymns appear mostly as prose texts in the liturgical books, so their poetical nature was doubted. My investigation showed in a concrete way that although they are in fact like prose, they acquire a meter through the musical setting and this ‘musical meter’ is the basis for the construction of the poetical texts of the contrafacta. The results of this investigation can be applied to the chants sung nowadays which are the descendants of the older ones, leading to a full and deep understanding of the rhythm and of the continuity and transformation of chant in the course of time.

What I have said is related to the first stages of the notation and the chants written down by means of it. But the notation and the chants themselves underwent a continuous evolution. All this is in my research interest because I believe in a diachronic study of Byzantine chant. One cannot solve problems of the present day praxis and theory without referring to the past and, conversely, present day praxis can give at least an idea of some aspects of the past. I have seen that a mere synchronic study has very often led to errors and misconceptions. So, another field of my investigations is the study of the history of the modes. The same poetical texts have remained in use in the Church for many centuries (some hymns date even from the earliest Christian times) but their music has, little by little, changed. Although heirmoi, for example, were at some time written down (musical manuscripts exist from the 10th century), their liturgical use as model melodies for other chants forced singers to rely chiefly on their memory rather than on the written melody. So, heirmoi became essentially a part of the oral tradition occasionally written down but already in a form changed through orality. This process of transformation even included a change of the scales or the tonic of some modes. Studying all these stages of the music of the chants, one certainly realizes that there is an impressive continuity of the tradition, but without such a study one cannot understand or explain the complexity and diversity of the modern system of modes of Byzantine chant.

All these and other related investigations have given to me a firm basis for my teaching of the present day musical praxis. Unfortunately, I have not been able up today to give all this in a complete published form (except in a couple of papers) or teach it in a systematic way.

How has Byzantine chant changed over the centuries? How is it presently sung in the liturgy?

Byzantine chant has changed over the centuries chiefly through the following processes:

a) through the interplay and mutual influence between the oral and written tradition. Some very well known chants were seldom or even never written down to notation. On the other hand, the written down music of model chants, such as the heirmoi or some stichera automela, served only for reference and learning purposes because a singer had to know his melodies by heart, as he had to adapt many other words to them. As a result, all these chants were sensitive to change due to inadequate memory, a sense of freedom during performance, difficulties of adaptation, small changes in aesthetic standards, corrupt transmission and so on. The oral forms of these chants were sometimes written down, and they became a written tradition subject to the same use as the earlier one and so forth. This oral tradition could exert in each period an influence on other written and more stable chants. Through such processes, the music of the heirmoi appears changed from the end of the 13th century onwards. Several local traditions appear in the manuscripts in the 14th century, while from the end of the 16th or beginning of the 17th century. we see the first record of the Heirmologion (book of the heirmoi) under the name of one composer, Theophanis Karykis. After almost two centuries (end of 17th century), we find theheirmologion of Balasios the Priest and in the second half of the 18th century the heirmologion of Petros Lampadarios which is used today.

All these three heirmologia are records of the Constantinopolitan tradition (with possible arrangements by their notators) but we can assume that they were widely disseminated due to the ever growing role of Constantinople as a national and musical centre during the Turkish domination. Examining these heirmologia, one can follow the continuity of the tradition and the course of changes. Another genre of chants, the stichera idiomela remained essentially unchanged up to the 17th century. An embellished, but essentially old style, form of the Sticherarion (book of stichera) appeared by the middle of the 17th century. In the first half of the 18thcentury we can imagine, or sometimes follow in manuscripts, a process of simplification of the music of the stichera idiomela with a parallel influence of the music of the contemporary heirmoi on them. The final stage of this process was its written record by Petros Lampadarios (d. 1778). This is the so-called ‘New sticherarion’ which is itself or with minor changes or small embellishments still sung today.

b) the change in the way of reading the notation. As I have already mentioned, I believe I have proved that the notation was originally read ‘at face value’: one simple sign indicated one plain or sometimes slightly ornamented note. But we have also received two more ways of reading the old notation: short melismatic and long melismatic (see above). These are, of course, part of our tradition and cannot be discarded. Given that, I believe that one can suppose that these changes in the conception of notation, from the syllabic to the long melismatic, occurred at particular times, and this is exactly one of my fields of investigation. Through such changes, chants became ever longer and this led to tendencies of ever more embellishment or, in the opposite direction, to simplification and abbreviations (cutting of some embellishments of melismatic chants). This is a very complicated story to describe here. What is important is that changes in the music itself necessitated the development of the notation and changes in the notation affected the music. The final stage of the notation, the reformed notation of the Three Teachers used nowadays, being capable of being fully analytical and describing every detail of the performance, has on the one hand facilitated the singing but on the other hand has contributed to the deterioration of church music in the compositions of some modern composers through strong influences from secular music.

c) the tendency to more melismatic forms and, on the contrary, to simpler ones. I have already mentioned this with regard to the reading of the notation. But these tendencies can be traced in the compositions themselves irrespective of the way the notation is read. Melismatic chant seems to have existed from time immemorial. However, a turning point in its history is the emergence of the so-called kalophonic (literally beautiful voiced, embellished chant in the 13th century and its subsequent development in the 14th and 15th centuries. A leading figure who also codified this chant is Ioannis Koukouzelis. This style was extremely melismatic, sometimes with inserted tropes, with rearrangements of the text and very often with the insertion of meaningless syllables such as ‘terirem, to to, ti ti , ne ne na’ etc. This style continued to flourish after the fall of Constantinople and has in fact left its imprint in the whole subsequent production of Byzantine chant.

d) the transformation of intervals. In opposition to the views of many Greek, and in the last decades of some Western, scholars, or the belief of the church singers concerning present day praxis in which there is a plethora of musical intervals, I have good reasons to believe that Byzantine chant was originally diatonic with ‘in principle’ Pythagorean scales, the scales of the modes being exactly like those described by the western musician Odo de Cluny of the 9th century. (We know that the theory of the modes of the East was transmitted to the West).

‘In principle’ means that the relative position of the tonics of the modes is regulated by the intervals of the Pythagorean scale. As far as the intervals in the actual practice of singing the chants of a mode are concerned, I notice that Pythagorean intervals cannot always be sung in a precise manner ; the voice ‘slips’ frequently to slightly different intervals like those of just intonation (instead of the Pythagorean major tone and leimma, ie. small semitone, one sings a major tone, a minor tone and a big semitone). Although some acousticians speak also in favour of the contrary, I am sure that I observe such deviations in the present day praxis for the case of modern modes with theoretically Pythagorean scales. In addition, this transition from a theoretically ‘hard diatonic’ (Pythagorean) to a ‘soft diatonic’ (using major and minor whole tones) can also be observed in the transcription of the Three Teachers, revealing a dual nature of the intervals, for some formulas at least (that is, one can sing these formulas either in hard or in soft diatonic). All this makes me suspect that the original form of the scales is the hard diatonic transformed through musical praxis to the soft diatonic which dominates the present day praxis. Two modes, second and plagal second, went even further : they developed augmented seconds (intervals more or less larger then the whole tone) and became ‘chromatic’ (‘chromatic’ meaning exactly this in Byzantine chant). Again, such transitions from the hard or soft diatonic to the hard or soft chromatic (with larger or smaller augmented second respectively) can be traced in the present day praxis, in the transcriptions of the Three Teachers and in the manuscripts and the chants in their evolution over the centuries.

Chromaticism in Byzantine chant has been a subject of great controversy. It was supposed by many western scholars that it constituted an oriental influence upon that. But, as I stated, it can with good evidence be seen as the result of a slow and continuous transformation in the system of Byzantine chant itself. On the other hand, one does not know the exact form of Arabic or Ottoman music of the medieval times sufficiently to be able to speak about influence on Byzantine chant, although such influences can be suspected through the titles of some Byzantine compositions, such as ‘Persian’, ‘Tatarian’ etc. In brief, I believe that the absence of instruments in worship, the absence of an exact theoretical description of the intervals and the continuous musical praxis contributed to the transformation of the intervals and the formation of the sound of the now sung Byzantine chant, a sound not so much new but with a life of several centuries.

The bulk of Byzantine chant now sung consists of chants from the tradition of the 18th century, especially the notations and compositions of Petros Lampadarios, which constitutes the tradition of the ‘Great Church’, i.e., the Church of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. Other older chants are, of course, sung, as well as later compositions, some of them following the tradition and retaining the ‘ethos’ (character) of church music, some of them slipping to secular styles. The same can be also said about the vocal style : on the one hand traditional and on the other secularized (usually heavily and in a bad sense orientalized). Let us hope that research, teaching and, above all, a true sense of the Truth of the Church will result in an improvement of the situation of this, in spite of deficiencies, living tradition of a music which has its roots - I’m happy to see this in my investigations- in the Church Fathers themselves.
 
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Nikolaos Giannoukakis

Παλαιό Μέλος
Dear Mr. Theodore,

When someone posts the identical points under two separate headings without any nuances that differentiate each of the separate posts, so that they have contextual relevance, the impression is created that the discourse intended (one would like to think) is not to engage in helpful discussion, but to impose a particular view as "Proof".

I don't know if you have any background in mathematics or science, or even fact-based knowledge, but the word "Proof" is very strong to use. And on this word alone, we could end up spending months of discussion, before we even graduated to your assertion (or Mr. Arvanitis very old assertion) about said "Proof" of implied authenticity.

To avoid this (in my mind) unhelpful discussion to begin, I will simply cross-post what I replied with to your other post:

http://analogion.com/forum/showpost.php?p=217232&postcount=58

Please take the time to read through the thousands of pages of discussions in Psaltologion on the matter. Knowledge of Greek is imperative, of course. It will be a helpful exercise, even if you remain unconvinced in the end.

Respectfully,
NG
 
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