Since I could not find a Sticheraric or Papadic version of this Katavasia in English and since it is appointed to be sung in place of It is Truly Meet on the Leavetaking of the Exaltation (this Sunday), I humbly post this arrangement.
Any better compositions, would be greatly appreciated as this is not my area of expertise.
In Christ,
Rdr. Michael
Hello Michael,
I'm not exactly an expert on the slow heirmologic style of composition, but I've been glancing at it on and off over the past few months, and, when I saw your post, I finally decided to try to dig a little deeper into it and see what I could learn. In looking at your piece, and comparing it with other hymns in slow heirmologic from the plagal fourth mode, I noticed several things. I'll try to divide my comments into several categories; this is kind of how I noticed things as I was working.
1) Comments on your piece as an independent work
First of all, your piece is very nice. I like how you tried to remain faithful to the original melody whenever you could, changing only the sections in which the text differed from the Greek. Overall, I think you were successful (even more so than my own arrangement). However, there are a couple sections of your composition which have a few problems. These are problems in general, and don't have anything to do with the slow sticheraric style of composition
per se.
a) I'm not familiar with the thesis you used for the words "death that came to man through." Maybe my memory fails me, or perhaps it's something you thought up? It seems a little unusual.
b) On line 2, the oligon-kentemata-gorgon combination followed by an apostrophos needs to start a new syllable. It can't be "empty" (or a continuation of the previous syllable).
c) Second line from the bottom - the section "Mother of God" does not work for that particular formula, because you have squeezed an extra syllable in (on the second apostrophos after the oligon-kentemata-psefiston combination). That thesis
very rarely - if ever - takes 2 different syllables on those two apostrophoi (at least in the sticheraric and slow heirmologic styles), so you might want to consider something else here. There are a couple options.
d) 2nd line from the bottom - the phrase "whom all the powers" is missing a syllable the way you have it written. (The second-to-last character on that line - the single ison - needs to start a new syllable.) For it to be correct, you could re-write it ever so-slightly, as follows:
-delete the psefiston on "whom"
-change that first note of the next character to be an ison instead of an apostrophos
-move "whom" to go where "all" is right now
-move "all" to where "the" is right now
-move "the" to the second-to-last character on that line - the single ison.
e) This is not a problem so much with an incorrect application of syllables to a thesis - but I would prefer to have the phrase "abolished through the Cross" end on Ni, since that is where the period is. Granted, I cannot say that I always apply this "rule" myself when composing doxastika, but I do try as far as is possible. In general, one should try to have periods fall on Ni. However, you have the opposite happening in your piece - a period on Di, and two phrases with no punctuation at all ending on Ni. This sounds a little strange to my ears - I'm expecting the end of a sentence (or at least a comma or semicolon) when I hear a cadence on Ni, and, conversely, some kind of continuation of the sentence or train of thought when I hear a cadence on Bou or Di.
2) Comments on your piece as being in the slow heirmologic style
This is where I started to do a little research, because - as I mentioned at the beginning of this post - I am not exceedingly familiar with the slow heirmologic style of composition. However, I tried to look at your piece, and compare it to other piece in the same genre. These are several things I noticed.
a) I didn't see the thesis you used for "eating of the tree" in any of the hymns that I examined. (Although my examination was rather cursory, so I could have missed it.)
b) Interestingly, out of all the hymns that I examined in Petros the Peloponnesian's
Heirmologion, only one used the formula which you applied to the words "that fell on all mankind" in the middle of a troparion. Every other hymn reserved that specific cadence (which descends to Pa and "sits there" before "resolving" to Ni) for the semi-final ending of each hymn, and did not use it in anywhere else in the piece. In other words - with one exception - it seems to be reserved for semi-final endings. Again, this was a cursory examination, but nonetheless, this seems to be indicated by my perusal of Petros' work.
Basically, this can be boiled down as follows:
-Fr. Ephraim's collection of theseis - the "Formula Book" - is a collection of sticheraric and heirmologic theseis (his other volume contains papadic theseis). It does not contain a section for slow heirmlogic theseis. However:
-Basically every thesis that I saw while examining the slow heirmologic section of Petros the Peloponnesian's
Heirmologion, published by Chourmouzios in 1825, can be found in Papa Ephraim's Formula Book," in the plagal fourth sticheraric section. (There are, of course, some variant ways of writing some theseis, as well as some fthorae that might not be found in his book - at least not exactly as they are written - but, nonetheless, practically all the material can be found in his book.)
-That being said - just because a formula appears in the plagal fourth
sticheraric section of Papa Ephraim's book, does not mean that it is appropriate for a plagal fourth
slow heirmologic piece from Ni. There are some compositional differences. One of these, I believe, is the fact that I mentioned above about the semi-final cadence that seems to be reserved almost exclusively for the end of a piece. Another one is the fact that, while the cadence you used right at the beginning of the piece (which descends to Ke) is indeed part of the plagal fourth mode, I did not encounter it in any other hymn of the Plagal Fourth
Slow Heirmologic style - which is a different sort of style than Plagal Fourth Sticheraric. There are similarities, certainly - as I mentioned, practically all the melodic material of Plagal Fourth Slow Heirmologic is contained in Plagal Fourth Sticheraric - but this does not mean that we can take any thesis from the latter and apply it to the former. It's like saying "all squares have four sides, but not everything with four sides is a square."
I've attached an attempt at this same troparion, after the brief examination I did of plagal fourth slow heirmologic. I'm not totally happy with it, partially because my own experience with the genre is extremely limited - but I tried to restrict myself to formulae that I found in other pieces in plagal fourth slow heirmologic. I also attempted to at least keep some melodic lines from the original, although I did put a fthora on one section.
If anyone can offer some more insight into this topic, I would be very happy to hear at - as I have already said, my experience with this style is very limited, since a) very few pieces in slow heirmologic settings are chanted in common practice now, and b) there are far fewer pieces in this genre than there are in other genres (e.g. fast heirmologic, sticheraric, etc). So there is less material to draw from and study.
In Christ,
Gabriel
