Φίλοι του Ψαλτολογίου,
Δυστυχώς το παρακάτω κείμενο του Stan Takis υπάρχει μέχρι τώρα μόνο στα αγγλικά.
Συγνώμη για την αγγλική γλώσσα, αλλά έχει μερικά ενδιαφέροντα στοιχεία.
Όπως. . .
". . .
it must be said that the new recording, Sacred Music of Byzantium, produced by the Axion Estin Foundation, offers a nearly perfect glimpse into a vast and ancient vocal art. The Greek Byzantine Choir under the direction of Lycourgos Angelopoulos displays a technical proficiency and precision that reflects their long years of dedication to the performance of this music."
. . .και. . .
"Byzantine music is primarily linear, that is, the monophonic melodies take center stage with no harmonic accompaniment except a drone upon the fundamental tone of the phrase. These intricate melodies are laced with subtle ornamentation and micro-tuned intervals, which makes them very unlike modern music, with its reliance on major and minor scales with chords.
The Greek Byzantine Choir not only executes these melodies with unanimous blend and precision, but also with a sensitive interpretation and intelligence. Despite the fact that Byzantine musical pieces are fashioned from whole cloth, with little variance in tempo or style within a single hymn, and despite the fact that they are constantly chanted here by unaccompanied male voices, the ear of the listener does not become fatigued as these often-long pieces unfold. Interest is kept by the way Angelopoulos has brought out the finer points of the melodic lines with skill and a natural flow that makes the music a pleasant and interesting conversation with the listener. How much more pleasant it is when the listener can understand and appreciate the wonderful poems that are set to this music! It seems this is Angelopoulos' primary motivation in the way he trains his choir."
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REVIEW OF SACRED MUSIC OF BYZANTIUM, GREEK BYZANTINE CHOIR
by Stanley J. Takis
Byzantine chant, besides being the traditional music of the Greek Orthodox Church, is probably the oldest continually existing form of music in Western Civilization. When one listens to Byzantine chant for the first time, the effect is immediate. It is unlike anything the listener has heard before, as if it were echoing from a distant place. One may be puzzled by it, or entranced, but it is generally agreed that it is certainly different from most other musical experiences. Given this, it must be said that the new recording, Sacred Music of Byzantium, produced by the Axion Estin Foundation, offers a nearly perfect glimpse into a vast and ancient vocal art. The Greek Byzantine Choir under the direction of Lycourgos Angelopoulos displays a technical proficiency and precision that reflects their long years of dedication to the performance of this music. The eleven selections on this newly released compact disc give the listener a wide sample of the different modes and rhythmic styles of Byzantine chant.
The program of Sacred Music of Byzantium, as one would expect from an authentic performance, is entirely in liturgical Greek. Unfortunately, there is no translation of the texts provided with the accompanying booklet (although they will be available on the Axion Estin's website
http://www.axionestin.org along with the musical scores), and I say this is unfortunate because the most outstanding feature of Byzantine chant is the ingenious marriage of words and music, which is meant to highlight and emphasize the outstanding poetry and meaning of these religious texts. So, unless one understands ancient Greek or can find a translation of the works on this disc, one will have to be satisfied with experiencing only the music. However, there is much to listen to and appreciate in the musical content of this performance.
Byzantine music is primarily linear, that is, the monophonic melodies take center stage with no harmonic accompaniment except a drone upon the fundamental tone of the phrase. These intricate melodies are laced with subtle ornamentation and micro-tuned intervals, which makes them very unlike modern music, with its reliance on major and minor scales with chords. The Greek Byzantine Choir not only executes these melodies with unanimous blend and precision, but also with a sensitive interpretation and intelligence. Despite the fact that Byzantine musical pieces are fashioned from whole cloth, with little variance in tempo or style within a single hymn, and despite the fact that they are constantly chanted here by unaccompanied male voices, the ear of the listener does not become fatigued as these often-long pieces unfold. Interest is kept by the way Angelopoulos has brought out the finer points of the melodic lines with skill and a natural flow that makes the music a pleasant and interesting conversation with the listener. How much more pleasant it is when the listener can understand and appreciate the wonderful poems that are set to this music! It seems this is Angelopoulos' primary motivation in the way he trains his choir.
Byzantine liturgical music has a complex set of theoretical rules, which are applied to the thousands of hymns of the Orthodox Church. In addition to the Divine Liturgy, the central service of the Church, which carries the Sacrament of Holy Communion, there are hourly services, including Vespers, Orthros (Matins), and Compline, for every day of the year, and each day celebrates a different saint or event in the history of the Church. There are also services for different occasions, such as baptisms, marriages, and funerals. Each one of these services is chanted with its own set of prayers, homilies, histories, and poems of praise. The depth of literature is so rich, that it seems to be a hidden treasure, since most people do not experience all of these daily services. Most hymns are assigned either a specific melody or a specific musical mode. These melodies and modes come from a system known as the Octoechos, which contains eight different families of sounds. Each of these is known as an echos, which is usually translated as "tone" or "mode." Each echos contains a set of melodic formulas which are applied to words and phrases based upon the metrical pattern of their accented and unaccented syllables. The range and variety of these melodic formulas are enough to fill a thousand-page book.
Another shortcoming of the packaging of this disc is the lack of identification of the tracks, except for a brief listing in English. Thus, we have no explanation of the pieces presented on the CD, nor are we given their context within the realm of Orthodox hymnody. Because of these omissions, I will try to give the information for each track, as best as I can identify it, until the scores become available.br />
The first selection of Sacred Music of Byzantium, is the most common prayer of the Orthodox Church, "Lord, have mercy," which is recurrent in every service. While most Kyrie eleisons are short and succinct, the three recorded here are a part of a longer, more melismatic litany in the Second Tone of the Byzantine Octoechos.
This selection is followed by a part of the Divine Liturgy known as the Typica or Antiphony, where the early life and teachings of Christ are expressed through prophetic Psalm verses and the Beatitudes, chanted antiphonally between two choirs and interspersed with hymns that comment upon the verses. Psalm 102 is chanted here in the short, one-note-per-syllable mode of the Plagal Fourth Tone. Psalms are used throughout Orthodox services, and are usually selected for their foreshadowing of Christ's presence on earth. Psalm verses are most often interspersed with tropes (troparia), which are refrains written by Christian-era poets commenting upon or celebrating the theme of the particular service that contains the hymns.
This is followed on track three with the Beatitudes and their associated hymns. These commentary hymns begin after the verse "Blessed are the poor in spirit..." and there is a different set of hymns for each Tone of the Octoechos. In the recording, we hear the First Tone collection of hymns with the Beatitudes verses. Today, in most celebrations of the Divine Liturgy, the Beatitudes and their associated hymns are replaced by an antiphon consisting of Psalm verses and refrains (troparia) of the feast(s) of the day.
The Cherubic hymn arrives at a point in the Divine Liturgy where all of the instructive parts of the service have been completed, and the business of preparing the Communion gifts begins. The hymn accompanies a procession and is interrupted by the entrance of the Holy Gifts of bread and wine into the sanctuary. In olden days, these gifts were stored outside of the Church and the ceremonial procession was initiated to retrieve them. Today, the gifts have been placed in a special area near the altar. Long silent prayers are offered, and the gifts are brought out for a procession through the church and then brought back to the front and placed upon the altar. All of this takes time, and the dialogue between the celebrant and the people, which is the basic form of every service, temporarily comes to a halt. The chanters fill this time with an elongated, ornate hymn that compares their image to that of the Cherubim angels, who in heaven sing the thrice-holy hymn. Long melismatic hymns, such as this one, stretch the rules of the echos, creating intricate melodic lines upon single syllables. Frequent modulations into other modes are heard, and the melody may soar into a higher vocal range. On the disc, the Cherubic hymn presented is a famous early 19th Century composition in the Third Tone by Gregory Levitis, also known as Gregorios Protopsaltis, the presiding chanter of the Patriarchate in Constantinople from 1819 to 1922.
After the Cherubic hymn track, the recording follows with the Holy Anaphora or Offering, the part of the Divine Liturgy where, after the gifts have been placed upon the altar, prayers are offered to have them changed essentially into the Blood and Body of Christ. This process consists of several responses and hymns, of which all but the last hymn, on this recording, represent a return to an ancient practice. In more recent tradition these hymns are given a modal, melodic treatment, including the famous "Holy, Holy, Holy" hymn, known in the Catholic mass as the Sanctus. Recent researchers have maintained that these responses and hymns were not chanted with melody, but rather with a heightened form of speech known in Greek as kliton, demonstrated here by the Greek Byzantine Choir before they chant, in the Second Tone, the final piece in the sequence, the megalynarion, which is a hymn of praise to the Virgin Mary.
The sixth track is from the Great Compline, a service given during fasting and penitential periods in the calendar of the Church. This is not to be confused with the lesser compline, which is the last service in the typical daily liturgical cycle. The hymn "God is with Us," chanted here in the brief mode of the Plagal Second Tone, takes a series of declamatory verses from the prophecy of Isaiah, and intersperses them with the refrain, "For God is with us."
Tracks seven and nine offer a look into a controversial practice in Byzantine chanting, the kratema. The kratema is a melismatic melody chanted on nonsense syllable such as "te ri rem" that are inserted into a hymn at a point where some kind of amplification of the music is desired. In the first example on the disc, a line from "Hail, Mary" is elaborated upon, and in the second example it is the first line of the megalynarion, "Axion Estin," a fitting tribute to the Foundation that produced the recording. The ostensible purpose of employing a kratema is to heighten the prayer by expressing an imitation of the pure, wordless angelic music. However, there has not been agreement within the Church hierarchy that this is an acceptable practice. Nevertheless, the presentation here is a virtuoso performance of pure Byzantine music.
Between these two kratemas, we hear the Polyeleos, so called because of the refrain, "For His mercy endures forever," placed between verses of Psalms 134 and 135 (Septuagint numbering). The Polyeleos is given during the Orthros service of great feasts, and at other times in various situations. A wide variety of musical and textual treatments are used. On this disc we hear an abbreviated set of verses in three different modes, First Tone, Plagal First Tone, and Plagal Fourth Tone.
The tenth selection on the CD demonstrates antiphonal solo chanting with two distinguished chanters, Eleftherios Eleftheriadis from the Music School of Thessaloniki, Greece, and Photios Ketsetzis of The Holy Cross Seminary in Brookline, Massachusetts. Psalm 104 is read at every Vespers service, but on the feast of Pentecost, it is chanted from verse 28, because of the clear foreshadowing of the sending of the Holy Spirit into the world. It is chanted here in the Plagal Fourth Tone.
The final hymn on the disc is the doxasticon from the Orthros service of Second Sunday of Lent, "In this season of Lent," chanted in the hard chromatic mode of Plagal Second Tone. A doxasticon is so-called because it begins with a small doxology, "Glory to the Father..." (in Greek, "Doxa Patri...") followed by an elongated hymn of praise or penitence. The recording demonstrates a method of chanting a doxasticon where each phrase of the text is recited quickly, followed by the melismatic music of the hymn on the same phrase.
In conclusion, I heartily recommend the purchase of Sacred Music of Byzantium, available through the Internet at axionestin.org. Although the presentation could have been more educational with a more informative accompanying booklet, the musical performance is wonderful and well captured in the very pleasant acoustic of the Elebash Recital Hall in the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in New York City. Congratulations should be extended to The Axion Estin Foundation, an organization dedicated to the advancement of Byzantine liturgical music, for making this recording accessible to those wishing to explore a living musical art form with roots deep in the ancient world.
http://www.axionestin.org/review.html
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