An extra syllable in cadence in Slavic books

SergM

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Hello!
I often see such a cadence with an extra syllable in Slavic books. It occurs in different modes. Is she correct? Is it found in Greek books?
 

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In the word свѧ́тостїю, the composer had to deal with the peculiarity of the Church Slavonic Language which can put the accent (stress) on any syllable of the word, unlike Greek. Now, there are many ways to read and pronounce Church Slavonic, as there are Slav speaking Churches. Serbians do not bother too much about the stress; hence one hears at the memorial service "I ninjé i prísno i vo vjéki vjékov, ámin": the melodic formulae of Serbian tone 5 take precedence and the text is accentuated in such a way as to match them. Bulgarians "learnt" Church Slavonic in the 19th century from Russians (as hitherto services were almost exclusively in Greek) and have stuck to that pronunciation, with the exception of adding an additional vowel on occasion (e.g. пѣ́снь is pronounced пѣ́сaнь). Stresses are of paramount importance when reading or chanting in Church Slavonic for a Bulgarian.
 
Hello!
I often see such a cadence with an extra syllable in Slavic books. It occurs in different modes. Is she correct? Is it found in Greek books?
1) I may be able to automatically search my collection of some thousands of score notes, for this syllable. But first I have to make some changes to be able to do this search.
2) In the mean time I have tested that cadence with the BZQ program (*). I am very glad to say, the added syllable is melodically/systematically impeccable, perfectly agreeing with average/traditional byzantine music style. It has an AverDiff of Zero!
(*) https://analogion.com/forum/index.p...aditional-byzantine-melody.51759/#post-279701
 
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In the word свѧ́тостїю, the composer had to deal with the peculiarity of the Church Slavonic Language which can put the accent (stress) on any syllable of the word, unlike Greek. Now, there are many ways to read and pronounce Church Slavonic, as there are Slav speaking Churches. Serbians do not bother too much about the stress; hence one hears at the memorial service "I ninjé i prísno i vo vjéki vjékov, ámin": the melodic formulae of Serbian tone 5 take precedence and the text is accentuated in such a way as to match them. Bulgarians "learnt" Church Slavonic in the 19th century from Russians (as hitherto services were almost exclusively in Greek) and have stuck to that pronunciation, with the exception of adding an additional vowel on occasion (e.g. пѣ́снь is pronounced пѣ́сaнь). Stresses are of paramount importance when reading or chanting in Church Slavonic for a Bulgarian.
Regarding accents, indeed, in such cadences, especially if the syllable is stretched into 4 beats, accents in the Slavic text can be almost arbitrary. But, the extra syllable here is not related to the Bulgarian pronunciation, it will sound the same in Russian. It seems to me that the author simply did not find a suitable cadence for the syllable pattern 1000, he often writes that way in this case. I want to rewrite it like this:
shot1.png

1) I may be able to automatically search my collection of some thousands of score notes, for this syllable. But first I have to make some changes to be able to do this search.
2) In the mean time I have tested that cadence with the BZQ program (*). I am very glad to say, the added syllable is melodically/systematically impeccable, perfectly agreeing with average/traditional byzantine music style. It has an AverDiff of Zero!
(*) https://analogion.com/forum/index.p...aditional-byzantine-melody.51759/#post-279701
I also have a search engine, but my collection of score notes is not very large (it is difficult to find books in machine-readable format). I don't find such a cadence in Greek books.
 
Your re-written score is again perfect, AverDiff=0.

My collection of scores are automatically imported in BZQ coding or coded by hand.
Inside BZQ I can play the parallagi with real recorded voices AND with
adjustable interpretations of the quality symbols eg Petasti etc.
I can also do more things in BZQ, eg check the Orthography etc.
My typed scores have been done with one of the following FREE programs:
Pandouris, MK, and the latest Neanes.
BZQ imports scores from these 3 programs, it translates them to the simple and mnemonic BZQ coding, eg in your case:

SergM 20250122.png

As you see the BZQ coding is not so frightening, it is as mnemonic as possible,
ie like the parallagi for the notes, and
like the shapes of other symbols or their names. Example: T comes from the word anTikenoma.

By the way there is a special BZQ coding for a Score Database,
which has a comprehensive way of searching according to many parameters, you can read that in BZQ.
We are looking for volunteers to collect data.
 

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(it is difficult to find books in machine-readable format). I don't find such a cadence in Greek books.
That's absolutely true. And you cannot easily/quickly search for Byzantine notes! How, in what format?
If you are learning English, you can search and find an identical small English phrase but not the long phrase you need.
Then, you 'll have to write the long phrase yourself, the best you can, based on your knowledge of English and its logic and syntax.
Byzantine Music can be used for any spoken language as Prof.Stathis proved to a Danish professor in Denmark:
Stathis took the Danish newspaper on the table and sang an article in perfect Byz.Music!

Like in English and Bulgarian phrases, in Byzantine Music there are many identical musical phrases(formulas)..
But in many some cases you cannot readily find the B.M. score you need.
For such cases the BZQ AverDiff comes to help:
It has analysed some 17000 notes (so far) and it has "distilled" a number of mathematical/statistical/logical parameters and produces the so called AverDiff.
The AverDiff shows the extent of the difference from the average Byz.M. style even for a phrase never written before. What is important is the Byzantine Music logic, style, or syntax if you prefer.
 
In case you are interested, here is a Romanian solution by Suceveanu (Sfinte Doamne).
 

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That's absolutely true. And you cannot easily/quickly search for Byzantine notes! How, in what format?
It's strange for me to hear that. Okay, I'll show you what I have. This is a small search program that I use to compose sheet music. The search can be either by notes or by syllable pattern. This is what working with her looks like.
I've seen your program. For 2025, this is a relic, although it may be useful to someone. I understand that Visual Basic 6 has its limitations, and everyone writes what they can. But I have my own set of programs: for typing notes, for checking what is typed for compliance with Greek books, and for searching formulas. Nothing secret, maybe someday I'll publish them, but I'm not ready yet. It's just difficult to deploy them on another computer (and I have Linux).
 

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It's strange for me to hear that. Okay, I'll show you what I have. This is a small search program that I use to compose sheet music. The search can be either by notes or by syllable pattern. This is what working with her looks like.
I've seen your program. For 2025, this is a relic, although it may be useful to someone. I understand that Visual Basic 6 has its limitations, and everyone writes what they can. But I have my own set of programs: for typing notes, for checking what is typed for compliance with Greek books, and for searching formulas. Nothing secret, maybe someday I'll publish them, but I'm not ready yet. It's just difficult to deploy them on another computer (and I have Linux).
Congratulations! I like the interface!
I first wrote mine in 1997 in DOS, before Windows and VB6! Prehistory.....
Remember DOS? Black and White? Punched cards?
 
Remember DOS? Black and White? Punched cards?
I didn't see pure DOS, usually there was always Norton Commander or one of his clones, so for me DOS is associated with the blue color.

But on the subject: Melodos also seems to have a sheet music search, but I haven't seen it live. There is no music database in the demo version. Does anyone use it? It surprised me that searching through Byzantine music is such a problem.
 
I just know the name Melodos. Never used it, sorry. Probably because I was too busy developing my own. It's a big program.

BZQ was "born" in 1997 simply to play notes with any exact intervals. The rest followed in the course of the next 28 years...

By the way, you seem to have done a lot of work and you know very much... Do you happen to know of any other program:
-playing notes with a (prerecorded) human voice (it seems Finale can only sing LaLaLa...)
-clearly pronouncing the syllables ni pa... or do re mi..
-including change for petasti, psifiston etc etc
-portamento?
 
By the way, you seem to have done a lot of work and you know very much... Do you happen to know of any other program:
-playing notes with a (prerecorded) human voice (it seems Finale can only sing LaLaLa...)
-clearly pronouncing the syllables ni pa... or do re mi..
-including change for petasti, psifiston etc etc
-portamento?
No, I didn't synthesize vocals. I would look for singing engine. Something from here: https://gist.github.com/0xdevalias/0b64b25d72cbbc784042a9fdff713129
 
By the way, you seem to have done a lot of work and you know very much... Do you happen to know of any other program:
-playing notes with a (prerecorded) human voice (it seems Finale can only sing LaLaLa...)
-clearly pronouncing the syllables ni pa... or do re mi..
-including change for petasti, psifiston etc etc
-portamento?
Your task is easier than singing synthesis. Another option is possible: I have a synthesizer program with a voice processor function, the sources are available via SVN. https://sourceforge.net/projects/byzorgan/
She can change the pitch of the recorded voice without distorting it. If there is audio with pre-recorded words (pa, vou, ga ...) at an some pitch, they can be played back by arbitrarily changing the pitch. But, of course, it will have to be modified: extract a repitcher from it, make a library out of it so that it can be linked to another project.
 
Byzorgan is a very nice tool! Congratulations!
It is a side-by-side companion with BZQ:

-Byzorgan is for easy, quick playing of some notes with the correct intervals.
-BZQ is to play a whole score with continuous exact timing (also digorgon etc), petasti, changing ison etc, all seamess almost like a live recording. It also does other things like Orthographic check, AverDiff etc see BZQ list.

More congratulation because you are practicing Byzantine Music in another country, Russia.

Many years ago I sung in a church also with Kostas Bousdekis, perhaps you know him.
 
I had a look at the same composition by Ангел Иванов - Севлиевец, on whose work was Manasi's work based. Ангел Иванов - Севлиевец had a much better understanding of Church Slavonic (and NT Greek) than other contemporary composers and chanters and I thought he might have chosen some other formula-but he had treated this phrase in the same way.
Let me here add that we must not isolate the Bulgarian composers from their time; they did the best they could and as best as they knew. I don't think anyone had handed them a copy of the 1,000 formulae! :ROFLMAO:
 
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