Anastasimatarion in Slavonic composed by Petros

Shota

Παλαιό Μέλος
The following few pages from Dimitrije Stefanovic's and Milos Velimirovic's article were sent to me by Vladimir, a distinguished member of our forum from Russia. Velimirovic and Stefanovic talk about a ms currently kept in the Yale University Library which contains (a part of?) the Anastasimatarion in Slavonic (the text is not written in the Slavonic alphabet, but is transliterated into Greek) set to music by Petros Lampadarios at the request of Metropolitan Seraphim of Bosnia.

Of itself the fact that Petros composed in Slavonic is most interesting, but also musically the ms gives an important example of Petros' music in the slow sticheraric style. The only composition of an analogous style by Petros that springs to my mind is Kassiane's Troparion.

It will be nice if the ms is studied by some of the Old Notation connoiseurs of the forum.
 

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Laosynaktis

Παλαιό Μέλος
The following few pages from Dimitrije Stefanovic's and Milos Velimirovic's article were sent to me by Vladimir, a distinguished member of our forum from Russia. Velimirovic and Stefanovic talk about a ms currently kept in the Yale University Library which contains (a part of?) the Anastasimatarion in Slavonic (the text is not written in the Slavonic alphabet, but is transliterated into Greek) set to music by Petros Lampadarios at the request of Metropolitan Seraphim of Bosnia.

Of itself the fact that Petros composed in Slavonic is most interesting, but also musically the ms gives an important example of Petros' music in the slow sticheraric style. The only composition of an analogous style by Petros that springs to my mind is Kassiane's Troparion.

It will be nice if the ms is studied by some of the Old Notation connoiseurs of the forum.
It must not be an original composition by Petros but an adaptation of the Anastasimatarion by Chrysaphis the New into Slavonic, done of course in the right way, i.e. not merely by adapting the words faithfully on the original but using other formulas where necessary. This can be done properly only by one who is also a composer like Petros. In this sense, this is Petros' composition, too, to some degree.
Ioannis Arvanitis
 

Laosynaktis

Παλαιό Μέλος
The following few pages from Dimitrije Stefanovic's and Milos Velimirovic's article were sent to me by Vladimir, a distinguished member of our forum from Russia. Velimirovic and Stefanovic talk about a ms currently kept in the Yale University Library which contains (a part of?) the Anastasimatarion in Slavonic (the text is not written in the Slavonic alphabet, but is transliterated into Greek) set to music by Petros Lampadarios at the request of Metropolitan Seraphim of Bosnia.

Of itself the fact that Petros composed in Slavonic is most interesting, but also musically the ms gives an important example of Petros' music in the slow sticheraric style. The only composition of an analogous style by Petros that springs to my mind is Kassiane's Troparion.

It will be nice if the ms is studied by some of the Old Notation connoiseurs of the forum.

A transcription of it by me:
(I had not the time to search for the text in Slavonic script, so that I see the words more correctly written, so I retained the script of the original P;etros' version)
 

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Shota

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A transcription of it by me:
(I had not the time to search for the text in Slavonic script, so that I see the words more correctly written, so I retained the script of the original Petros' version)

It's superfluous to say how grateful we are for the transcription!

With your very busy schedule, would you be interested in studying all 11 folia of the original ms, provided somebody supplies you its copy?
 

frephraim

Παλαιό Μέλος
I wish I could see some of Petros' adaptations in Slavonic transcribed into a notation I know! (Chrysantine Byzantine notation or even Western staff notation) Seeing how he dealt with problematic phrases would be very instructive for me and also for other people like me who are trying to adapt Byzantine hymns into a foreign language. In particular, I would especially like to see how hard he tried to preserve melodic reminders of the "original" Greek version.

As I demonstrated in my article "Concerning Adaptation", there is a broad spectrum of approaches to this issue. The conclusion I reached in that article was that composers with expertise in Byzantine music would sacrifice the original melody and utilize formulas appropriate for the syllables in the new language.

I am glad to hear from you, Mr. Arvanitis, that Petros did change the melody by using other appropriate formulas, but I still wonder if he tried to preserve the melodic contours of a troparion. In other words, if the original Greek version of a troparion in third mode, for example, had medial cadences on Ke, Ke, Pa, Nee, Ke in that order, would Petros do everything he could to follow that same pattern or not? In other words, would he use a rare or even unknown formula to follow that pattern of medial cadences, or would he only use familiar formulas, which necessarily prevented him from preserving the melodic contours of the original?

The answer to that question has very practical ramifications for adapters of Byzantine music today. Some adapters (such as Georgios Michalakis in France) believes that the sequence of medial cadences must be followed in adaptations, even if doing so entails breaking the formulaic rules. (By "breaking the formulaic rules", I mean creating melodic formulas that are nonexistent in classical compositions of Byzantine music). I, on the other hand, believe that the formulaic rules should not be broken, whereas the melodic contour may be adjusted when adapting a troparion into a different language.

I elaborated on those two views with a small statistical analysis in this post: http://psaltologion.com/showpost.php?p=10845&postcount=3 with the hope that someone with experience would be able to evaluate our opinions objectively. Unfortunately, no one commented on it yet. I would be very grateful if someone with your experience like yours, Mr. Arvanitis, could offer your insights on this issue.

+Fr. Ephraim
 

frephraim

Παλαιό Μέλος
Thank you, Mr. Arvanitis. My wish came true!
But I still need to compare this with the "original" Greek version. Does anyone have it?
 

Π. Δαβίδ

Γενικός συντονιστής
Nobody can doubt the value of such a composition and no words are enough to express our gratitude to Mr. Arvanitis for his work. Special kudos is likewise due to Shota. However, I do see a limitation in using Petros' works in slavonic as a model: how well did Petros understand the language of the hymns he was setting to music? :confused:

Neofit Rilski was very skilled in both Greek and Slavonic as well as in psaltic music. However most (if not all his work) is not published yet. The Rila monastery brotherhood is now contemplating to publish his melodies for the feasts (dormition & translation of relics) of St. John of Rila; though these are original melodies and not adaptations from Greek melodies (since the texts of these services were written in slavonic and not greek) it will give us a most useful insight.
 

Laosynaktis

Παλαιό Μέλος
It's superfluous to say how grateful we are for the transcription!

With your very busy schedule, would you be interested in studying all 11 folia of the original ms, provided somebody supplies you its copy?

Thank you Shota and all in this thread!
I would be interested of course but I cannot tell when I can complete the transcription, provided that I'm currently rushing for completeing my PhD. This special sticheron took me some minutes. I sung it tice from the original and then put it on paper. I did it by heart, i.e. without direct reference to other chants, where I could find formulas whose transcription I possibly could not remeber well. So, this for this sticheron. I don't know what will happen with the rest! Maybe I can transcribe them directly and then check them. But of course I can try.
 

Laosynaktis

Παλαιό Μέλος
I wish I could see some of Petros' adaptations in Slavonic transcribed into a notation I know! (Chrysantine Byzantine notation or even Western staff notation) Seeing how he dealt with problematic phrases would be very instructive for me and also for other people like me who are trying to adapt Byzantine hymns into a foreign language. In particular, I would especially like to see how hard he tried to preserve melodic reminders of the "original" Greek version.

As I demonstrated in my article "Concerning Adaptation", there is a broad spectrum of approaches to this issue. The conclusion I reached in that article was that composers with expertise in Byzantine music would sacrifice the original melody and utilize formulas appropriate for the syllables in the new language.

I am glad to hear from you, Mr. Arvanitis, that Petros did change the melody by using other appropriate formulas, but I still wonder if he tried to preserve the melodic contours of a troparion. In other words, if the original Greek version of a troparion in third mode, for example, had medial cadences on Ke, Ke, Pa, Nee, Ke in that order, would Petros do everything he could to follow that same pattern or not? In other words, would he use a rare or even unknown formula to follow that pattern of medial cadences, or would he only use familiar formulas, which necessarily prevented him from preserving the melodic contours of the original?

The answer to that question has very practical ramifications for adapters of Byzantine music today. Some adapters (such as Georgios Michalakis in France) believes that the sequence of medial cadences must be followed in adaptations, even if doing so entails breaking the formulaic rules. (By "breaking the formulaic rules", I mean creating melodic formulas that are nonexistent in classical compositions of Byzantine music). I, on the other hand, believe that the formulaic rules should not be broken, whereas the melodic contour may be adjusted when adapting a troparion into a different language.

I elaborated on those two views with a small statistical analysis in this post: http://psaltologion.com/showpost.php?p=10845&postcount=3 with the hope that someone with experience would be able to evaluate our opinions objectively. Unfortunately, no one commented on it yet. I would be very grateful if someone with your experience like yours, Mr. Arvanitis, could offer your insights on this issue.

+Fr. Ephraim

Thank you Fr Ephraim for your message and sorry that I don' t have the time to comment on the many subjects in it.
I ll assure you only that Petros preserves the structure of the original in this sticheron. I don't know of cource about the other ones because I don' t have them. It happens that I remember its Chrysaphis' version. Concerning the formulas themselves, I don't think that he would need to use unknown formulas. But I cannot discuss it in detail now.
Although I have worked very little on adaptations, I think that I cannot agree with Michalakis 100%. If one can compose, he can maybe always find a solution with the common formulas. don't think that one needs to preserve all the medial cademces, but, in difficult cases, preserve the more general structure of the original. Or the best is that one is able to compose directly in the new language (I have tried it for 2-3 cheroubika in English, 2-3 Koinonika and an Axion esti. Unfortunately it can take a lot of time to find them now).
 

Laosynaktis

Παλαιό Μέλος
Nobody can doubt the value of such a composition and no words are enough to express our gratitude to Mr. Arvanitis for his work. Special kudos is likewise due to Shota. However, I do see a limitation in using Petros' works in slavonic as a model: how well did Petros understand the language of the hymns he was setting to music? :confused:

Neofit Rilski was very skilled in both Greek and Slavonic as well as in psaltic music. However most (if not all his work) is not published yet. The Rila monastery brotherhood is now contemplating to publish his melodies for the feasts (dormition & translation of relics) of St. John of Rila; though these are original melodies and not adaptations from Greek melodies (since the texts of these services were written in slavonic and not greek) it will give us a most useful insight.

This is of course something to be examined and this can be done, if we see all his adaptations (I thnik you know Slavonic, so you can judge, in part at least, the quality of his adaptation from my transcription).
It happened, some years ago, that someone brought me some adaptations he had made into Slavonic of some modern chants, so that I check them. Be fore doing anything, I asked him about the words, ie. prepositions, lexical words, their accentuation, their meaning (although I knew the meaning of the whole, because they were known hymns). Then I tried to adapt them to appropriate formulas. I sung them to him and asked him how it sounded. If it were not exactly satisfactory, I did it in another way, till I find, with his judgment as a help, the final solution. Petros could possibly have worked in the same way.
 
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