Articles on Byzantine music by J. Thibaut

[Shota]

At the turn of the 19/20th c. one of the pioneers in the field of the Byzantine musicology J. Thibaut published a number of articles on the aspects of the old notation(s), in particular in the Transactions of the Russian Archeological Institute in Constantinople. I attach the following two papers (with watermarks, unfortunately):

J.Thibaut. Etude de Musique Byzantine. La notation de St. Jean Damascene ou Hagiopolite. Известия Русского археологического института в Константинополе. III. P. 138-179, 1898.

J.Thibaut. Etude de Musique Byzantine. La notation de Koukouzeles. Известия Русского археологического института в Константинополе. VI. P. 361-396, 1901.

The entire volumes can be downloaded e.g. from here:

http://www.library.chersonesos.org/showsection.php?section_code=6

 

[Shota]

I forgot to attach the colour plates of the papers that appear at the end of the journal. Pay particular attention to the 1st plate of the first article, which is a notated excerpt of the Synodikon of Orthodoxy. Should this be transcribed according to the long exegesis?

 

[Shota]

The notated excerpt of the Synodikon of Orthodoxy is from the so-called Synodikon of Tsar Boril. This is Slavonic adaptation of the Synodikon of Orthodoxy plus some extra material (I give a short summary based on what I read here). The original was compiled in the beginning of the 13th c. There are two copies of it that have survived: from the 14th c. and from the 16th c., respectively. The 14th c. copy (Palausov's ms) contains four notated excerpts in Greek which are inserted in the middle of the Slavonic text at different places (I'm not sure they were part of the 13th c. original):

On fol. 2v: Θερος και εαρ συ επλασας ταυτα μνησθητι ταυτης (Ps. 73,17).

On fol. 2v-3r: Δια σταυρου τε και προ του σταυρου και μετα τον σταυρον παθων τε και θαυματων του.

On fol. 4r-4v: αυτη η πιστης την οικουμενην εστηριξεν.

On fol. 6v there's a damaged fragment which is as yet unidentified.

All four excerpts are notated in the fourth mode and bear the inscription "tou autou", which should be a copy of the Greek indication of the authorship (the Greek original probably contained a number of other kalophonic excerpts too, where the name of the author was also given and then simply repeated as "tou autou"). That the excerpts were meant to be chanted is doubtless from marginal rubrics in Slavonic which say "here the chanters chant...". I guess the photos of the ms are published in this book (it is mentioned in the bibliography of the article and after all it contains 270 photos of various musical mss):

http://www.alba-books.com/index.php?go=products&id=1010&u_lang=1