The situation here is not so simple. The usage of musical phrases in almost (if not) all slavonic BM books (at least in all that I've seen till now) differs more or less from that of the 'canonical' books of Petros – his Anastasimatarion and Doxastarion (if we take just sticheraric melos for the beginning). Specifically, it lacks that strict and logical system which one could easily observe in Petros books. If, for example, anyone wants to have books with meli composed in 'Petros system', he will discover that the Bulgarian books at many places pay no attention to some of the 'unwritten rules' that adheres Petros (or two Petroi, to be exact
). This specifically relates to the distribution of the syllables in musical phrase and particularly, position of the stressed syllable in the phrase.
Here are several examples of this. Attached are two leaves from the Anastasimatarion and one of the Liturgy. On the page 5 of the Anastasimatarion in the second anastasimo sticheron in lines 6-7 is one example of such 'strange' phrase for the syllables '-konij nashih': I think you would never encounter such phrase in Petros books. Also, does not exist the phrase for the syllables 'izbavlej nas' in lines 5-6 – it is the beginning (a 'stump') of the phrase on Ga.
Further, on page 7 in line 2 there is incorrect (again, in terms of Petros books) usage of the phrase for syllables "tserkov' tvoju" – this phrase may be used for 2 of 3 syllables, but in no way for 4. Such usage occurs very often in Bulgarian books, as far as I remember.
On the line 3 of the same page there is a combination <zn'> which in Bulgarian language obviously counts as a syllable, but in Russian this conbination doesn't produce a syllable – it's a part of the one-syllable word <zhizn'>. Such instanses sound totally unexeptable for the Russian ear, it's just due to the difference in language pronunciation, but it needs to be corrected in order to use it in Russian churches. If you change the number of syllalbes, in most cases it obviously involves change of the music phrase.
In line 4 of the same page the syllables 'che-lo' take the four chronoi that in all occurences of that phrase in Petros books take a single syllable. Besides that, this syllable should be stressed in this musical phrase, whereas in reality the syllable 'lu' (2nd from the end) has the stress in this word.
Another example is the hymn 'Se ymnoumen' from the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great. If you compare this score with the classical setting of Iakovos, you'll see that in Bulgarian version the music of Iakovos has been left unchanged (not all, but the overwhelming part) and the words were 'squeezed into' the music. As a result, we have 1) the misplaced stresses and 2) differences in the correspondence of the musical phrases to the text. Eg.: the music phrase for <poje'm> is the same as for <-mnou'men> by Iakovos, so obviously we have misplaced stress; the word <blagoslovi'm> is just squeezed into the musical phrase for <eulogou'men>, resulting that the syllable 'slo' falls in the position of the musical stress, though it is unstressed in the language.
The same, as far as I have seen (just the first page though), relates to the score of the Anoixantaria shortened by Chourmousios – the music phrases are left almost intact, and the slavonic words are squeezed in the music.
To me personally, the more preferable approuch is that one (and this alternative is described well in the 'manuals' of Fr. Ephraim) where we adjust the use of the phrases according to the distribution of stressed syllables, and do not squeeze more text syllables in the musical phrase than how it was originally used by the 'greats'.
By these reasons, we are constantly looking for the books and manuscripts with the slavonic BM settings (eg. by Nektarios Vlachos, who presumably was an expert in composition for different languages; though we have very small number of his pieces yet), hoping that we can eventually find some quality adaptations. We already have quite a number of slavonic books, but according the bibliography that I have, there were printed much more books in Bulgaria than we have. Panagiotis and Markellos, if you have books, may we compare our lists, and may be you could share with us (and we with you
, if you need it) some books (of course I mean copies, preferably electronical ones) that we miss? Or manuscripts, if you have, because it's really important for us, as the volume of the material is really huge. I know that there are a number of manuscripts of Nektarios Vlachos disseminated in the monasteries of the Mt Athos and other places, may be you know where and how we can find it?
