Workshop Byzantine Music (2): Creation of the Constantinopolitan Hyphos (Ottoman Period) (original) (raw)
Related papers
2015
Post-Byzantine musical manuscripts constitute a very important written source for the secular music of the Middle East. We find in them a rich quantity of material, over a long period, a multitude of genres comprising, the echoi (modes), makams and usûls, together with the names of composers and other information. This source material covers a time span that ranges from the end of the 14th century to the beginning of the 19th, or circa 1830 when there appeared the first printed collection of secular music. Petros Peloponnesios (1740-1778) is considered one of the leading personalities of ecclesiastical music, with a variety of narrations dealing with his legendary life. He served in high music positions in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (Domesticos (1764-1771) and Lampadarios (1771-1778)), whereas recent research has revealed more and more clues which prove that he was a great personality in terms of 18th century secular music in Constantinople, both as performer (ney and tambur), composer, and scribe of codices.
Petros Peloponnesios — About Authorship in Ottoman Music and the Heritage of Byzantine Music
Issue 25: "Byzantium and Islam" — In Memory of Alessandro Angelucci, 145-184, 2017
This monographic essay is dedicated to one of the most mysterious protagonists of the patriarchal style (hyphos) Petros Peloponnesios. Despite the many colourful anecdotes, we only know very few facts about Petros Peloponnesios’ life before he came to Constantinople in 1764. Analysing Petros’ contribution to the hyphos, this essay does not rely on the well-known transcriptions as they were distributed by the print editions in different languages. Recent research has already proved that many ascriptions to Petros are not trustworthy. On the other hand, readers might discover less known compositions by Petros, like his second week cycle and the long oktoechos cycle of cherouvika, which have rarely been printed. They will also be surprised that his composition of the idiomela for the «Doxastarion syntomon» are quite different from the official transcriptions according to the New Method. Another mystery is Petros’ close relationship to the Mevlevi dervishes of Pera (Beyoğlu), where he was adored as Hoca and Hırsız (“teacher and thief”), and his exceptional contribution to Ottoman music by numerous transcriptions of historical makam compositions and more than 100 original makam compositions, sometimes made over a Greek text. The article proves that Petros did not invent the exegetic use of notation nor the transcription of makam music into Greek neume notation. It also proves that many of the works and innovations were officially wrongly attributed to him. Nevertheless, he must be regarded as one of the most remarkable and most gifted Greek Ottoman musicians who did wonders during his short life span between 1764 and his early death during the disastrous plague of 1778.
A fourth unit will be about the origins of the traditional methods of the thesis of the melos, and their books. One concern of this lecture is the cathedral rite, the surviving Greek and Slavonic manuscripts of kontakarion and asmatikon will be regarded as a reception outside Constantinople, although the Slavonic one seems somehow between the original books, their notation and their tonal system (of sixteen echoi) and their transcription into the monastic oktoechos notation, they also have traces of a very original local style. There are two focuses on this secular tradition, the genre kontakion and the cherouvikon. The history of the kontakion will treat Romanos’ propaganda role during the Justinian era, when the Hagia Sophia was constructed and inaugurated, but also how the genre has changed until the 14th century. The cherouvikon is the very heart of the divine liturgy, it was introduced by the end of the 6th century, since a change in sacred architecture caused, that there must be a procession at the beginning of the second part of the liturgy, reserved for the baptised. For each formular of a divine liturgy there is only one offertory, known as the cherouvikon for the one ascribed to John Chrysostom. According to the Byzantine rite, it existed only in the devteros echos. Only by the end of the Byzantine empire, Manuel Chrysaphes replaced the cherouvikon asmatikon with a papadic oktoechos cycle, so that the cherouvikon could be sung according to the echos of the week. The other concern is the development of a monastic hymn repertoire composed as oktoechos melodies. Today it is simply regarded as the creation by Ioannes of Damascus and his step brother Kosmas during the 8th century. Recent papyrus studies gave evidence, that the oldest Greek tropologia which preceded the notated chant books of the 10th century (sticheraria, heirmologia, great oktoechos, oktoich) are related with other redactions which were older than the Christian Byzantine empire, such as the Syriac tropligin, the Georgian iadgari, and the Armenian šaraknoc’. The first Greek tropologion was created by Syrian hymnographers in Jerusalem, but it has only survived in Syriac translation since the 6th century. When Ioannes and Kosmas entered Mar Saba, a monastery of this Patriarchate whose territory was outside the Byzantine empire, a synodal reform had already established an oktoechos reform which was opposed against the Constantinopolitan rite. Today their particular role is regarded as their contribution to the heirmoi and to more complex unique melodies of the sticheraric repertoire known as idiomela which we do only know by the “unnotated” tropologia. The whole repertoire as it is known today was completed by many hymnographers (also female hymnographers in Constantinople) until the 11th century. They were either mainly based in Mar Saba at Jerusalem and St Catherine’s at Sinai (Coislin types of Old Byzantine notation), or in many metochia associated with the Mone Stoudiou in Constantinople (Chartres types of Old Byzantine notation). The Slavonic translation at Ohrid conservated the complex system of hymn melodies organised between idiomela, avtomela, and prosomoia, or kanones composed according to the heirmoi, they did not care so much about the literal meaning of the Greek hymns. Later new literal re-translations in Kiev and Novgorod provoked an entire recomposition of its melodies, in peripheral regions it was mastered by an oral tradition based on simple oktoechos recitations (sometimes in multipart forms of recitation).
Workshop Byzantine Music (3): Psaltic Art and the Syntheseis of the Papadike (Late Byzantine Period)
The third unit is about the Renaissance of the cathedral rite during the 13th and 15th centuries, after this tradition had disappeared during the exile of the Court and the Patriarchate at Nikaia. The acceptance of the oktoechos system was based on the monastic Round notation as the medium to integrate different traditions of the Byzantine empire: the monastic tradition of the chant books sticherarion and the heirmologion, and the cathedral rite with its chant books asmatikon and kontakarion. The synthesis was done by the establishment of psaltic art and an additional kalophonic way which was based on the traditional methods and their books, but at the same time also a field for experiments between the genres. The books of the papadic reform were akolouthiai, and additional editions of the old books such as sticherarion kalophonikon and heirmologion kalophonikon, but also the creation of revised editions of the old books sticherarion and heirmologion. According to Manuel Chrysaphes it was Ioannes Koukouzeles who invented the kalophonic method to sing the hymns of the sticherarion. His method was based on a didactic chant called “Mega Ison” which memorised all signs of Middle Byzantine notation. While Constantinople became a very advanced centre of Byzantine music with famous composers like Xenos Korones, Ioannes Glykys and Ioannes Kladas, other Poleis, Patriarchates, and peripheral territories within and beyond the Empire opposed to its innovations. A three-dimensional realisation of the trochos system offers an insight in the creative aspects of kalophonic art, and demonstrates the integrative role of eight diatonic echoi and two phthorai called by their intonation (echema) “nenano” and “nana”. Since the history of Constantinople was particular destructive, this lecture will also treat Mount Athos as a hidden place where lost traditions of Byzantine Music could be continued and from where they could be revived.
Yegah Musicology Journal, 2022
Konstantinos A. Psachos was born on May 18, 1869 (Safer 6, 1286) in Mega Revma [Arnavutköy], Istanbul and died on July 9, 1949 in Nea Smyrni, Athens. He was a multi-faceted scientist, of international status and recognition; he was a musician, musicologist, composer, music teacher, researcher and writer, as well as an inventor of an Organ. He played a leading role in the restoration of Byzantine Music, and today is undoubtedly recognized as the academic founder of the sciences of Byzantine Musicology and Music Folklore. He also contributed to the study and dissemination of Ottoman Turkish (Asian, as he called it) music in Greece. However, this aspect of his work remains largely unknown and underappreciated. This paper will present the relevant facts, located in Psachos’s personal archive. The aforementioned archive, which remains in his residence, contains the scientific and artistic activities of K. A. Psachos, collected and organized by himself, a record of his published and unpublished life works.
Tradition and Innovation in Late-and Postbyzantine Liturgical Chant II. Proceedings of the Congress held at Hernen Castle, the Netherlands, 30 October-3 November 2008, Leuven-Paris-Walpole, MA 2013, pp. 261-289
The story of a composition (the story of any composition) constitutes -undoubtedly- a completely interesting “adventure”: as soon as its composer conceives it, it is noted down (by its composer or by his students), it is copied (unedited or partly changed) into various other musical manuscripts, it is broadly spread during its time or even centuries after that, it arouses the interest of other (known or unknown) music instructors (who retouch it, beautify it, reform it, broaden it), and – finally – it is transcribed into various (and differentiated, as time goes by) systems of musical notation… In the present paper, I try to trace some aspects and respective illustrations of this “adventure”, triggered off an enigmatic figure; the Eunouxos Protopsaltes the Phelanthropenos (Constantinople, second half of 13th century), a composer who is accredited with only one composition, which is anthologized occasionally (from the 14th until the 16th century) into various Mathemataria. The emerging conclusions present a high musicological interest, with a generalized and diachronic validity…
Workshop Byzantine Music (1): The current tradition of Orthodox Chant (1814-2018)
2018
This lecture aims simply an introduction into “Byzantine music” following a kind of archaeological approach. The first unit starts with the living tradition defined by the Neo-Byzantine reform of 1814 and the establishment of Chrysanthos’ New Method, when monodic church music and its oktoechos system was redefined by the distinction of four chant genres (troparic, heirmologic, sticheraric, and papadic), their tempo, and their mele. This lecture introduces to the common print editions of chant books (anthologies for Orthros and of the Divine Liturgies, the doxastaria, the two parts of the heirmologion, and the anastasimatarion or voskresnik). The notation reform will be less regarded as a simplification of the Middle Byzantine notation than as a creation of universal notation which was based on an oral tradition of the different performance styles (oktoechos, makamlar, traditional music of 2 different regions of the Mediterranean). It will also treat the printed anthologies of makam music (mismagia, a Greek corruption of the Ottoman divan called “mecmua”) and the New Method to transcribe makamlar as aspects of the oktoechos. The oral tradition of oktoechos performance will be presented by historical field recordings, including own fieldwork.
"Ottoman corruptions of post-Byzantine chant!" (English version)
Theorie und Geschichte der Monodie, 2020
Title: "Ottoman corruptions of post-Byzantine chant!" About the long history of exchange between oktoechos and makam music and about a certain ideological discourse to talk about it German version: Gerlach, O., 2018. ‘Osmanische Verfälschungen im nachbyzantinischen Gesang!’ Über die lange Geschichte eines Austauschs zwischen Oktoichos- und Makammusik und den ideologischen Diskurs darüber. In M. Pischlöger, hrsg. Bericht der Internationalen Tagung Wien 2016. Theorie und Geschichte der Monodie, 9.2. Brno: Tribun EU, S. 651–679. English version: Gerlach, O., 2020. ‘Ottoman Corruptions of Post-Byzantine Chant!’ About the Long History of Exchange Between Oktoechos and Makam Music and About a Certain Ideological Discourse to Talk About It. In M. Pischlöger, ed. Bericht der Internationalen Tagung Wien 2018. Theorie und Geschichte der Monodie, 10. Brno: Tribun EU, pp. 117–144. Summary: In confrontation with the differences between Byzantine music transmission and the innovations of the New Music School of the Patriarchate since the 18th century, H.J.W. Tillyard reproached the living tradition of Orthodox monodic chant (called hyphos, the "patriarchal style") that it corrupted the Byzantine heritage. Gregorios Stathis reacted by a lecture at Oxford, in which he stressed, that a Western philologist like Tillyard does not understand the difference of music composed according to the makamlar from the one composed according to the oktoechos. He referred to the distinction between external (exoteric) and internal (esoteric) music which was common in Greek music theory of the 19th century, after makam music became transcribed as well into Byzantine neumes since the school of the Archon Protopsaltis Panagiotes Halacoğlu. Only recently handwritten Greek Anthologies or "Mismagia" had been rediscovered as important sources of Ottoman music. This discovery raises the question how to deal with common prejudices and misunderstandings, which became an obstacle to approach the current tradition of psaltic art and its creative potential.