Troparion tis Litys – the Processional Chant in the Liturgical Practices of the Medieval Slavs
Gregory Myers
The paper concerns an early chapter in the history of medieval Slavic liturgy and music. Specifically, it addresses the appropriation of the Byzantine urban sessional liturgy in the period of the eleventh to fourteenth centuries. The author attempts to place select sung numbers in the context of the liturgical typikon (Great Church or Studite) in use among the medieval Southern and Eastern Slavs at this time. The particular focus is on the use of the Trisagion and the Kontakion for Palm Sunday with its apparently unique detachable refrain as preserved in the Slavic kondakaria. The author attempts to make the case that the Slavic practice mirrored that in use in Constantinople.
Kondakarian Chant: Trying to Restore the Modal Patterns
Yulia Artamonova
The article intends a description of the modal system of the Kondakarian chant. This study probes to restore an internal structure of the kondakarian mode (glas) on the base of the modal patterns or glas-models. Kondakarian chant (or Kondakarnoie penie) is one of the most interesting and intriguing phenomenon of the Russian church singing of the early period which takes important place in Russian medieval studies. This notion implies the body of hymnography which is written in the book of Kondakar. Characteristic features of the kondakarian hymns are a melysmatic style and a special music writing – so-called Kondakarin notation.
Post-byzantine Chanting Tradition in the Serbian Monastery Hilandar on Mount Athos
Vesna Sara Peno
Deep and close contacts in the sphere of 19th century musical practice between Hilandar and other Athonite monks are discussed in this study. In the light of the reform of neumatic notation which was undertaken by the Constantinopolitan chant teachers and theoreticians Gregorios, Chourmouzios and Chrysanthos, chanters, composers and scribes from Mount Athos began to write down church hymns in different sorts of musical manuscripts (Octoechoi, Anthologiai, Sticheraria). Hilandar psaltes, as well as other musically educated Athonite monks, completed the chant books necessary for all church services directly after the Reform was accepted in the Great Church of Constantinople. To improve the acceptance of the so called New Method (that is, the reformed neumatic notation) many Greek and Bulgarian monks wrote manuscripts in the Church Slavonic language for the chanters of Hilandar. Nevertheless, in the Hilandar brotherhood there were few very ambitious and skilled musical scribes such as Spiridon, Ioasaph, Vikentije, whose manuscripts contain a reasonable number of popular and original church melodies.
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