Almost the entire Orthodox liturgy is sung, most often to centuries-old melodic formulas. In addition to chanted liturgical texts, hymns play an important role in Greek Orthodox worship. Over 60,000 hymns, following one of a variety of prescribed patterns, have been written for use in these churches. Though local customs may influence the way in which this music is chanted, most singing follows traditional practice.
Music is uniquely integrated into the worshiping traditions of the Eastern churches. In the Orthodox churches music and liturgy are interdependent. In well-endowed churches the singing is by choirs; in a humble village church, the priest and people sing. Following the injunctions of the church fathers, musical instruments have never been accepted. The sound of the human voice raised in song is central. As Basil the Great wrote as far back as the fourth century: A psalm is tranquillity of soul and the arbitration of peace; it settles one’s tumultuous and seething thoughts.… A psalm creates friendships, unites the separated and reconciles those at enmity. Who can still consider one to be a foe with whom one utters the same prayer to God! Thus Psalmody provides the greatest of all goods, charity by … joining together the people into the concord of a single chorus. (J. McKinnon, Music in Early Christian Literature [Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1987], 65-66)
The church year and its fasts, feasts and celebrations dominates national and home life in a way that is difficult for the Westerner to appreciate: Nobody who has lived and worshipped among Greek Christians for any length of time has but sensed in some measure the extraordinary hold which the recurring cycle of the church’s liturgy has upon the piety of the common people. Nobody who has kept the Great Lent … who has shared in the fast which lies heavy on the nation for forty days … who has known the desolation of the holy and great Friday, when every bell in Greece tolls its lament and the body of the Saviour lies shrouded in flowers in all the village churches … who has been present at the kindling of the new fire and tasted the joy of a world released from the bondage of sin and death—none can have lived through this and not have realised that for the Greek Christian the Gospel is inseparably linked with the liturgy that is unfolded week by week in his parish church. (R. Hammond, The Waters of Marah [London, 1956], 51-52)
Monastic traditions of worship are very strong in the East, and the twenty monastic foundations on Mount Athos in Greece form its cornerstone. For them, life is governed by Daily Offices similar to those of the Western monastic tradition, but for churches in towns and villages only extracts from the full monastic liturgy are celebrated. The most important of these is the Divine Liturgy (that is, Mass or Communion), the central act of worship on Sundays and feast days. The people do not receive Communion without initial preparation and fasting.
The Divine Liturgy
There are three liturgies used by the Orthodox churches today. The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is in common use throughout the year; the Liturgy of St. Basil is rather more elaborate and is used only on Christmas Eve and at Epiphany; the Liturgy of St. James (the oldest of the three) is heard only rarely.
The Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church follows the pattern of worship that has changed little in 1,500 years. It may be interesting to compare its outline with that of Egeria’s experience of Mass in fifth-century Jerusalem and the outline of the later Roman Mass. It cannot be stressed enough how important a role music plays in the liturgy. Apart from the sermon, the silent prayers, and perhaps the creed, everything is sung.
Chanting
The simplest type of chanting can be heard in the Scripture readings, declaimed to a single note with deviations related to the punctuation. Between about the eighth and thirteenth centuries a simple but unique method was used to indicate the way in which the pitch of the reader’s voice had to be raised or lowered. This ekphonetic (exclamatory) notation consisted of signs written above the beginnings and endings of sentences, although their meanings are still not completely understood. Today ekphonetic notations are still used in some Eastern churches and in the Jewish synagogue.
The psalms used in the Divine Liturgy and those which also form the backbone of the Daily Office are sung to chants belonging to one of eight modes. These modes are similar to those of Western medieval music, being scale-systems whose finals (like key-notes) are the notes D, E, F, and G.
Psalm-singing is elaborated to a similar degree to Western chant. More interestingly, the eight modes are incorporated into the church’s year.
For symbolic reasons buried in antiquity the modes of Byzantine chant are governed by an eight-weekly cycle, the eight modes being changed Sunday by Sunday until the cycle is begun afresh. The systematic organization of all chants into the eight modes is called the oktoechos.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the modes is the tendency of music written in any one mode to develop a unique character through the use of stock melodic ideas or formulae, a practice known as centonization. This is a feature of many types of music which are created aurally rather than composed on paper.
There is evidence of centonization in Gregorian chant and it is an essential part of Indian classical music, where a rag is given its character not just by the notes of the scales used, but by the melodic ideas used as the basis for improvisation. African master-drumming is based on the same principle, and it is inherent in contemporary jazz.
Hymns
One of the most striking musical features of Orthodox worship must be its hymns, which have been composed in huge numbers from the fourth century onwards. One compilation lists at least 60,000 (Follieri, Initia Hymnorum Ecclesiae Gracae, quoted in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians [London, 1980], under the entry “Byzantine Rite”). Byzantine hymns have traditional structures which all have their proper place in the liturgy.
The simplest hymns are one verse long and called troparia (singular troparion). Originally these were short poetic prayers inserted between the verses of a psalm and set to simple music easily memorized by a congregation.
Kontakia are much more extended hymns, being built up of many verses—perhaps thirty or more. They are based on a number of traditional patterns (called hirmoi) which govern the numbers of lines for each verse and the number of syllables and their stresses in each line. The beginning letters of each verse make an acrostic that may spell out the name of the author, or the day and feast for which the kontakion was intended, or perhaps the musical mode to which it was sung. Each verse has a short refrain suitable for participation by choir or congregation. Many kontakia were composed by Romanus in the sixth century.
Kanones became the most complex of all Byzantine hymns and replaced kontakia around the eighth century. In full they consist of nine sections (called odes), the subject of each being based on nine biblical songs:
• Exodus 15:1–19
• Deuteronomy 32:1–43
• 1 Samuel 2:1–10
• Isaiah 26:9–19
• Daniel 3:26–45 and 52–56 (including the deuterocanonical section)
• Daniel 3:57–88 (including the deuterocanonical section)
• Jonah 2:3–10
• Habakkuk 3:2–19
• Luke 1:46–55 (Magnificat)
• Luke 1:68–79 (Benedictus)
As with the kontakia, the odes consist of a verse from a traditional source (the hirmos) followed by a number of troparia modeled on it.
Each ode is sung to a different melody. In practice, kanones in their full form are very long and are only heard nowadays at the important yearly feasts and then only in monasteries and cathedrals. They are sung during the Morning Office and split into three parts (odes 1 to 3, 4 to 6, and 7 to 9). (A glance at the subject matter will suggest why it is included only during Lent.) Between these parts are inserted hymns and a reading. Usually, kanones are drastically shortened so that only the initial hirmoi are sung.
Stichera were a later development of the troparia—hymns sung after a verse of a psalm. In this respect they are similar to Western antiphons. They are divided into different categories according to their subject and the feast for which they are appropriate.
In the last few centuries of the Byzantine Empire, expert singers and composers—maistores—developed a highly elaborate style of kalophonic singing, beautifying the already elaborate chant. The names and compositions of these maistores are known today, Joannes Koukouzeles (about 1280–1370) being the most revered (he is a saint of the Greek Orthodox Church). This unique singing tradition even had a competitive element, maistores rivaling each other in their spectacular elaborations of a given text. The kalophonic tradition lasted until the nineteenth century when Chrysanthos of Madytos revised and simplified the chant to bring it back into closer touch with the common people.
The Byzantine Chant Today
How is Byzantine chant performed today? The answer of course depends on where it is performed, but under no circumstances will it be heard with musical instruments. In a village church, there may very well be no choir, and the chanting will be undertaken by the local priest. If the priest himself is not available, a lay reader will be able to take the role of psaltes (cantor), for the music will be very familiar to regular churchgoers.
In a few city churches in Athens, it is still possible to hear Byzantine chants harmonized in a manner developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but in most monasteries and cathedrals this is not the case. Here the music will be sung in a long-established manner by two choirs standing on either side of the chancel, the left-hand choir led by the lampadarios and right-hand by the protopsaltes. The right-hand choir tends to have the more skilled singers and handles more complex music, though much of the music is antiphonal, the music moving from one choir to the other and back again. Highly skilled cantors will sing the most complex chants (such as the prokeimenon) as solos.
In many monastic choirs (such as that of the Monastery of Saint Simon on Mount Athos) a tradition of two-part singing is preserved. In reality, the second part is not melodic but consists of held notes rather like a drone, a practice dating from about the seventeenth century. The upper part keeps to the traditional chant.
The language used by the church for its traditional music is the Greek of the very earliest years of Christianity, very different from modern Greek, but nonetheless understood and revered by churchgoers.
The music of course has changed since its creation in those early times. How much it still resembles the music of the ancient Byzantine Empire is a difficult question which cannot be answered easily (see M. P. Dragoumis, “The Survival of Byzantine Chant” in E. Wellesz, ed. Studies in Eastern Chant, vol. 1 [Oxford, 1966], 9). But considering the enormous time span from their composition to modern times, the correspondence between ancient manuscripts and the present-day chant is remarkable.