Music for worship in the Byzantine Orthodox tradition is thought to be a direct descendent of the music used in the synagogues during the life of Jesus. The Orthodox have a very high, almost sacramental, view of music, believing that it is a “window to heaven.” Music is intrinsic to the liturgy of the church, for it is frequently used to express the liturgical text.
Historical Development
While some scholars would speculate that the music of the ancient church was a survival of the old classical Greek music, most have taken the position that the music of the ancient church is primarily a legacy from the music of the synagogue.
This affirms the conviction that Christ handed down to his apostles not only the rule of faith (the Doctrine of the Apostles) but also the rule of prayer (the Worship of the Apostles). We find in the Gospels that Christ and his disciples regularly attended the synagogue and that after Pentecost, the disciples continued to attend the synagogue until they were no longer allowed to attend because of persecution. The melodies sung in the synagogue were near, no doubt, to the hearts of Christ’s disciples, and they took these melodies with them into the Christian gatherings which followed a similar order of worship.
The best scholarship indicates that the ruling principle of church music of the early Byzantine era was formulary rather than modal. This means that the music was grouped by melodic characteristics or formulas (motives) rather than by scale or mode. This music of the ancient church was most likely preserved through the oral transmission of melodies from one generation to another until the eighth century, at which time a system of eight tones (or modes) was developed by St. John of Damascus as a basis for collecting these melodies into eight major groups.
Theological Foundations of Byzantine Music
The hymnody of the Byzantine church is theologically the richest in the world. One can learn a great deal about the church’s doctrine and life by carefully and prayerfully singing or contemplating the hymns of the church. In his essay, Sacred Music, Constantine Cavarnos explains the purpose of Byzantine sacred music in worship.
The aim of this music is not to display the fine voices of the chanters, or to entertain the congregation, or to evoke aesthetic experience. Indeed, the chanters who sing it must have good voices.… Good execution [is not sought for its] own sake; and the pleasure it evokes is not an end it deliberately seeks, but something incidental, and further, is not mere aesthetic pleasure but something much richer and higher. The aim of Byzantine sacred music is spiritual. This music is, in the first place, a means of worship and veneration; and in the second place, a means of self-perfection, of eliciting and cultivating man’s higher thoughts and feelings, and of opposing and eliminating his lower, undesirable ones.
The use of this music as a means of worship consists in employing it to glorify God, and to express feelings of supplication, hope, gratitude, and love to Him. Its use as a means of veneration consists in employing it to honor the Holy Virgin and the rest of the saints. Its use as a means of cultivating higher thoughts and feelings and opposing the lower ones is inseparable from these. There is not one kind of music employed as a means of worshiping God and honoring the saints, and another kind employed for transforming our inner life, but the same music while having as its direct aim the former, incidentally leads also to the fulfillment of the latter. For while glorifying God and honoring the saints by means of psalms and hymns, or while listening to others chant while we do so in our hearts, feelings such as sadness, hatred, anger, and torpor [laziness] subside, and feelings such as contrition, love, peace, and spiritual joy and aspiration are aroused.” (Constantine Cavarnos, “Sacred Music,” in Byzantine Thought and Art [Belmont, Mass.: The Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 1968, reprint 1980], 97-98)
In his book Russian Church Singing, Johann Von Gardner points out the inseparability of worship and singing: “The Russians of past centuries referred to worship as ‘singing.’ ‘To go to sing’ meant the same as ‘to go to worship.’ ‘It’s the time for singing, it’s the hour for prayer! Lord Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy on us!’ ” (Johann Von Gardner, “Orthodox Worship and Hymnography,” in Russian Church Singing, vol. 1 [Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980], 25).
The Music of Heaven
Byzantine composers worked within the framework of Orthodox theology, which taught that the prototypes of the melodies were the songs of praise of the angels, inaudible to human ears, but transmitted and made audible by the inspired hymnographers. For instance, we know from Scripture that the continual worship around the throne of God includes the song of the angels: “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of Hosts. Heaven and earth are filled with Your glory” (Isa. 6:3). The role of the composer was to make audible the inaudible melody of heaven. Such a task was accomplished through prayer and supplication and revealed by God to the pure in heart.
But even then, the composer was not left merely to ecstatic or spontaneous inspiration. He worked within the system, that is, within the context of melodic formulas that had been passed down by his predecessors. To work within the framework of traditional melodic formulas was to take an ultraconservative view of one’s function as a composer. It implied deep-seated respect for tradition, but was at the same time an enormously sophisticated way of working, susceptible to infinite refinement.
The beauty and spirituality of such music must have surpassed anything we can imagine. The account of the followers of Prince Vladimir who visited the Moslem Bulgars of Volga, the Christian church in Germany and Rome and finally, the Church of the Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) in Constantinople in search of a true religion for their people, illustrates the point: There is a story in the Russian Primary Chronicle of how Vladimir, Prince of Kiev, while still a pagan, desired to know which was the true religion, and therefore sent his followers to visit the various countries of the world in turn. They went first to the Moslem Bulgars of the Volga, but observing that these when they prayed gazed around them like men possessed, the Russians continued on their way dissatisfied. “There is no joy among them,” they reported to Vladimir, “but mournfulness and a great smell; and there is nothing good about their systems.” Traveling next to Germany and Rome, they found the worship more satisfactory, but complained that here too it was without beauty. Finally they journeyed to Constantinople, and here at last, as they attended the Divine Liturgy in the great Church of the Holy Wisdom, they discovered what they desired. “We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, for surely there is no such splendor or beauty anywhere upon earth. We cannot describe it to you: only this we know, that God dwells there among men, and that their service surpasses the worship of all other places. For we cannot forget that beauty.” (Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church [New York: Penguin Books, 1963], 269)
Cultural Influences
The modern system we hear today in churches that are rooted in the Byzantine tradition is radically different from the medieval system. Medieval Byzantine chant was wholly diatonic, that is, it could be played with sufficient accuracy on modern keyboard instruments. The Gregorian system, which is also diatonic, was derived from the medieval Byzantine system, but used different names for the eight tones and developed along different lines.
The modern Byzantine (Chrysanthine) system developed in 1821 includes chromatic and enharmonic scales in addition to the diatonic. The whole fabric is not Greek at all but is Oriental, i.e., Arabo-Turkish. Yet the church accepted these cultural influences as appropriate and beneficial. For instance, the Russian eight-tonne system began with the Byzantine eight-tonne system as a basis but developed over a period of 200 years into its own cultural and national expression of church music.
In our day, it would seem profitable to study and learn the Byzantine system of eight tones since it dates back to biblical times and finds its roots in the music of the synagogue and temple worship. Further, it would be important to analyze its development in different cultural settings through the ages. Such a study would undoubtedly find its application in adapting and developing this system of church music that truly reveals the worship of heaven to our present cultural situation.