Byzantine Music - Extent of Byzantine Music Culture Vs. Liturgical Chant Proper

Extent of Byzantine Music Culture Vs. Liturgical Chant Proper

The term Byzantine music is commonly associated with the medieval sacred chant of Christian Churches following the Constantinopolitan Rite. The identification of "Byzantine music" with "Eastern Christian liturgical chant" is a misconception due to historical cultural reasons. Its main cause is the leading role of the Church as bearer of learning and official culture in the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium), a phenomenon that was not always that extreme but that was exacerbated towards the end of the empire's reign (14th century onwards) as great secular scholars migrated away from a declining Constantinople to rising western cities, bringing with them much of the learning that would spur the development of the European Renaissance. The shrinking of Greek speaking official culture around a church nucleus was even more accentuated by political force when the official culture of the court changed after the capture of Constantinople by the Ottoman Empire on May 29, 1453.

Today, few sources and studies exist about Byzantine music on the whole. A Persian geographer of the 9th century (Ibn Khordadbeh), mentioned in his lexicographical discussion of music instruments that Byzantines typically used urghun (organ), shilyani (probably a type of harp or lyre), şalandj (probably a bagpipe) and the bowed lyra (Greek: λύρα - lūrā) (lyre), an instrument similar to the Arabic Rabab. Byzantine music included a rich tradition of instrumental court music and dance, as would be expected considering the historically and archaeologically documented opulence of the Eastern Roman Empire. There survive but a few explicit accounts of secular music. A characteristic example are the accounts of pneumatic organs, whose construction was most advanced in the eastern empire prior to their development in the west after the Renaissance. To a certain degree we may look for remnants of Byzantine or early (Greek-speaking, Orthodox Christian) near eastern music in the music of the Ottoman Court. Examples such as that of the eminent composer and theorist Prince Cantemir of Romania learning music from the Greek musician Angelos, indicate the continuing participation of Greek speaking people in court culture. However, the sources are too scarce to permit any well-founded stipulations about what cultural musical changes, took place when and under which influences during the long histories of the Byzantine empire, but the influences of ancient Greek basin and the Greek Christian chants in the Byzantine music as origin, are confirmed. Music of Turkey was influenced by Byzantine music, too (mainly in the years 1640-1712). It seems also remarkable that Ottoman music is a synthesis, carrying the culture of Greek Christian chants. It emerged as the result of a sharing process between the Greek people and the minorities living alongside Byzantium, considering the breadth and length of duration of these empires and the great number of ethnicities and major or minor cultures that they encompassed or came in touch with at each stage of their development. The rest of this article confines itself to a discussion of the musical tradition of Greek Orthodox liturgical chant, and is reproduced from Dr. Conomos text as cited at the end of the article.