Talk:Hagiopolitan Octoechos

The good old no technical terms discussion
Dear Wikipedian King and collector of Platinum Barnstars

I did not know that the description bar for edits is supposed to make polemic comments, but it seems that I should try that, too, if I want to follow your good example...

Unfortunately it is the encyclopaedic business not to avoid, but to explain terms by different articles. This is what I already mentioned, when I commented on the few related articles which are often quite comprehensive, but they tell so little about the subject, that you should not expect that I will be the one to explain them all in one article, or to write and to improve for you 50 of them. So far about the "great work, as usual"!

But if you expect, that many authors will do the job in a kind of teamwork, I recommend to mind your tongue. So if there is an "incomprehensible" article, don't worry and be happy to explain those cryptic terms by another article. I assure you, I tried hard to use no one which should be avoided.

For more specific hints I will be grateful. Platonykiss (talk) 13:52, 2 January 2013 (UTC)


 * "I recommend to mind your tongue" that's rather rich, given the rather unwarranted hostility you display... My comment in the edit summary was intended as an explanation of why I put the tag there, not to slight you or your work. I respect the effort you put into these articles, but seriously, no one without a thorough grounding in ecclesiastical music can understand them. Before getting offended and resorting to sarcasm on a completely irrelevant point, you might want to ponder for a moment what it means for the readability of your essays if a user who is actively interested (since you took the time to check out my userpage, I suppose you saw that too) in Byzantine history (in itself one of the more obscure areas for an English-language enclyclopaedia) writes that your articles are "too technical" and incomprehensible. Technical terms are necessary, but here for instance, in the very opening of the article, is a collection of terms that mean absolutely nothing to the average reader: "the inventor of the psaltic art and its soloistic style (called "kalophonia"), and Chrysanthos of Madytos as the "great teacher" of the living tradition today (the translator of psaltic art into the modern neume notation)." Or take Papadic Octoechos: "In the history of the Byzantine rite the Hagiopolitan reform was described as a synthesis of the cathedral rite and the monastic rite". Great, so what exactly does this mean? And what is the "Hagiopolitan reform" and what does it have to do with the "Papadic Octoechos"? If you don't explain these terms and their relation with one another, or at least provide a relevant link, then your articles will be inaccessible for the overwhelming majority of WP's readership. That has nothing to do with the barnstars on my usepage, and everything with you yourself knowing the subject very well (kudos on that) and forgetting, as most experts do, that most others don't... Constantine  ✍  14:26, 2 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, as you are somebody who is interested in Byzantine History, I assure you that all the emphasized terms without even one exception have a very precise meaning. They are translated from Greek and they are worth to be explained in separated articles which quote particular sources.
 * Thank you for the confirmation and for these concrete suggestions, which are much more helpful than the multiplication of the own frustration to nearly 100%. If you have time to give more examples, you can be sure that I will respect them and bear them in mind, or replace them, if they are really avoidable. The article "Papadic Octoechos" is still under construction and I do appreciate your support and you might profit from our work as well. Platonykiss (talk) 21:44, 2 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't doubt that they have a specific meaning. That is what "technical language" is for, and I wouldn't dream of asking you to remove it. What is required is more context, either in the form of links or, ideally, as explanations in the text itself. If I understand correctly, these articles are the result of a split of a much larger original article. This means that they should be rewritten to be able to stand independently. This is particularly evident in the Papadic Octoechos article, where a "Background" section summarizing the Hagiopolitan Octoechos and the situation should be provided. Otherwise, as I wrote above, the introduction of terms like "Hagiopolitan reform" or the name of Koukouzelis is sudden and makes no sense: it presupposes knowledge that the average reader simply does not have. I am probably not the best to help with a rewrite of the article, but try contacting the people over at WP:GOCE. They are pretty good at such things, and will probably have more and better suggestions than me to make. Constantine   ✍  12:13, 7 January 2013 (UTC)


 * It is already there:
 * 1) The cathedral rite of Constantinople has been described in the Hagiopolites itself, and I quoted this passage and pointed to the Constantinopolitan genre kontakion and mentioned that it is the only source about its 16 mode system which has survived. Furthermore you have the links to the articles Frøyshov and Strunk which are both available online (see note 1 and 4 of Papadic Octoechos). But these articles are certainly not better readable than this entry. The cathedral rite is not only characterized by changes between a solo singer and choir, it has also two separated books: asmatikon and psaltikon, the latter is also called kontakarion, if it is from Constantinople, because the kontakia collection fills two thirds of the book. My problem is that there is no article for these issues, even related ones except a very meager one for "Kontakion". Nevertheless, your suggestion to open an article for Cathedral rite is very helpful, because it goes far beyond the context here. Every region has its own cathedral rite, and the Milanese (Ambrosian Chant) and Constantinopolitan (ἀκολουθία ᾀσματική) are just the most famous ones. I can write a stub for you, so that somebody will fill this gap.
 * 2) Psaltic art. See talk page of the second part Papadic Octoechos.
 * 3) Byzantine Notation. See talk page of the second part Papadic Octoechos.
 * Please don't worry, the three parts of the current version are not less independent than other articles here. Please note that the splitting of the article was not my idea, but forced by the user "Jax 0677" with the argument that this was the only way to avoid a deletion. He copied the third part into a new article without caring about the links to references (sources as well as studies). I regard this solution as provisional, because it will take more time that missing entries will grow out of the three of octoechos, as far as users follow my suggestions for new entries here. Until now I repaired every step of other users, as long as I have no doubts concerning your good intentions. If I do, you will read it here. Platonykiss (talk) 10:56, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Section Origins
Thanks for the clarify tag. I reworked the whole section. It did not become incomprehensible because of the splitting, but because of other edits during which I added more and more information in the same place. Please re-read it and tell me, whether it has become better or not.

The general problem – for everybody who works in this field – is, that we have very few theoretical sources concerned about Byzantine chant (they were strictly separated from the mathematical science harmonikai) and they only survived in copies which have been made centuries later. According to my knowledge there is no article and no book which offers a clear chronology. Peter Jeffery's article "The Earliest Oktoechoi" is probably the most informative one, but far from easy readable. It is a lot of work to puzzle a new chronology based on the most recent research. Here you have the fruit of my efforts without any original research. Platonykiss (talk) 11:10, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Removed the links of the octave species names (section "8 Diatonic Echoi")
I am sorry. I see your good intention inserting these links, but despite that it is not very elegant to put links within quotations, the articles about mixolydian and diapason (interval) are too weak and misleading. The difference between the Latin and the Greek interpretation of the mixolydian trope is, that the Greek one uses the large seventh, but the Latin the small one, as I explain in the next paragraph, while the article Talk:Diapason (interval) describes the so-called "Pythagorean" intervals. In fact the latter are rather "Eratosthenian" (according to Ptolemy's reference to historical tetrachord divisions), because we do not know how Pythagoras divided the tetrachord.

As long as these articles are not universal enough to explain the difference between the Western and the Eastern interpretation which is different from the Ancient Greek science of the tropes, it will confuse the readers even more. In any case I left the link to the article "octave species", because it is in rectangular brackets. Please note, that here we are talking about the medieval interpretation of tropes as church tones, in Ancient Greek theory there was no connection with melodic concepts in the sense of a musical mode. Nevertheless, I have no objections concerning the way, how this difference has been described in the latter article. Platonykiss (talk) 11:35, 12 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I added other links to related music theoretical articles, where they really serve to understand the terms in this article. I also remarked that there are not only too less articles in the field of Byzantine history, but also several duplicates in the field of music theory, sometimes occupying even very different "aliases". Platonykiss (talk) 17:37, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

My revision of this article is completed
I apologise for using many technical terms here, but I am convinced, they should be all here, because it would not help to replace them. Another user has even translated the whole article into Greek. I also thank very much those who harmonized their articles of the English wikipedia with this one. This is, how I imagine teamwork in this portal. Hence, I removed the technical term tag in order to continue with Papadic Octoechos. I thank everybody who read, changed, and commented on this and related articles. Maybe in a later version it will be shorter and more balanced between plenty other articles which are missing right now. Platonykiss (talk) 17:37, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Source Challenge
Coptic music and liturgy does not have eight modes. It should be clear Coptic liturgy has no eight weeks cycle. No reference shows coptic music is using eight modes of any name. If there are modes they are related to composition as for any culture. Unless a source is provided for the latter, it will be removed from text. Cheers.--Connection (talk) 12:53, 6 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I personally found a close connection to Coptic Chant and the oktoechos tradition present at Sinai, although the vocal style is different. What is the exact nature of exchange, I do not know, but maybe you are interested in this article by René Menard: La musique Copte problème insoluble ?
 * Concerning the terminology, you can also find correspondences mentioned in this article. When al-Kindi translated "al-alhān at-tamāniya ar-rūmīya" for the Greek Octoechos, he already used the common Arabic term, as it is used for a melodic mode by Coptic communities today (the correct Greek term today is melos as a subcategory of Octoechos). This might explain, while it is easy for musicians today to recognise behind them a certain echos or makam. It just depends on the point of view to listen to them. Platonykiss (talk) 00:32, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Introduction
The introduction needs to introduce the term "Hagiopolitan." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tedcampbell (talk • contribs) 16:19, 10 December 2018 (UTC)


 * Indeed, but it had the wrong gender. I changed it to hagia polis. Platonykiss (talk) 08:13, 16 May 2024 (UTC)