User:Platonykiss/Byzantine Notation

Byzantine notation is the notation used in Orthodox chant books since its early beginning between the 10th and the 12th century until today. According to this definition this article includes all notation systems which had been exclusively used for Orthodox chant, whether they are neumes or certain forms of staff notation distinct from Western staff notation. The connection with Byzantine music is simply given by the expectation of Orthodox chanters, that their tradition is somehow related with the Byzantine history. Hence, the article describes their notation systems in a chronological order.

Modal signatures and intonation formulas
The fundamental difference with respect to the neumes used in Latin liturgical traditions since the late 10th century is, that modal clefs which indicate the echos, can be already found in the earliest papyrus fragments of the 6th century. Hence, the different systems of Byzantine notation had been always related to those modal clefs. The neume signs indicated certain steps above or below. These clefs have been called "modal signatures" by philologists who studied medieval chant manuscripts.The terminology has been established by Jørgen Raasted. Concerning neume notation, already in its early stage, he makes a difference between "main signatures" which indicate the tonality of a certain hymn, and "medial signatures" which can be found within the lines of notation, often written in red ink. Among psaltes of the living tradition, those medial signatures are called "martyriai" (modern μαρτυρίες, old μαρτυρίαι) which means "witnesses". In performance practice the modal signatures stand for an intonation formula which have been sung by the choirleader (Lampadaroi, Domestikoi, Protopsaltes) or a soloist (monophonares). Thus, the turn to one of the choirs had been indicated, but the pitch of the beginning as well. The change between sung parts of the liturgy and the celebrating priests or the diacon, but also between different choirs, are coordinated by modal intonations (see enechema) until today.

The notation of the tropologion
The history of Byzantine chant is often described that it developed musical notation quite late, with notated chant books of monastic hymnography like those books of the sticherarion and the heirmologion between the 11th and the 13th century. It is not really true, since there are papyrus fragments of the 3rd century which have evidence about the first Christian Greek hymns fully notated with Alypian notation.

Early papyrus fragments of the tropologion dating back to the 6th century reveal that they did not only use modal signatures, but also signs which did indicate accentuation patterns within chant books which are neither ekphonetic nor theta notation.

Since the tropologion was also used in two other imperia outside Byzantium which did accept Christianity as state religions 50 years earlier, we should also mention the evolution of Armenian and Georgian notation within their tropologia (the Armenian šaraknoc' and the Georgian iadgari).

Armenian khaz notation
Independent from Byzantine redactions Armenian khaz notation has been developed during the middle ages as well for religious as for secular music. The khaz system has been developed in various books such as hymnals (šaraknoc'), khaz-books (khazgirk'), lectionaries (č'ašoc'), canticle books (gandzaran), and chant books (tağaran).

The Armenian khaz notation consists of two independent systems, a prosodic and a musical system.

Georgian notation
Although the tropologion is regarded as a mixed hymnal which originally did not separate the cycles of movable and immovable feasts, the Georgian tropologion called “iadgari” ("memorial") developed music notation since the end of the 10th century.

Ekphonetic notation
Byzantine notation has been developed as a neume notation, and like the notation of Western plainchant, its origins are ekphonetic signs which originated from the simplest forms, dots situated on different heights which marked the syntactical structure of liturgical lessons. Different traditions of Christian liturgies as they can be found in the earliest medieval parpyri, are strongly connected with their Hebrew origin.

But since the Stoudios Monastery developed their own chant books from the 10th century on, there is a fundamental distinction between ekphonetic notation as the notation used for the lecture of the prophets, the epistel, and the gospel, and a notation which has been used to transcribe an oral tradition of the Octoechos hymns, which had been the book heirmologion, and the four books of the sticherarion, and another Constantinopolitan notation system which has been ordered according to 16 modes, which transcribed the earlier hymn compositions of the kontakion, but also the elaborated psalmody of the cathedral rite like doxologies, the biblical recitation of the canticles, the koinonika, but the ordinary chant based and its rare counterparts as well, like the trisagion and the cherouvikon which have been originally based on psalmody.

Though the later notations did not replace ekphonetic notation, they did less exclude than integrate certain ekphonetic signs.

Old Byzantine notation
The Old Byzantine or Palaeo-Byzantine notation can be described as several groups of new melodic notation systems which had been developed in different regions between the 10th and 13th century. Further there should be a differentiation between musical notation developed in the books of the Constantinopolitan cathedral rite (asmatikon and kontakarion or psaltikon) and those of the Hagiopolitan and Antiochian rite (tropologion and their notated derivatives sticherarion and heirmologion).

Theta notation
Theta notation is the earliest form of a melodic notation which was usually only used in parts of unnotated chant books like tropologia, books of the sticherarion or the heirmologion. It refers to the Greek letter Θ which was used like a notational sign over syllables to indicate a melisma (θέμα which referred to a melodic formula or figure), alternative signs were two other neumes such as “oxeia“ / (ὀξεῖa) or “diple” // (διπλὴ). Hence, it might be also called “oxeia” or “diple notation”. Often traces of the simple theta notation were removed by palimpsests which elaborated the notation towards Coislin and Chartres notation. Thus, a theta was specified by great signs of these notation systems called “thematismos” (θεματισμὸς, Coislin), “ouranisma” (οὐράνισμα, Chartres) and “thema haploun” (θέμα ἁπλοῦν, Chartres and Coislin).

Chartres and Coislin notation
These Old Byzantine neumes which had been classified as "Chartres" and "Coislin notation (I-V)," belong to an own group which is closer to Byzantine Round notation than those used in the books of the cathedral rite. This was no coincidence, because these notation systems had been invented by the later reformers who continued the Octoechos reform as a liturgical and a hymn reform during the 9th and the 10th century.

The result of the Studites reform which organized lessons and hymns for the Lenten period, had been written down in two of the earliest chant books more or less fully provided with melodic notation: the heirmologion and the sticherarion—often separated parts of it like the triodion, the pentekostarion or the octoechos.

There are manuscripts dating back to the 10th century which have an archaic Chartres notation, while the late fully developed type of Coislin notation came already very close to the Middle Byzantine notation around the mid 12th century.

Kontakarion notation
The Kontakarion notation has only survived in one 14th-century manuscript which transcribed its cheironomic signs into sequences of signs of the contemporary Middle Byzantine notation. The name has derived from its book, the kontakarion which belonged to the cathedral rite in various local traditions of the Byzantine empire. The kontakarion was called after the homiletic genre kontakion, but the typical kontakarion had been as psaltikon as well, because it had to be sung by a precantor, the soloist who often replaced the left choir, while he was singing from different places within the cathedral (usually the left pulpit or the ambo). The complementary book of the right choir and its leader (domestikos) was the asmatikon.

The cheironomic signs, later also called "hypostaseis" (ὑποστάσεις), had been gestures which implicate whole melodic phrases to the choir.

A Slavonic reception of the kontakarion notation can be found in manuscripts written within the Kievan between the 12th and the 13th centuries. It means that the sources of the Slavonic reception in Northern Europe and Northwest Asia date earlier than the earliest and only Greek chant book which transcribed the cheirononmies into Middle Byzantine round notation.

Old Slavonic chant manuscripts can be dated back to the early 12th and 13th century, when the imitation of the Constantinopolitan cathedral rite (ἀκολουθία ᾀσματικὴ, "sung rite" or "choral rite") at the Kievan Rus had already established an own notation system with its particular use of medial signatures, a 12 mode system, and own notation signs whose names had been taken from Kontakarion notation, but synoptic comparisons between Kontakarion (as transcribed during the 14th century) and Theta notation (not earlier than since the 12th century) cannot confirm that they had been used in an analogue way. The difference was probably due to the own system, as it was already manifested by the earliest manuscripts.

Chrysanthine notation and other reform notations

 * sister-project: Chrysanthine neumes