Byzantine Chant in the New World

-Regarding Adaptation Transcription of Byzantine Chant in

English, and its rendering in the Sacred Services of the Orthodox
Church
John Peter Edward Presson, Protopsaltis of the Metropolis of Portland and the
West

This talk is being presented on the heels of the release of a two new publications
in the Metropolis of Portland of the Divine Liturgy in English in Byzantine
notation and the Service of the Great Vigil of Pascha (and subsequent simplified
editions in Western notation for our emerging mission communities). This
edition is not simply another re-transcription of the Seattle Liturgy Book will
prayerfully represent an adaptation of the classical Patriarchal and Athonite
repertoire into the English language or at least a small part of it. It is my hope in
giving this talk that I can give some insights as to Byzantine musical history (and
hysteria) as well as the Metropolis Cathedral’s methodology and practice, as it
presents in many ways a departure from what has been accepted as norms and
conventional wisdom of the recent past.

Byzantine chant in English – a cultural history

While understood as originating from hymns in the Greek language, the

Byzantine musical tradition has been successfully transplanted into not only
Arabic and Syriac languages, but also into the southern Slavic Orthodox nations
of Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria and Romania, not only using the received
Chrysanthine notational reforms, but also as the received classical style of
singing. It seems only natural that Byzantine chant with its traditional style,
theory and notation should be not only taught, but chanted in worship in our
native English language here in the New World.

Byzantine Chant in the New World 1

It must be stressed that the storied history of Byzantine music has had a
somewhat circuitous and sometimes troubled path in the recent century,
particularly its transplantation in America.

On the heals of the simplifying reforms of the Three Teachers which brought
greater access and learning of the chant tradition, in Greece, particularly self
deprecating, attitudes prevailed amongst urban Greeks against anything
remotely Eastern in their social, political and religious culture. One can argue
that this was the result of centuries of Moslem Turkish domination, but the
results remain a matter of history –Greek Orthodox Christians began a relentless
march towards western, specifically European forms of music and art. The
Athenian cantor John Sakallerides, himself educated in the schools and salons of
Vienna, embarked on a relentless campaign of simplification and westernization
of the historic musical heritage of Byzantium. His “reforms” in Greece were
short-lived, however they found a great deal of tenacity in the West. The
redoubtable English scholar HGW Tillyard, and his Danish colleague Egon
Wellesz were both students of Sakallerides, and his views provide the base of a
school of thought widely accepted in the West that advocated the deconstruction
of the received tradition of Byzantine chant and its reconstitution along the lines
of the post 19th Century restorations of Gregorian Chant. The proliferation in the
West was only exacerbated by the political climate that surrounded the first
Greek immigration to the United States, in which nearly every Church cantor
who left Greece was a student of Sakallerides. We, particularly of the
traditionalist bent, laugh at the pews and the organs and the 4-part choirs in
contemporary new calendar Greek Churches, but fail to realize that these
modernizations well predated the calendar reforms and ecumenical programs
we rightly condemn.

For all our romantic notions of an America being the nation of immigrants, the
climate that every immigrant found, leaving the poverty of their home countries

Byzantine Chant in the New World 2

in the hopes of a better life, was a climate of hostility, pressures to assimilate, and
outright bigotry. A walk through the retail and restaurant quarter of any major
America city found signs on the store fronts that said “Irish need not apply”, or
“John’s Restaurant: All American. No rats, Italians or Greeks”. A culture founded on
the principles of Protestantism and Freemasonry placed particular pressure on
these new immigrants and their quirky Churches to assimilate and “look” and
“feel” like their American counterparts. Entry into the economic culture of
America often was dependant on acceptance into fraternal orders such as the
Freemasons. Much the same as Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox Christians
who not accepted into these organizations founded similar types of secret
societies such as AHEPA. In the seminaries, there was a constant tension
between formation in the traditional chants and the popular milieu of the
Western classical forms expounded by such composers as Sakallerides, Desby,
and in our own generation Tikey Zes and many others. These compositions, in
particularly Sakallerides became the dubious standard for the Greek Churches in
the US. While one can rightly cast aspersions on these deviations from Orthodox
liturgical life and piety, understanding of this cultural climate can provide some
insight and understanding, and perhaps a road ahead.

The Notation Question:

In approaching the issue of notation, one must acknowledge that Byzantine and
western notation and theory, while having a few common points of reference,
and similarly went through extensive evolution to their present forms, represent
and express two completely different musical systems.

1. An Italian Benedictine monk, Guido of Arezzo, originated western staff

notation in the 13th Century so that unlike previous notational systems,
any melody could be recorded. Its origins also coincided with a system of
Solfege (Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Si and octave Ut) derived from a hymn to

Byzantine Chant in the New World 3

 St. John the Forerunner, in which each Solfege syllable was derived from
the syllable of the text and the note it fell on, each being a progressive
ascent in the mode’s scale. Its gradual development over several centuries
began to allow for not only the recording of virtually any melody, but also
vertical harmonies and counter point, since its system of measures, rests,
and various rhythmic values could accurately place a 2nd, 3rd, etc. line of
musical score along with the principal melody line.
2. Byzantine notation was derived from the medieval practice of chironomy
(the hand signals of the director/cantor to his choir to move the melody in
particular directions, and to execute various ornamental figures. It is said
that the former Imperial court cantor and later Athonite monk, St. John
Koukouzelis derived the notational system that has since evolved into its
present form, from the chironomic signs of the Constantinopolitan cantors
(there is an interesting 14th Century ancient lithograph of St. John and his
contemporary Coronis receiving instruction at the feet of their teacher
John Glykis --each of the students has their hands shaped in particular
musical signs, above St. John’s hands the inscription reads Oxeia and
above Coronis’ the name of the Ison). This notational system served
largely as an aid to memory to what had largely been an oral tradition
passed from master to student. By the 19th Century the notation had
reached enormous complexity and sophistication, and could only be
understood fully by a small number of Masters and although there were
numerous attempts at reforming and simplifying, none really took hold
until the early 19th Century. Metropolitan Chysanthos of Madydos,
himself a cantor, and also a student of European schools of music became
frustrated by the cumbersome notation, and along with Gregory, the
Protopsaltis of the Great Church, and a Patriarchal archivist named
Georgios Chourmouzios reduced the notation to neumes representing
musical movement, and retaining some of the older classical
ornamentational signs. They coupled this simplification of the notation by

Byzantine Chant in the New World 4

 a simplified system of Solfege (replacing the older note names which are
still retained in the apicema or intonations of each of the modes) and a
refined system of theory. The result was that Chrysanthos could teach
students in matter of months, what could previously have take many
years while retaining the character and tradition of the music1. The
reforms of the Three Teachers, called the “New Method of Byzantine
Music” caught on, and large volumes of the Church’s historic repertoire as
well as much of the services for Sundays, Feasts, Great Lent, and the
Pentecostarion were transcribed into the New Method.

While western and Chrysanthine notations may be said to both have the shared
ability to communicate a melodic skeleton, the results of a piece rendered in the
Byzantine, by a skilled practitioner schooled in both the oral and written
tradition, and in Western notation by a singer with a basic musical education,
unlike the two choirs of Konstantine and Gregorios, can be vastly different.

Here are a few fundamental differences:

1. Byzantine notation records a melody by a series of unique “shape notes”

that determine the interval of the next pitch based on the note previously
chanted. Byzantine music is also, like a lot of other things in Orthodoxy,
wed to an overarching oral tradition, which assigns certain neumes and
combinations of neumes certain expression or ornamental value, which
have no equivalent in western notation. Even today, a chanter following
Byzantine notation is still expected to "interpret" a musical phrase based

1
It must be noted that the basic understanding of the oral tradition of Byzantine chant was retained, even
with the massive changes and reductions. It was recorded that a particular service in the Patriarchal chapel,
the Right Choir under the direction of Protopsaltis Konstantinos Byzantios working from scores in the Old
Method, and the Left Choir under direction of then Lampadarios (later Protopsaltis) Gregory working from
scores from the New, chanted alternately, and as reported by one expert in the subject of Byzantine music,
there was no discernable difference between the two choirs.

Byzantine Chant in the New World 5

 on the oral tradition he has inherited from his mentor. Interpreting a
musical phrase entails chanting a tone with a certain élan or adding notes
to a phrase. Because Byzantine notation is descriptive, it grants an
experienced chanter the freedom to add to a melody the embellishments
he has learned through oral tradition. The same score may also be
executed slightly differently by another experienced chanter who hails
from a different "school" of Byzantine music.
2. Ornamentation is directly associated, in quick and slow/quick hymns to
the accented words and syllables in the course of the text.
3. Byzantine notation is understood entirely by the Mode or Tone that it is
chanted in –an alteration of the Mode during the chanting of a hymn can
be quickly understood by a serious of simple symbols which are quickly
recognized by the chanter.
4. Byzantine music is governed by over 100 rules of compositional
“orthography” or musical grammar that limit a melody to a body of
certain traditional conventions.
5. Byzantine melodies are, for the most part, an amalgamation of specific
melodic formulae. These melodic formulae can be easily recognized by a
chanter when they are written as a particular combination of neumes.
When they are written in Western notation, however, they cannot be so
readily recognized. As a result, they will tend to be executed in a dry
manner, note-by-note, rather than as a flowing musical phrase.
Furthermore, these melodic formulae consist of nuances that are not
expressly written even in Byzantine notation. Nevertheless, when an
experienced chanter recognizes the melodic formula, he will add these
nuances in accordance with the tradition. On the other hand, in Western
notation this is less likely to occur, since the chanter will not recognize the
melodic formula.
6. Byzantine music can record rhythmic and tuning nuances unique to
chanting with greater sophistication and accuracy. Standard Western

Byzantine Chant in the New World 6

 notation is incapable of accurately expressing the proper intervals of
Byzantine music. Although it can approximate most Byzantine scales such
that the error is never greater than 2 Byzantine tuning units (33 cents), it
cannot approximate the scale of the soft chromatic modal genre without
producing an error of less than 4 units (67 cents). This large error
considerably alters the yphos (the "hue") of troparia in this modal genre.

One particular area the subject that presents itself in the notation is the question
of the “yphos” or hue and style in which the Modes were taught. These
intervallic errors, while somewhat noticeable in the diatonic genres, becomes
very plain when dealing with music written in the soft chromatic genre –mainly
2nd and Plagal 2nd Mode, but also most of the Dismissal Hymns, Kontakia and
poetic Kathismata written in the 4th Mode. Using two famous examples of the
“Byzantine Music Project” of Basil Kazan used in the Antiochian Archdiocese,
and a sampling of work from Holy Transfiguration Monastery, which is in
widespread usage in the Holy Orthodox Church in North America, two extremes
occur. In the actual rendering of a soft chromatic mode, we must take into
consideration how the intervals actually look. From Nh to Nh we see the
following breakdown:

8- 14- 8- 12- 8- 14- 8

Ni- Pa-Vou-Ga-Di- Ke- Zo'-Ni'

The interval between the Ni and pa is (using the values of 12 as a major whole
step and 6 as a ½ step) is slightly greater than a ½ step, making the Pa somewhat
flat, and the interval of the Vou as slightly greater than a whole step (this is
repeated in the upper half of the scale from Di). The result is from Ni-Bou and
Di-Zw, we see a natural third identical to how it is in the diatonic modes, but the
transgressive notes of Pa (D) and Ke (A) are slightly flatted creating this subtle
(soft) chromatic interval. The approach with Basil Kazan’s literature has been to
present the Pa and Ke as full flats:

Byzantine Chant in the New World 7

Example 12

We can already hear that this sounds very Eastern. Almost too much so. It is,
essentially the hard chromatic scale of Plagal 2nd Mode because the flat on the Ke
(A) is too severe. The Yphos of the Mode has been essentially altered.

Going to the other extreme in Western notated transcription is the work of Holy
Transfiguration Monastery, Brookline, MA. In this example (which is typical of
most of their work), the problem of the flatted Ke (A) is solved by eliminating it
altogether, as seen in their transcription of the above Apolytikia:

Example 23

2
http://www.antiochian.org/sites/antiochian.org/files/sacred_music/06-2%20Troparion-Resurrection-
T2.pdf
3
http://www.homb.org/resources/docs/Liturgy-Music-Book.pdf Pg 26

Byzantine Chant in the New World 8

Here, the arrangers, although they show some sensitivity in the opening phrase
on the accented syllable of “UN-to”, the bulk of their approach is to treat as if it
were a modified “C” major scale from G, making it sound something closer to a
modern Gregorian mode or what we call Agia Fourth with a fixed natural Zw.
In either case, the presentation is NOT 2nd Mode as it is chanted in the received
tradition. The Yphos or hue of the Mode has been changed.

One compromised approach to the problem of the Soft Chromatic genre is to use
alternate key signature that reflects that a flat short of a ½ step exists. To their
credit, in their CD set The Chanter’s Companion Holy Transfiguration uses a
modified flat symbol to designate the microtonality of the flat. In both
Protopsaltis John Michael Boyer’s bi-notational scores for the Divine Liturgy, as
well as my newer scores, D to designate that the “A” and “D” receive a “1/2

flat”

Byzantine Chant in the New World 9

Example 34

Adaptation and Transcription of Byzantine Music into English

Inherent in the transition from Greek to English is the nature of both languages.
Greek is a language that is based on inflected word endings and a flexible
grammatical syntax. Word order can be shifted in the context of a sentence, often
resulting in poetry of surprising subtlety. One clever device in the practice of
Greek psalmody is the anagramatization – an example in English is notable in
the Matinal Prokeimonon of Feasts of the Theotokos (as well as the Paraklesis
Canons):

I will commemorate Thy Name from generation to generations.

And on the Third repetition of the Psalm verse:

Thy Name, from generation to generation // shall I commemorate

While this example is notable, if is often not able to be repeated because of the
fixed syntaxes in English.

4
Transcribed from http://orthodoxmetropolisportland.org/PDX%20Liturgy%20Book%201.pdf Page 26

Byzantine Chant in the New World 10

In this light, up to a certain point of time, the standard and approach toward the
transition of Greek liturgical music has been to treat the music itself is the
“Tradition” and thus any deviation from the “Tradition” constitutes a “musical
heresy”. Therefore, any approach to setting English text has been either to
superimpose the English text over a Greek melody, irrespective of how the music
was originally written to correspond melodically, syntactically, etc to the original
liturgical text or converse to inflate and convolute the English text itself so that it
fits into the structure of the melody5. An example of this approach can be found
in the 1980 publication (recently reprinted in 2011) of The Divine Liturgy of St.
John Chrysostom by Holy Transfiguration Monastery, known affectionately as
“the Seattle Blue Book” in the Thrice Holy Hymn:

Example 46

Here, (outside of the obvious components of a stripped down melody being

rendered in a Western key) –we see that the melody, is simply a transcription of
the structural melody from the Pandektes Liturgy with the English text

5
The Transcription, Adaptation, and Composition of Byzantine Chant into the English Language, John
Michael Boyer, ASBMH 2007 Conference Pg 2
6
http://www.homb.org/resources/docs/Liturgy-Music-Book.pdf Pg 43

Byzantine Chant in the New World 11

superimposed at cadential points. Particularly for those of us “in the know”, this
approach illustrates painfully well the flaws in this process.

Expanding on this, one of the difficulties in adapting Greek melodies into

English is the very syllabic structure of both languages. In most cases, the Greek
text will have more syllables that its translated English counterpart. We have
only to look at the Greek exclamation of :

Α−γι−ος ο Θε−ος, Α−γι−ος Ισ−χη−ρος, Α−γι−ος Α−θα−να−τοϕ ε−λε−ι−σον η−µας

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

and compare with the more paltry classic English translation of the same:

Ho-ly God, Ho-ly Might-y, Ho-ly Im-mor-tal, have mer-cy on us

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

and deduce that some re-tailoring of the melody may be necessary. Rules of
composition generally state that in the Sticheraric (the slow-quick hymns) which
this piece is assigned, there are usually 2 notes (often working to about 2-3 notes)
per syllable, except at cadences (phrase endings). This formula implies that
while the melody is slower and more melismatic, the purpose of the hymn is still
to illuminate the text. The standard melody for this hymn in the Second Mode
splits the four phrases into an AAB melodic formula. The standard method of
presenting this hymn in English has been to inflate the 17 syllables of text, so that
it fits into the Greek original built for its 25 syllables. The result as demonstrated
below is that the English text becomes muddied:
Example 5
“A” formula


Α α γι ι ο ο ος ο ο ο Θε ο ο ος
Ho__________ly _____ God__________________________________

Byzantine Chant in the New World 12

The same melodic formula is repeated again for “Agioj Iscuroj”:
Example 6
Repetition of “A” formula


A a gi i o o oj I i sch ro o oj_ _ _
Ho__________ly _____ Might________________ty____________

And the concluding:

Example 3
Concluding “B” formula


                       
Α α γι ι ος α θα α να τος ε λε ι
Ho-____ ly___ Im- mor-_________ tal, have mer -

   

σον ι µας
cy ______ on us._____

Byzantine Chant in the New World 13

As demonstrated, the Greek text follows the syllable rule for Αγιος with
approximately 2-3 notes per syllable, however the English is stretched out over
the course of 4 notes in the case of the first syllable of “Holy” and over the span
of 10 notes for the single syllable of “God” and 4-5 for the two syllables of
“Mighty”. The final “B” section more or less follows a similar syllable structure.
While respecting the integrity of the well-known traditional melody, the text
becomes swallowed up in yawning melismas, wholly inappropriate for the
sticheraric genre.

The solution to this problem is demonstrated in an arrangement by Protopsaltis

John Michael Boyer, which we have included as the model score in this present
volume (and which is also used as the melodic standard for the recently
published Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom published by Mousikh
Triantafillopolij and the Metropolis of Portland (the so-called “Portland Red
Book”). Instead of contracting both “A” melodies, the text of the first two
phrases are conflated into the first “A” formula:

Example 77
Boyer’s conflated formula

                    

Ho -______ly___ God________, * Ho-___________ ly Might- ty

7
Transcribed from http://orthodoxmetropolisportland.org/PDX%20Liturgy%20Book%202.pdf

Byzantine Chant in the New World 14