Byzantine music

"From the deepest eons indissolubly affined with the suplicatory , doxological, and the dogmatic theological logos, also striving with a variety of vicissitudes and straits, assays to sustain unsullied and unalloyed from admixtures and influences alien to its nature and line it's serving." ( Nectarios Kougias ).

Strictly speaking, Byzantine music is the medieval sacred chant of Christian Churches following the Orthodox rite. This tradition, encompassing the Greek-speaking world, developed in Byzantium from the establishment of its capital, Constantinople , in 330 until its fall in 1453. It is undeniably of composite origin, drawing on the artistic and technical productions of the classical age, on Jewish music, and inspired by the monophonic vocal music that evolved in the early Christian cities of Alexandria , Antioch and Ephesus .

The Byzantine church music is the traditionally established music of the Greek Orthodox Church. Intrinsically, it is characterized by simplicity, decency and incomparable spiritualism, while extrinsically it is monophonic and purely vocal.
Its purpose is neither the display of sweet-voiced chanters nor the congregation's entertainment. Although the chanters should be sweet-voiced and the psalmody should be performed correctly and listened to pleasantly, these are not the purposes that Byzantine music aims at. Its purpose is spiritual . Music is a mean of worship which expresses feelings of supplication, hope, thanksgiving, love and doxology. Christianity has recognized from the beginning the importance of psalmody as a means of worship as the Gospels and the epistles of the Apostle Paul exhibit.

As it has already been mentioned it is purely vocal and monophonic. The performance of Byzantine music with accompaniment of musical instruments was forbidden by the Fathers of the church as being incompatible with the solemn, hieratical and spiritual character of Christianity. It is monophonic in the sense that there is just one member's line so that even if many chanters take part in the psalmody, they all chant together as being one. The heterophony, the �harmonization� of the Byzantine music, where two or more lines of musical sounds are used are in opposition to the tradition of church. It is an innovation which Russians initiated into Orthodox church in the eighteenth century and other churches have imitated them. However, the decency, the holiness and the devoutness is destroyed. The Byzantine mystique is turned into something completely different which rather functions as a means of aesthetic pleasure and entertainment than as a means of religious excitement and internal transformation.
     The modernists, who tried to harmonize the Byzantine music, committed a major mistake. Being influenced by Russian, they thought that in that way they could improve Byzantine music. It is true that Russian four parts choirs have some stateliness. Though this stateliness has rather secular than spiritual nature.

    Instead of using heterophony, Byzantine music uses �the isokratima � (meaning homophony) which enriches and boosts its melody. � Ison � is the basic tone of mode in which the psalmody is chanted. It not only enriches the melody but also emphasizes the mode in which the hymn is chanted and increases the psalmody's gravity and power. Historically, it is placed in the first period of Christianism .

Antiphony is used in Byzantine music in order to give the chanters the chance to have some sort of rest and to keep the congregation alert. In other words, two choirs are used and each of them chants after the other. Thus, the chanters can have a rest and the congregation never gets bored as it happens when four parts choir is used.