Byzantine Chant: Advent and Christmas Music from Mt. Sinai

Cappella Romana

Alexander Lingas, Artistic Director
John Michael Boyer
Stelios Kontakiotis
David Krueger
Mark Powell
Adam Steele
David Stutz

Performed at the Meyer Auditorium, Freer Gallery of Art, November 30, 2006.
Recorded in Seattle, Washington, December 2006
Presented in conjunction with the Sackler exhibition, In the Beginning: Bibles Before the Year 1000

Texts and Translations

From the Vespers of Saint Catherine

Invitatorium

Selected verses of Psalm 103 (Septuagint)

From the Lamplighting Psalms

From the Service of the Furnace

Christmas Acclamations from the Imperial Ceremony of the Prokypsis

Between 548 and 565 the East Roman (Byzantine) emperor Justinian I constructed the Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine at the foot of Mount Sinai, a place already revered by pilgrims as the site of God’s appearance to Moses in the burning bush. Monastic life and pilgrimage have continued through the centuries without significant interruption at Saint Catherine’s, bestowing on its living community a rich inheritance of spiritual traditions and material treasures. The latter include its architecture, rare early icons predating the artistic censorship of Byzantine Iconoclasm, and an invaluable library of more than three thousand manuscripts in a variety of languages, including Greek, Arabic, Georgian, Latin, Slavonic, and Syriac.

Of the approximately two thousand Greek manuscripts held by the monastery, a significant number contain forms of Byzantine musical notation. Their diverse musical repertories span the entire notated history of Greek Orthodox chanting, from thousand-year-old sources parsimoniously marked with only a few musical signs to nineteenth-century chantbooks recording melodies according to the precise “new method” of Byzantine notation. For the pre-Christmas season of Advent, we have chosen to represent the musical riches of Saint Catherine’s library with a selection of chants from the late thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries edited for modern performance by Ioannis Arvanitis.

Although marked politically by the terminal decline of the East Roman state, Byzantium’s final two centuries were also a time of spiritual and artistic renewal that brought forth in music what Edward Williams has called a “Byzantine ars nova.” The most influential figure in this musical revolution was the composer, editor, music theorist, and saint John Koukouzeles (late 13th to early 14th century). His Life identifies him as having been a contemplative (hesychast) monk of the Great Lavra on Mount Athos. He spent weekdays in solitude practicing hesychia (literally, quietude) before returning to his monastery for weekends and feasts to chant the All-Night Vigil. Judging by musical sources, Koukouzeles evidently helped to codify older repertories of hymns whilst pioneering a new “beautiful sounding” (kalophonic) idiom of chanting that spread throughout the Orthodox world. This style of liturgical singing was characterized generally by vocal virtuosity, but it also encompassed the addition of new texts to existing chants (troping), highly florid melodies, and even textless vocalizations on nonsense syllables (teretisms).

From the Vespers of Saint Catherine

The first half of this program of music from Sinaite manuscripts features chants that would have been sung during the later Middle Ages at the service of evening prayer (vespers) on the eve of the monastery’s feast day of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, who is commemorated on 25 November. After a blessing by the celebrant, choirs of the Late Byzantine period sang the Invitatorium according to a melody here taken from Sinai 1257, which is dated 1334 and is its second oldest source. The second and third invocations, “Come let us worship,” are notated at successively higher pitches, an unusual form of modulation confirmed by performance instructions (rubrics) in the manuscript.

Immediately after the Invitatorium, the left and right choirs began the chanting of Psalm 103 (102 in the Hebrew numbering), using a traditional melodic formula in Mode Plagal 4. (For this performance the ensemble sings only the initial four half-verses.) The older Byzantine practice appears to have been to complete the entire psalm in this manner, interpolating only a few modest refrains (a custom maintained today by Russian Old Believers). Koukouzeles, however, helped to initiate a new tradition of embellishing the concluding portion of Psalm 103. The opening verse and final doxology of this section—known in its entirety as the anoixantaria, a name derived from verse 28b, “When you open your hand”—are set anonymously in what Williams has labeled a “quasi-traditional” style. For the intervening verses, Koukouzeles and his successors composed original music featuring added short texts glorifying the Holy Trinity (Triadika). Tonight’s program features all five of Koukouzeles’ settings: three from Sinai 1257 (the oldest source to contain any of his anoixantaria); one from Sinai 1527 (fifteenth century); and one from Athens 2458, dated 1336 and the oldest complete copy of Koukouzeles’ Akolouthiai (Orders of Service).

In an actual Byzantine vigil service, Psalm 103 is followed by a litany and the chanting of Psalms 1–3 in a style similar to that of the anoixantaria. Omitting these items, the ensemble proceeds directly to an abbreviated version of the Lamplighting Psalms. Sung at sunset and accompanied by the offering of incense, these psalms (Septuagint numbers 140, 141, 129, and 116) form the ancient core of Byzantine evening prayer. The opening verses of Psalm 140 (known as the Kekragarion) are sung in a solemn manner, creating an atmosphere of reverent supplication perfectly suited to the second verse’s description of prayer rising “like incense” and the “lifting up” of hands as an “evening sacrifice.” A change of tempo and a simpler musical style herald the arrival of the stichologia: the chanting in alternation of the succeeding verses.

From at least the seventh century it became customary in the region around Jerusalem to add hymns appropriate to the day to the Lamplighting Psalms’ final verses and doxology. Despite early opposition from Sinaite ascetics who rejected the musical elaboration of the Psalter, such hymnody eventually became standard in Byzantine worship. The first three hymns (stichera) sung today in honor of Saint Catherine are prosomoia, metrically identical texts sung to a model melody (an automelon, in this case a hymn praising the angels). Listeners accustomed to the received tradition of Byzantine singing may notice that this fifteenth-century melody from Sinai 1250 is virtually identical to the modern tune.

The final Sticheron Doxastikon—thus named because it follows the doxology “Glory to the Father”—is an idiomelon, a through-composed hymn with a unique melody. Its first half is sung here to the traditional melody found in Koukouzeles’ edition of the Sticherarion, a hymnal containing mainly stichera. The second half of this sticheron is taken from a two-part setting in the florid kalophonic style by Manuel Chrysaphes the Lampadarios, a composer and theorist who sang in the chapel of Constantine XI Palaeologos, the last Byzantine emperor. Chrysaphes’ composition is sung from Sinai 1234, a manuscript copied in Venice by John Plousiadenos, who was himself an important composer and theorist.

The Service of the Furnace

Although many services of the Byzantine rite contain dramatic or mimetic elements (e.g., the burial procession of Christ on Holy Friday), the Service of the Furnace is the only medieval Greek example of a liturgical drama comparable to the Visitatio sepulchri and other such plays of the Latin West. Both Greek and foreign observers have provided accounts of its celebration during the later Middle Ages in the cathedrals of Constantinople and Thessalonica (both named Hagia Sophia), and its music survives in a handful of manuscripts.

The Service of the Furnace was sung between morning prayer (Orthros) and the Eucharist (Divine Liturgy) on the Sunday before Christmas. Known in the Byzantine tradition as the “Sunday of the Fathers,” this day commemorates Old Testament saints and features the reading of the genealogy of Christ from the Gospel of Saint Matthew. The service, which is no longer used in worship, augmented this celebration with a quasidramatic rendering of the Song of the Three Children in the Fiery Furnace, a set of canticles found in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament Book of Daniel. The canticles’ musical settings are derived from the urban Byzantine worship, which maintained the early Christian practice of performing psalmody with refrains that were originally added to encourage congregational participation. A variety of hymns and teretisms supplement the biblical portion of the drama with commentary or musical interludes. Whereas a full reconstruction of the drama based on the most complete version of its text (that edited by Saint Symeon [died 1429], Archbishop of Thessalonica) would last about two hours, the present performance offers an abbreviated version closely following the manuscript Sinai 1527.

A sticheron borrowed from the services of 17 December (the Orthodox commemoration of Saint Daniel and the Three Holy Youths) introduces the first biblical canticle. Its verses and refrains—some of the latter are attributed in other manuscripts to Koukouzeles’ contemporary Xenos Korones—are sung in alternation between the choirs and a group of three soloists representing the holy youths Ananias, Azarias, and Misael (Shadrach, Abednego, and Meschach). In a fully staged version, these three singers would stand in the middle of the church on a raised platform representing the furnace, over which an icon of an angel would be lowered at the climactic moment of the angel’s descent to cool the furnace and save the children. Sinai 1527 offers two settings of the text describing this event: a simple verse with refrain continuing the previous pattern of alternation (omitted); and a kalophonic version by Manuel Gazes the Lampadarios, a composer of the early fifteenth century whose works include several two-part compositions based on contemporary Western styles of singing. (Cappella Romana has recorded one of these on its most recent disc.) Rubrics in MS Sinai 1527 suggest the interpolation of various hymns, but the manuscript only includes notation for “When the tyrant saw” by Gazes’ student Angelos Gregoriou. After a brief teretism, this kalophonic sticheron offers King Nebuchadnezzar’s perspective on the youths’ miraculous salvation, reflecting his inward confusion with vocally high and florid lines.

Today’s concert concludes with Imperial Acclamations from the Christmastide celebration of the Prokypsis recorded by John Plousiadenos in MS Sinai 1234. This was an elaborate late Byzantine display of homage to the emperor, who emerged from behind a curtain in a ceremony enhanced by lighting effects. Soloists would then lead the assembly in wishing long life to the emperor and his family, in this case, John VIII Palaiologos (1392–1448) and his third wife, Maria Comnenos of Trebizond.

Cappella Romana

Cappella Romana is a professional vocal chamber ensemble dedicated to combining passion with scholarship in its exploration of the musical traditions of East and West—Byzantium, Russia, and the Western World—with emphasis on early and contemporary music.

Its performances “like jewelled light flooding the space” (Los Angeles Times), Cappella Romana is a vocal chamber ensemble dedicated to combining passion with scholarship in its exploration of the musical traditions of the East and West, with emphasis on early and contemporary music. Its name is derived from the medieval concept of the Roman oikoumene (inhabited world), which included not only “Old Rome” and western Europe but also “New Rome” (Constantinople) and the commonwealth of Slavic countries, from which Moscow later emerged to claim the title “Third Rome.”

In May 2006, Cappella Romana was the only vocal ensemble invited from outside the Mediterranean to the festival Paradhòsis: Traditions of Byzantine Music, held in Palermo, Italy. While other ensembles presented music from contemporary traditions of Byzantine chanting in Greece, Italy, and parts of the Middle East, Cappella Romana performed medieval music from the medieval monastery of Grottaferrata outside Rome. It is the only ensemble in the world regularly making historically informed performances and recordings of medieval Byzantine music.

The ensemble presents an annual concert series in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. Critics have consistently praised these for their unusual and innovative programing, including numerous world and American premieres. The group has also frequently collaborated with such artists as conductor Paul Hillier, chant specialist Ioannis Arvanitis, and composer Ivan Moody.

Flexible in size according to the demands of the repertory, Cappella Romana is one of the Pacific Northwest’s few professional chamber vocal ensembles. It has a special commitment to mastering the Slavic and Byzantine repertories in their original languages, thereby making accessible to the general public two great musical traditions that are little known in the West. Leading scholars have supplied the group with their latest discoveries, while its music director has prepared a number of the ensemble’s performing editions from original sources. In the field of contemporary music, Cappella Romana has taken a leading role in bringing to its audiences the works of such European composers as Michael Adamis, Ivan Moody, Arvo Pärt, and John Tavener, as well as promoting the work of North Americans, such as Tikey Zes, Sergei Glagolev, and Christos Hatzis.

Cappella Romana tours regularly and made its European debut in March 2004 at the Byzantine Festival in London with concerts at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sophia. The Metropolitan Museum of Art presented the ensemble in its New York debut for the exhibition Byzantium: Faith and Power 1261–1557 in April 2004, which included the release of a CD by Cappella Romana, Music of Byzantium, to accompany the exhibition. The ensemble also appeared in Festival Vancouver (British Colombia) and the Bloomington Early Music Festival, Indiana Early Music Festival (Indianapolis), the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), and recent tours to Belfast (Northern Ireland) and Limerick (Republic of Ireland) and again in London.

Alexander Lingas, Artistic Director

Alexander Lingas is Cappella Romana’s founder and artistic director. Under his leadership Cappella Romana’s programing continues to expand, including music from the very oldest musical manuscripts to contemporary works by some of the world’s most notable composers. He has directed Cappella Romana on National Public Radio and BBC Radio 3, at the Eclectic Orange Festival in California, Festival Vancouver, and recently at the Byzantine Festival in London, which featured a gala concert in St. Paul’s Cathedral, performed before HRH The Duke of Kent and an audience of more than two thousand.

His musical pursuits have won him many awards, including Fulbright and Onassis grants for musical studies in Greece, a fellowship in Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., two fellowships at the University of Oxford, and speaking engagements on the BBC Radio 3, at Yale University, the Liszt Academy in Budapest, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. From 1998 until 2001 he was British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Oxford University’s St. Peter’s College. He has also served as a lecturer and advisor for the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies at the University of Cambridge. Dr. Lingas is currently Lecturer in Music at City University in London and a Fellow of the University of Oxford’s European Humanities Research Center.

In addition to publishing scholarly articles in journals, encyclopaedias, and books, Dr. Lingas has composed music for the Orthodox Church and has served as a cantor in Portland, San Francisco, Vancouver, Phoenix, and Oxford. In May 2001 he collaborated with Ioannis Arvanitis, Lycourgos Angelopoulos, and the Greek Byzantine Choir on the first celebration in five hundred years of Vespers according to the ancient Rite of Hagia Sophia, which was held in the chapel of St. Peter’s College. His upcoming projects include books for Ashgate Publishing on Sunday matins in the rite of Hagia Sophia and Byzantine experiments in polyphony, as well as a general introduction to Byzantine Chant for Yale University Press. During the academic year of 2003–2004, Dr. Lingas was in Princeton, New Jersey, as the recipient of two prestigious awards: a membership in the School of Historical Studies of the Institute for Advanced Study and an NEH Area Studies Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies.

Part One

The Vespers of Saint Catherine

Invitatorium (Mode plagal 4)
Traditional (MS Sinai 1257: “1334”)

Excerpts from Psalm 103 (Septuagint): Modes plagal 4 and 2 authentic
Traditional and Saint John Koukouzeles (late 13th–early 14th century)

MSS Sinai 1257, Sinai 1527 (late 15th century) and Athens 2458 (1336)

From the Lamplighting Psalms

1. Kekragarion: Mode 1 traditional (MS Sinai 1255: 15th century)
2. 3 Stichera Prosomoia in Mode 1 for Saint Catherine (traditional, MS Sinai 1250)
3. Doxastikon: Sticheron Idiomelon in Mode 2
   Part 1: Traditional (MS Ambrosianus 139 A sup.: 14th century)
   Part 2: Manuel Chrysaphes the Lampadarios (mid-15th century)
   MS Sinai 1234 (Autograph of John Plousiadenos, 1469)

Part Two

Advent and Christmas

The Service of the Furnace: A liturgical drama of the Three Holy Children according to MS Sinai 1527

1. Sticheron (MS Ambrosianus 139 A sup.)
2. The Song of the Three Youths with Refrains
   Traditional and Xenos Korones (14th century)
3. “The Angel of the Lord came down”
   Manuel Gazes the Lampadarios (act. first half of 15th century)
4. “When the tyrant saw”
   Angelos Gregoriou (mid-15th century)

Imperial Acclamations for Christmastide (MS Sinai 1234)