The Music Sessions at the 17th International Congress of Byzantine Studies Georgetown

University 3-8 August 1986

Author(s): Peter Jeffery
Source: The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Winter, 1988), pp. 130-134
Published by: University of California Press
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Conference
Report
The Music Sessions at the
17th
International
Congress
of
Byzantine
Studies
Georgetown University
3-8 August 1986
Peter
Jeffery
130
hree sessions were devoted to music at the 17th
International
Congress
of
Byzantine
Studies,
which met
August 3-8,
1986,
on the
campus
of
Georgetown University
in
Washington
D.C.
Co-sponsored by
the
University
and the Dumbarton Oaks Center for
Byzantine
Studies,
the
quinquennial Congress
was
holding
its first
meeting
ever in North America. The more than
500
scholars who
participated
came from as far
away
as
Australia, India,
and
Japan,
but
the
majority
were from the
Americas,
Western
Europe,
and the
countries that are the main cultural heirs to
Byzantine
civilization:
Greece,
Italy,
Eastern
Europe,
and the Soviet Union. For
many
American
Byzantinists,
the
Congress provided
the first
opportunity
to
become
personally acquainted
with
colleagues
from
very
distant
places-colleagues
we had
previously
known
only through
their
publications.
Strictly speaking, Byzantine
studies focuses on the
Eastern,
Greek-speaking
half of the Roman
Empire,
which had its
capital
at
Byzantium
from
330 (when
the
Emperor
Constantine renamed it
Constantinople),
to
1453,
when the
city
fell to the Turks. But in
practice Byzantine
studies extends much
further,
to
every
time and
place
in which the influence of
Byzantium
was ever felt.
Chronologically, Byzantine
studies can extend back as far as the
period
Volume 6
*
Number i *
Winter
1988
The
Journal
of
Musicology
?
1988 by
the
Regents
of the
University
of California
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CONFERENCE REPORT
of Classical
Antiquity,
the
heritage
of which
Byzantium
did more than
any
other culture to
preserve.
At the other end of the
chronological
spectrum, Byzantine
culture still survives
today
wherever the Greek
language
is
spoken
or
studied,
and wherever the
religious
traditions of
the Eastern Orthodox Churches are still
practiced. Geographically,
the
Byzantine
orbit extended to the borders of the Eastern
empire,
which
(though they changed greatly
in the course of
history)
stretched at
times from the Danube to the
Nile,
from the Straits of Gibraltar almost
to the
Caspian
Sea. But
Byzantine
influence made itself felt even
farther
afield,
filtering
into the
non-Greek-speaking
border areas of
Ethiopia,
Persia, Armenia,
and the Balkan countries. It is
really
no
exaggeration
to
say
that
Byzantium
forms
part
of the
heritage
of
everyone
whose native culture is rooted in Greco-Roman
Antiquity,
Judeo-Christian religion,
and
Indo-European languages. Anyone
who
has such a
background
can still
sympathize
with the words set to music
by
Guillaume
Dufay
when the
city
was
conquered
500
years ago:
Dont suis de bien et
dejoye separee
Sans
que
vivant veulle entendre mes
plains.1
131
Byzantine
music is
pre-eminently
the medieval
liturgical
chant of
the Eastern churches that followed the
Byzantine
rite.
Today Byzantine
churches are found
throughout
the
world,
but in the Middle
Ages
most
of them were located in the
Greek-speaking
areas of Asia
Minor,
Pales-
tine,
Italy,
and
Greece;
in the
Slavic-speaking
countries
including
Bul-
garia,
Serbia,
the
Ukraine,
and
Russia;
in the
neighboring
countries of
Albania, Rumania,
and
Georgia;
and in
Syriac-speaking
"Melkite" or
"Royalist"
communities in the Middle East. But
despite
its focus on the
Middle
Ages, Byzantine musicology
does not exclude from its
purview
the more recent music of these
churches,
or the secular folk music of
peoples inhabiting
the former
Byzantine
realm. It is
easy enough tojus-
tify
the
study
of medieval
Byzantine
chant
by
the
light
it can throw on
the chant and music
theory
of the medieval
West,
but
specialists
in
Byz-
antine music find their
subject extremely intriguing
in its own
right.
Some of the most
interesting
and
important
issues were
explored
in the
three music sessions of the
Washington congress, effectively organized
by
Prof. Milos Velimirovic
(USA)
and attended
by
about
thirty
of the
Congress delegates.
As
might
be
expected,
most of the
delegates
in at-
tendance were from countries where the field of
Byzantine musicology
'
"Because of it I am
separated
from
well-being
and
joy,
for no one
living
will hear
my
complaints."
From "Lamentatio sancte matris ecclesie
Constantinopolitanae,"
in Guil-
laume
Dufay, Opera
Omnia,
ed. Heinrich
Besseler,
Corpus
Mensurabilis Musicae
1,
Vol. 6
(Rome:
American Institute of
Musicology, 1964)
19ff.
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THE
JOURNAL
OF MUSICOLOGY
has an
especially strong following:
the United
States, Greece,
Eastern
Europe,
and
Denmark,
where the most
important
resource in the
field,
Monumenta Musicae
Byzantinae,
is
published
in
Copenhagen.
As
agreed
at the
previous
Congress
(Vienna 1981),
the first session
was devoted to what is
probably
the central issue of
Byzantine
musical
research,
the
problem
of how to
decipher
and transcribe the medieval
neumatic notation. While scholars
agree
on the basic
meaning
of most of
the
important
neumes, they
disagree
as to how these written
signs
were
treated in
performance.
Did medieval
singers perform
the melodies as
they
were
written,
in
syllabic style
and in a diatonic
gamut
of
pitches?
Or
did
they
make use of unwritten ornaments and chromatic
alterations,
as
Greek Orthodox
singers
do
today?
The issue was addressed
by
three of
the
leading
Byzantine
musicologists.
In the first
paper,
"The Classical
Melos of
Byzantine Hymns,"
Kenneth
Levy
(USA)
defended a conserv-
ative view of the sort that Western scholars have
traditionally
found
ap-
pealing.
"The
hymns
of the archaic
Hirmologion
and Sticherarion were
sung
'as written' . . . the tonal
system
underlying
this
style
was itself
diatonic." But
Levy
also counseled a new
openness
to the
probability
that the
performance practice
underwent much historical
evolution,
en-
132
couraging
Byzantinists in
musicology
to "take
pride
in the
continuing
capacity
for
change
shown
by
this
repertory." Levy
also called for ethno-
musicological
study
of the chants as
they
are
sung
today,
an
investiga-
tion that would do much to
bring
the modern
performance practice
into
historical
perspective.
Some of the
history
of the modern
performance practice
was illumi-
nated by
Grigorios
Stathis
(Greece),
a scholar who has had the benefit of
both traditional ecclesiastical
training
in the chant and a Western
degree
in
musicology.
His
paper,
"The
Exegesis
of Psaltiki
Tehni,"
explored
the
writings
of some late medieval music theorists on the
practice
of
"exege-
sis" or
"interpretation," by
which ornaments and chromaticism are su-
perimposed
on the written
melody.
A remarkable intermediate
position
was taken
byJ0rgen
Raasted
(Denmark),
who
(appropriately)
read his
paper
in between those of
Levy
and Stathis. In
"Thoughts
on a Revision
of the
Transcription
Rules of the Monumenta Musicae
Byzantinae,"
Prof.
Raasted outlined the weaknesses of the conventional rules for
transcrip-
tion,
worked out in the
193os by
the founders of
Byzantine musicology.
He was able to
suggest many improvements
to be utilized in future
publications
of the
Monumenta,
particularly
with
regard
to the modern
notational
symbols designating specific
medieval
neumes,
and the use of
an
improved page layout
to
represent
the
poetic
structure of the
hymn
texts. Most
Byzantine musicologists
would
acknowledge
with Raasted
that the
rhythmic meaning
of the neumes often seems more
ambiguous
than the conventional
transcription
rules
imply.
But Raasted showed
himself much more
open
to the use of accidentals than
many
Western
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CONFERENCE REPORT
scholars have
traditionally
been. The
question
of
exegesis,
however,
Raasted found it
necessary
to leave
open.
"Is it at all
possible
to make
transcriptions
which at the same time can
satisfy opponents
and advo-
cates of a
theory
which claims that the neumatic texts ... are
only
out-
lines
("skeletons")
of what was
actually being sung
. ..?" In
conclusion,
having abundantly
demonstrated that "the situation calls for a
thorough
revision of our
transcriptional practice,"
Raasted
admirably
called for a
continuing
discussion in
preference
to
"imposing any
new set of rules."
The two later sessions were devoted to
short,
fifteen-minute
presen-
tations
by many younger
scholars,
in no
particular
order. Some of these
papers
considered other
aspects
of the
transcription
issue:
Gregory
Myers
(USA),
in "The Koukouzelian Didactic
Song
as an Aid in the
Transcription
of Russian Kondakarian
Notation,"
explored
the
possi-
bility
of
using
late medieval Greek material to
decipher
the earliest
Slavonic notation. Peter Weincke
(Denmark),
in "Some Observations on
the
Interpretation
of
Signatures
and Accidentals in East and
West,"
fo-
cused on some
extremely
rare
examples
of
Byzantine polyphony.
Elena
Toncheva
(Bulgaria),
in "The Problem of the
Postbyzantine
Musical
Exegesis-Seventeenth-Century
Musical
Exegesis
in the
Ukraine,"
car-
ried the issue of
exegesis
into the Slavic world.
133
Two other
papers
dealt with one of the most controversial issues in
all medieval chant
study,
the
problem
of the interrelated roles of oral
and written means of transmission in the creation and
preservation
of
chant melodies. One
aspect
of this
issue,
the "centonate" or "formulaic"
character that
many
texts and melodies
exhibit,
was examined
by
Nina
Konstantinova Ulff-M0ller
(Denmark)
in "The Connection Between
Melodic Formulas and
Stereotype
Text Phrases in Slavonic
Stichera";
her
paper
received an
especially
enthusiastic
reception
as a
job
well
done.
Joan
Roccasalvo
(USA),
in "The Nature and Structure of Rusin
Plainchant,"
explored
the interaction of oral and written transmission in
the chant of the Eastern Slavs in
Subcarpathian
Rus'
during
the
eight-
eenth
through
twentieth centuries. Marian Robertson's
(USA)
"The
Good
Friday Trisagion
of the
Coptic
Church: A Musical
Transcription
and
Analysis," explored
the
melody
attached to an
important
Greek
chant
text,
as it is
sung today
in the oral tradition of the modern
Coptic
Orthodox Church in
Egypt.
Two of the
papers
dealt with
specific
trends in the
history
of the
Byzantine
Greek
liturgy.
In "The Creation and the
Disappearance
of
the Greek Old Testament
Lectionary," Sysse
Gudrun
Engberg
(Den-
mark)
outlined the
history
of this
early liturgical
book
(also
known as the
Prophetologion),
an
important
monument of Greek
ekphonetic
nota-
tion. Peter
Jeffery
(USA),
in "Lost Melodies of the Rite of
Jerusalem,
and their Partial Survivals in the
Byzantine
and Latin Chant
Reper-
toires,"
speculated
that the melodies
sung
in the local
liturgy
of Jerusa-
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THE
JOURNAL
OF MUSICOLOGY
lem between the fourth and eleventh centuries
may
have
played
a role in
the formation of the
Byzantine
and Western chant traditions.
Pointing
out that
many
texts
ofJerusalem origin
survive in the chant traditions of
Byzantium
and the
West,
and that the Eastern and Western melodies
associated with
many
of these texts often show
unexpected
similarities,
Jeffery argued
that these melodic similarities are best
explained
as ves-
tiges
or survivals of the
original Jerusalem
melodies,
which are not ex-
tant in
any
notated source from
Jerusalem
itself.
Two other
papers
dealt with Greek melodies of the later medieval
and
early
modern
periods,
when written sources are
relatively
abundant
and
transcription
issues
relatively
few.
Stephanie
Janakakis-Merakos
(USA),
in
"Simple
and
Kalophonic Settings
of Pasa
pnoe,"
dealt with the
new
Kalophonic style
of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries,
as ex-
emplified
in the melodies for Psalm
150
in the
Ordinary
of the
Morning
Office. Svetlana
Kujumdzieva (Bulgaria),
in " 'Kurie ekekraxa'
(140.1)
der ersten Stimme in der
post-byzantinischen
Periode,"
dealt with first-
mode melodies of the sixteenth
through eighteenth
centuries for Psalm
140 (141)
in the
Ordinary
of the
Evening
Office.
Unfortunately,
a number of
delegates
from
Rumania,
Italy,
Aus-
134 tria, and even the United States were unable to attend, but most of them
mailed in
copies
of their
papers
to be shared with the rest of the
group.
Even
so,
the
precious opportunity
to be
part
of such an international
group
of
experts
was so rare it will not be
forgotten by anyone
who was
there. The one
regret expressed by many
of those who attended was
that there was so little time to
pursue
further the animated and
provoca-
tive discussions that each of the
papers
had stimulated. Of course noth-
ing
could be done to extend the
conference,
and no doubt some of these
discussions will be continued
by
mail. But it is to be
hoped
that addi-
tional discussion time will somehow be made available at the
1991
Con-
gress
in Moscow.
University
of
Delaware
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