Octoechos: Can someone explain them?

[thunderballs75]

When I go to the Byzantine Liturgy, they seem to talk about the 8 tones. Can somebody explain them to me? What does this mean? How do you chant them? Any good websites?

Thank you.

 

[Harpazo]

When I go to the Byzantine Liturgy, they seem to talk about the 8 tones. Can somebody explain them to me? What does this mean? How do you chant them? Any good websites?

Thank you.

From what I have heard from a few different Orthodox, the 8 tone system is similar to what the Jews used when chanting the psalms. My church (which is in the Bulgarian diocese, but we’re all American and converts) uses the same tones the OCA uses. Some Ruthenian churches I have been to have used some of the same tones that the OCA uses, but I don’t know if any others do.

I guess it would depend on which Eastern Catholic or Orthodox church you went to. Here is the one that we use. If you find the troparion of the day or some hymns to practice with, it would go a long way in learning it. For me, I’ve been going to Orthodox churches for almost 9 months now and I still haven’t learned them all perfectly from memory, but it the only way to really learn them is to use them.

In Christ,
Andrew

 

[Aramis]

There are 8 sets of propers (troparia, kontakia, prokimenia, aleluiaria).

Each tone has one of each for sundays, and for each week day.
Each tone has a melody for it’s troparia, its kontakia, its prokimenia, and its aleluria.

So it’s 32 melodies (in 8 families), and 56 sets of lyrics.

Not counting the additional variants for the hours, and the Irmosi.

So, Tone 1 is a troparion melody, kontakion melody, prokimenion melody, and alleluiarion melody. These melodies are all in the same key, all use similar shapes, and are musically related. There are additional melodies for use with Irmosi, magnifications, and recicitivi (reading tones; not always used).
It also is 7 troparion texts (1 per day), 7 kontakion texts(1 per day), 7 prokimenion texts (1 per day), and 7 alleluiarion texts (1 per day), all fit to those melodies. plus daily theotokia in the same musical tone.

So, given the day of the week, and the week’s tone number, one knows the melody and which words.

The Octoechos is literally “Eight sounds”… the greek for “eight tones”.

Essentially, Octoechos refers to the system of 8 core melodies, and the 60+ variants used in singing the liturgies, and the 300+ specific texts.

The Tone of the Week starts counting after pentecost, and resets every 8 weeks.

 

[bpbasilphx]

“Octoechos”, aka “Paraklitiki”, refers also to a BOOK containing the various texts needed for Matins and Vespers for every day in the week in each of the eight tomes.

As you can imagine, it’s published in its complete form in one or two sizeable volumes.

You can see the extent of it here:

anastasis.org.uk/oktoich.htm

 

[Kyrillos_NY]

From the “Syriac Music” website, syriacmusic.com/history.asp?menuid=cm&type=history&purpose=churchmusic here is a brief summary of the history of the eight modes:

Music of the Syriac Orthodox Church is enriched and has a sterling history running from the beginning of our times derived from the ancient Sumerian and Acadian musical period.

Excavations proved that music in Mesopotamia began with the Sumerians in 4500 BC and that there were schools of music in that area since that time. Music used in many fields of life especially in the religious ceremonies where it played an imported role.

The Acadian octave (from one note to its equivalent in a higher register) was divided into 24-quartertones. Every eight keys formed a scale. These scales did not get over the entire octave; while they were built on the first four tones only (tetra chord). These tetra chords were combined thereafter with each other until they made up to 3000 different complete scales. A lot of them did not give musical satisfaction and were reduced to almost 200. Today about 10 are in use.

The early Christians sang different type of songs and especially from the Psaltery. It was decided in the early Church to pray and sing in Aramaic the “international” language at that time. Already though, with the establishing of Church, the Acadian seven-tones´ scale was used, the tones which came to Palestine probably with the returning Jews who were liberated by Cyrus about 539 BC. These scales have been used in Jerusalem from 444 BC.

After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AC, the early believers moved to Antioch together with Peter the founder of Christian church of Antioch. At that time Antioch was an important bridge between east and west and the point of meeting for other cultures. After the entry of Christianity into the Middle East in the second-third Century, the Christian mass service in Antioch standardized by using the Acadian main tones but in a particular order.

Scales from Acadia took form of eight different tones, a new one for each Sunday, beginning from the Church Consecration’s Sunday (first Sunday in November). These eight scales became the basis of the oriental music which is used until today in all the Middle East, Iran, Greece, Turkey and North Africa.

In Byzantine use the cycle begins after “Bright Week”, the week after Easter. The Sunday following Thomas Sunday uses tone two, etc.

 

[josephdaniel29]

When I go to the Byzantine Liturgy, they seem to talk about the 8 tones. Can somebody explain them to me? What does this mean? How do you chant them? Any good websites?

Thank you.

Aramis explained it very well. Here is a website with some examples.

Yours in Christ
Joe

 

[bpbasilphx]

Aramis explained it very well. Here is a website with some examples.

Yours in Christ
Joe

Note that these are how the Tones are generally executed in the Great Russian tradition, which adapts very easily into English.

Greeks, Arabs, Bulgarians, and Romanians use the Byzantine system (with local adaptations) which sound quite different. Then Ukrainian, Carpatho-Ruthenian, and Serbian are other versions.

 

[Aramis]

Each system has diverged in the actual music; the method, however, is much the same across the board.

Note that the underlying original melodies are apparently derived from Jewish chant tonality.

 

[Diak]

Eight is itself an important number; it is related to the Resurrection and has eschatological significance (the eigth day, the day beyond the seven, etc ).

The word Octoechos itself can mean the musical structure of the eight tones or the collection of propers themselves set to these eight tones for the Hours and the Divine Liturgy.

The *Octoechos * (speaking here of the book or collection of books with the propers set to the eight tones) is used at the Hours and Divine Liturgy. These eight tones rotate throughout the year for Sundays and weekdays.

Note that other books are used for propers for fixed feast days (Menion), the Lenten period (Triodion), and the period between Pascha and the week after Pentecost (Pentecostarion).

St. John of Damascus was the largest single contributor to the original Greek Octoechos and believed to be an originator of the eight-tone system. Some newer research, however is indicating that some original texts in an eight-tone system may date back even to St. Romanos (as Christian Troelsgård has suggested).

That’s the liturgical text part of the Octoechos. Speaking of the musical part of the Octoechos is where it gets very confusing. Each particular tradition within the Constantinopolitan ritual family has its own development of these “eight tones” into different sets of melodies, plagal modes, etc.

There is almost always complex subdivisions of these melodies within a particular tradition. For example, in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic tradition we use primarily the Western Ukrainian or Galician (“Samoylka”) and also the Kyivan development of melodies.

Within each of these two developed particular systems of melodies there are many more subsystems such as Resurrectional Troparia, Kontakia (they do not always follow the Troparia melody), Resurrectional Prokimen, Alleluia, Samohlasny, Bulharski (“Bulgarian”), Podobny, Samopodobny, “Greek”, and Znamenny melodies, all having unique melodic forms.

Perhaps with this you can see why the experienced diak/cantor was such a well-respected figure in the parish church.

 

[Diak]

I would disagree with the notion that all of these tones originate in Jewish chant tonality, especially in the Greek-Byzantine (non-Slavic) chant systems. The influence of pre-Christian Greek melody has not been well researched; but Greek choruses and temple worship were well established in pre-Christian times and it is possible if not probable some of these melodies were “Christianized”.

 

[Aramis]

I would disagree with the notion that all of these tones originate in Jewish chant tonality, especially in the Greek-Byzantine (non-Slavic) chant systems. The influence of pre-Christian Greek melody has not been well researched; but Greek choruses and temple worship were well established in pre-Christian times and it is possible if not probable some of these melodies were “Christianized”.

The problem being that pre-christian greek music is barely documented in period, while hebraic modes have been retained as well as documented; further, greek instrumentation was often tunable, and few of the untunable instruments survived.

We know a good deal, for example, about western tonality in the period 800-1500 because of ‘non-tunable’ instruments which have survived, including trumpets, flutes, recorders, pipe organs, chimes and bells. Because we know how they were both notated and how that figures to other less long-term precise instruments,we can recreat much of the tonality by examining the fretting on lutes, since we know what the relative tuning was to items that don’t change over time.

We know how the hebraic chant was used, because there is written commentary about it and that commentary is still used. What we don’t know is cross-fertilization between greek and hebraic methods, and if the melodies are in fact derivative or not. What we do know is that Byzantine methodologies (recitation tone use, and psalms being sung to melodic sets) is directly out of the Hebraic chant tradition. (Which should be no surprise, considering the Apostles and most of the early disciples were all Jews…) We also know that Hebraic chant was (and is) congregational; so also is most Byzantine chant. We know that common psalms had specific melodies, and that others might be referred to by those.

Sadly, the systems of notation evolve due to early Medieval Christian chant needs, especially out of Byzantium and Rome… the earliest chant notation fits well with both simplified greek chant and with simplified hebrew chant… applying occam’s razor, it’s probably indicative of common descent.

(I did a couple research papers on church chant in college…)

 

[Diak]

Ioannidas Nikolaos has identified similarities in pre-Christian Greek melodies such as those of Mesomedes and Athenaeus in the first century B.C. with early Greek-Byzantine chant, specifically with regard to such basic components as isons and plagals, essential components of later Greek-Byzantine chant. There were also pannychis services with chants to several pre-Christian deities. But much more work is needed in research.

 

[Aramis]

Ioannidas Nikolaos has identified similarities in pre-Christian Greek melodies such as those of Mesomedes and Athenaeus in the first century B.C. with early Greek-Byzantine chant, specifically with regard to such basic components as isons and plagals, essential components of later Greek-Byzantine chant. There were also pannychis services with chants to several pre-Christian deities. But much more work is needed in research.

The question I’d have is how he’s finding those melodies; annotations start in the 4th century, and actual indexed tonality in written music somewhat later (tho’ I’ve not got my texts to hand for specific dates). Anything before that can only be inferred by extrapolation from later use.

But yes, much research is needed.

 

[Diak]

It’s clear that a number of aspects of Greek-Byzantine chant, such as plagal melodies, ison, etc. have nothing whatsoever to do with Hebraic chant. Since the early tradition was oral, it is probable that the early gentile Christians of Greek heritage who extended from Alexandria all the way around the Mediterranean kept the oral tradition inherited from pre-Christian Greek temple and chorus music rather than inventing something from scratch.