17 Facts About Byzantine chant

The ecclesiastical forms of Byzantine music are the best known forms today, because different Orthodox traditions still identify with the heritage of Byzantine music, when their cantors sing monodic chant out of the traditional chant books such as the Sticherarion, which in fact consisted of five books, and the Irmologion.

Byzantine chant music did not disappear after the fall of Constantinople.

Byzantine chant was added by UNESCO in 2019 to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage "as a living art that has existed for more than 2000 years, the Byzantine chant is a significant cultural tradition and comprehensive music system forming part of the common musical traditions that developed in the Byzantine Empire".

Tradition of eastern liturgical Byzantine chant, encompassing the Greek-speaking world, developed even before the establishment of the new Roman capital, Constantinople, in 330 until its fall in 1453.

Byzantine chant music was influenced by Hellenistic music traditions, classic Greek music as well as religious music traditions of Syriac and Hebrew cultures.

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Term Byzantine music is sometimes associated with the medieval sacred chant of Christian Churches following the Constantinopolitan Rite.

The melodic neume notation of Byzantine chant music developed late since the 10th century, with the exception of an earlier ekphonetic notation, interpunction signs used in lectionaries, but modal signatures for the eight echoi can already be found in fragments of monastic hymn books dating back to the 6th century.

Nevertheless, Byzantine chant music is modal and entirely dependent on the Ancient Greek concept of harmonics.

Notion of angelic Byzantine chant is certainly older than the Apocalypse account, for the musical function of angels as conceived in the Old Testament is brought out clearly by Isaiah and Ezekiel .

Byzantine chant needed a kind of mass propaganda to justify the imperial violence against the public.

Middle Byzantine chant version allows to recognise the exact steps between the neumes.

Byzantine chant thus commanded them to speak out before his vassals.

Constantin Floros' edition of the melismatic Byzantine chant proved that the total repertoire of 750 kontakia was based on a very limited number of classical melodies which served as model for numerous new compositions: he counted 42 prooimia with 14 prototypes which were used as a model for other kontakia, but not rubrified as avtomela, but as idiomela, and 13 oikoi which were separately used for the recitation of oikoi.

Integrative role of Middle Byzantine chant notation becomes visible that a lot of echemata were used which were not known from the sticherarion.

Byzantine chant's work was continued by his students Lycourgos Angelopoulos and Ioannis Arvanitis who both had a quite independent and different approach to the tradition.

Byzantine chant published some essays where he explained the role that his teacher Simon Karas had for his work.

Byzantine chant studied the introduction of the New Method under the aspect which were the Middle Byzantine neumes that had been abandoned by Chrysanthos, when he introduced the New Method.