Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Byzantine Music'

We used a Byzantine Music piece performed by a well recognized chanter in order to derive experimentally the mean frequencies of the first five tones (D – A) of the diatonic scale of Byzantine Music. Then we compared the experimentally derived frequencies with frequencies proposed by two theoretical scales, both representative of traditional Byzantine Music chanting. We found that if a scale is performed by a traditional chanter is very close in frequency to the frequencies proposed theoretically. We then determined an allowed frequency deviation from the mean frequencies for each tone. The concept of allowed deviation is not provided by theory. Comparing our results to the notion of pitch discrimination from psychophysics we further established that the frequency differences are minute. The Attraction Effect was tested for a secondary tone (E) and the effect is quantified for the first time. The concept of the Attraction Effect is not explained in theory in terms of frequencies of tones.

Digitized acoustical signals of Byzantine music performed by Iakovos Nafpliotis are used to extract the fundamental frequency of each note of the diatonic scale. These empirical results are then contrasted to the theoretical suggestions and previous empirical findings. Several parametric and non-parametric spectral parameter estimation methods are implemented. These include: (1) Phase vocoder method, (2) McAulay-Quatieri method, (3) Levinson-Durbin algorithm,(4) YIN, (5) Quinn & Fernandes Estimator, (6) Pisarenko Frequency Estimator, (7) MUltiple SIgnal Characterization (MUSIC) algorithm, (8) Periodogram method, (9) Quinn & Fernandes Filtered Periodogram, (10) Rife & Vincent Estimator, and (11) the Fourier transform. Algorithm performance was very precise. The psychophysical aspect of human pitch discrimination is explored. The results of eight (8) psychoacoustical experiments were used to determine the aural just noticeable difference (jnd) in pitch and deduce patterns utilized to customize acceptable performable pitch deviation to the application at hand. These customizations [Acceptable Performance Difference (a new measure of frequency differential acceptability), Perceptual Confidence Intervals (a new concept of confidence intervals based on psychophysical experiment rather than statistics of performance data), and one based purely on music-theoretical asymphony] are proposed, discussed, and used in interpretation of results. The results suggest that Nafpliotis' intervals are closer to just intonation than Byzantine theory (with minor exceptions), something not generally found in Thrasivoulos Stanitsas' data. Nafpliotis' perfect fifth is identical to the just intonation, even though he overstretches his octaveby fifteen (15)cents. His perfect fourth is also more just, as opposed to Stanitsas' fourth which is directionally opposite. Stanitsas' tendency to exaggerate the major third interval A4-F4 is still seen in Nafpliotis, but curbed. This is the only noteworthy departure from just intonation, with Nafpliotis being exactly Chrysanthian (the most exaggerated theoretical suggestion of all) and Stanitsas overstretching it even more than Nafpliotis and Chrysanth. Nafpliotis ascends in the second tetrachord more robustly diatonically than Stanitsas. The results are reported and interpreted within the framework of Acceptable Performance Differences.

Byzantine chant, the music of the Greek Orthodox Churches in America, embeds meanings and functions as a methodological tool which constructs and teaches about the role of women within church communities. This thesis explores how as cultural group identity, belongingness, and gender identity are semiotically iconized, purified, and recursively transmitted through the liturgical music of the church, specifically hymns about women saints and The Akathist Hymn to the Mother of God. This work is a culmination of twelve years of ethnomusicological fieldwork conducted by the author in Midwestern Greek Orthodox churches and monasteries, using participant-observation techniques. The work outlines the basic musicological theory of Byzantine chant, describes how the portrayal of women in liturgical music provides templates for the desired behavior of females within the community, and examines how Byzantine music works as a memory aid, teaching tool, and constructor of social ideas in relationship to the roles of women.

Ēriks Ešenvalds is an early twenty-first century composer who has been commissioned to write works for some of the most noteworthy ensembles in the world. Having written over 100 compositions to date, 72 of which are choral pieces, Ešenvalds is quickly becoming one of the most prolific and significant composers of his time. He currently works as a full-time composer out of Riga, Latvia. Ešenvalds’s choral works are primarily unaccompanied, while some include brass band, saxophone quartet, percussion, or orchestral accompaniment. Textures vary from three to twelve voice parts. His oratorio Passion and Resurrection (2005), written for soprano solo, SATB quartet, SATB chorus, SS soli, and strings, is an amalgamation of compositional techniques drawn from all eras of music history. This project identifies characteristics of Roman Catholic and Byzantine chant that are imitated throughout Passion and Resurrection. A succinct history of both styles is presented along with a detailing of Ešenvalds’s compositional technique and an overview of his oratorio. Aspects of form, melody, text, rhythm, harmony, and texture present in each movement are also discussed. This study provides conductors with insight into the chant-like aspects of Ešenvalds’s work and any influences on performance. Listings of notable Passion settings and Ešenvalds’s choral output are also included.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2008.
Title from first page of PDF file (viewed Mar. 16, 2009). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references: P. 228-240.

Spanning the first seven centuries of Christianity, this paper explores how Eastern Christian and Byzantine hymn chant was developed alongside pagan and Jewish worship traditions around the Near East. Comparison of hymns by Christian composers such as St. Romanos the Melodist and pagan poetry reveals many similarities in the types of metaphorical imagery used in both religious expressions. Common in Christian hymn texts, well-known metaphors, like the “Light of God,” are juxtaposed with pagan mythological gods, such as Apollo and Helios. This paper attempts to explain how and why Christians appropriated and adopted ancient pagan imagery into the burgeoning musical tradition of Christian hymn singing.

Michael Hadjiloizou's operas show the influence of Ancient Greek, Byzantine, and Cypriot folk music, all coexisting harmoniously to provide a new distinctive, unified and quite personalized compositional style. The examination of Hadjiloizou's operas is primarily an ethnic musicological matter, which requires a study of his compositional ideology, as the understanding and enjoyment of the ethical expressions evident in these works requires knowledge of the historical background on which they are based. Nevertheless, as in the case of Wagner, these operas are self-contained and can be observed for what they represent as staged productions. Hadjiloizou's information will be presented in two steps. First, the historical information of each of the three musical eras of the title will be told in the music of Ancient Greece and Byzantine, and Cypriot folk will be told by the similarities of each style in Mr. Hadjiloizou's operas. Musical information mentioned here, will be: (1) the nature of Greek music, how it differed from modern music, and why we are attracted to the history of Greek music; (2) mythical sound events, the mythology of musical reminiscence, musical myths, timbre of ancient instruments, principles of voice production, mode(s), ancient Greek Harmoniai, scales, octave species, tonoi or tropoi, the invention of musical intervals, physical basis of sound, the birth of drama, the use of Ancient Greek music for the care of the soul, the evolution of Greek music in the Byzantine empire, and women musicians; (3) the origins of Cypriot folk song, its rhythmic elements, morphology, scales and instruments, and; (4) Hadjiloizou's music and information about it as told by him.

This is the first full-length, bioergographical study devoted to Manuel Chrysaphes, a fifteenth century composer, theorist, and singer, who worked in the imperial court of Constantinople as lampadarios (a director of the imperial choirs) under the final two emperors of Byzantium, residing in Mistra, Serbia, and Crete after the disintegration of the Empire in 1453. Aside from Edward Williams’ study dedicated to the fourteenth-century musical reforms of Ioannes Koukouzeles, there are virtually no complete studies on notable musicians of the late Byzantine Empire. This dearth of scholarship is all the more remarkable considering these musicians’ prodigious output and the emphasis on the individual and the act of composition evident in manuscripts and treatises of Byzantine psalmody. Manuel Chrysaphes was the probable scribe of four codices, the author of an important theoretical treatise, and the composer of approximately 300 works, which range from simple psalmody to virtuosic chants composed in the florid, kalophonic style. This study embraces Chrysaphes’ multifaceted personality as scribe, theorist, and composer, in order to bring his aesthetics and compositional voice into relief. A detailed analysis of Chrysaphes’ arrangement and settings of the Anoixantaria (verses and troped refrains based on Psalm 103) not only serves to update our knowledge of evening worship in late Byzantium, but also provides a starting point towards understanding the identifiable elements of Chrysaphes’ style as composer. More broadly, this thesis attempts to define the figure of composer in the context of the late medieval world of the Christian East. Chrysaphes took the kalophonic tradition he inherited – a tradition of elaborate psalmody in which individual composers figured prominently – to its logical extreme, filling out repertories with his own compositions, innovating in certain areas, and defending the traditions of his predecessors elsewhere. Chrysaphes, a scribe, singer, and choir director, operated first and foremost as a selfconsciously authorial composer. His prolific activity as author of hundreds of veritable ‘art works’ nevertheless leaves us with the impression that these were not detractors from, but rather, instruments of worship and spiritual perfection.

This doctoral thesis aims to investigate some aspects of the liturgical and musical tradition of Southern Illyria, a specific region of the Byzantine civilization in the Balkans. Focusing on a group of manuscripts conserved today at the National Archive of the State in Tirana the project will help expand and deepen the knowledge about medieval Byzantine music of the Western Balkans. The methods adopted include the cataloguing, the study of the notation, the classification of the neumatic signs, as well as performing the transcription and critical analyses of texts and music, through a comparison with other authoritative MSS, representative of the Middle Byzantine musical notation. Among the six manuscripts in Greek and Byzantine notation currently preserved at the National Archive of Albania in Tirana (which cover a period from the 13th to the 19th century, and document the last two phases of the Byzantine notation) the research focus will be on the MS Br. 81, the only Sticherarion surviving in Albania. An initial investigation based on the identification though the indexing the repertory included in the Sticherarion Br. 81 was further extended by transcribing the texts and the intonations of some groups of musical compositions. The chants were selected according to the following criteria: 1) compositions considered significant for possible textual and musical comparisons with other concordant sources; 2) the repertory of unica chants included in the Sticherarion Br. 81. Through a comparative study of the repertory, i.e. by confronting the compositions obtained from Sticherarion Br. 81 with the concordant sources in the Middle Byzantine notation, the thesis aims to clarify the nature of the chants present in Sticherarion Br. 81, as well to identify the significant musical and textual variants through an in-depth analysis of the melodies. The analysis of the content of the MS has also permitted to address issues related to the origins of Sticherarion Br. 81. Since the Albanian musical MSS have not yet been comprehensively studied from a musicological perspective, this thesis, by providing a description and a first analysis of the repertory of Br. 81, aims to address this lack, and to provide scholars directions for future research. This is the aim of the Appendices with musical transcriptions too, which, besides making accessible a significant group of unique chants, also offer an interesting material for new investigations on the notation and on the local variations of the musical and liturgical repertory of a larger area of Byzantine culture.
La presente tesi di dottorato si propone di esaminare un aspetto della tradizione liturgico-musicale presente nel territorio dell’Illiria del sud, parte specifica e integrante della civiltà bizantina dei Balcani. Rivolgendo l’attenzione a un gruppo di manoscritti oggi conservati a Tirana, presso l’Archivio Centrale Nazionale di Tirana, il progetto si è posto l’obiettivo di approfondire la conoscenza delle testimonianze della musica bizantina medievale nei Balcani occidentali, effettuando la catalogazione, studiando la notazione, classificando le scritture neumatiche, eseguendo la trascrizione e l’analisi critica dei testi e delle musiche, attraverso il confronto con altri testimoni autorevoli in notazione bizantina. Tra i sei manoscritti in lingua greca e in notazione bizantina attualmente conservati nell’Archivio Centrale Nazionale dell’Albania a Tirana (che abbracciano un periodo dal sec. XIII al XIX e documentano le ultime due fasi della notazione bizantina) è stato scelto di studiare il ms. Br. 81 del sec. XIII-XIV, l’unico della tipologia degli sticheraria. Una iniziale indagine basata sull’identificazione, l’indicizzazione e alla stesura dell’incipitario di tutti i brani si è estesa trascrivendo contemporaneamente testi e intonazioni di alcuni gruppi di composizioni musicali. La selezione dei canti è stata effettuata secondo i seguenti criteri: 1) composizioni ritenute significative per i possibili confronti testuali e musicali con altre fonti concordanti; 2) unica presenti nel manoscritto Br. 81. Attraverso lo studio comparativo del repertorio, mettendo di fronte le composizioni ricavate dallo Sticherario Br. 81 e le rispettive fonti concordanti in notazione medio bizantina, la tesi mira a chiarire la natura dei canti presenti nello sticherario Br. 81, nonché individuare le varianti significative musicali e testuali tramite un’approfondita analisi delle melodie e dei testi. L’analisi del contenuto ha permesso inoltre di affrontare le problematiche legate all’origine e alla provenienza dello sticherario Br. 81. La tesi risponde soprattutto all’esigenza di avviare la ricognizione, la descrizione e una prima analisi di un repertorio rimasto finora ai margini degli studi musicologici, mettendo a disposizione degli studiosi gli elementi per successivi e specifici approfondimenti. A questo scopo risponde anche l’appendice di trascrizioni musicali che, oltre a rendere noto già un gruppo significativo di unica, offre anche un materiale interessante per nuove indagini sulla notazione e sulle varianti locali di un repertorio comune a una vasta area della cultura bizantina.

Les Harmoniques de Manuel Bryenne sont, autour de 1300, le dernier texte de théorie musicale 'classique', écrit à Byzance, dans le contexte de la Renaissance Paléologue. Il n'existe que deux éditions de ce texte (celle de J. Wallis en 1699 et celle de G. H. Jonker en 1970), dont aucune n'établit une histoire critique du texte. Le but de cette édition sera donc de proposer une histoire rigoureuse du texte et une traduction française qui s’adresse tant aux hellénistes qu’aux musicologues. L’ensemble est accompagné d’un commentaire au contenu, d’une étude des diagrammes ainsi que des sources utilisées par Bryenne. Le nombre des sources répertoriées et l’usage qu’en fait l’auteur permettent d’inscrire ce texte dans une très longue tradition remontant au IVème siècle av. J.-C. et de situer ce traité dans la tradition plus large des textes mathématiques et scientifiques des XIIIè-XIVè siècles
Manuel Bryennius’ Harmonics, written around 1300 AD in Byzantium, is the last compendium of classical musical theory that came down to us. It therefore belongs to the era of the Paleologean Renaissance. Until today, only two editions of this text are available, the first one by J. Wallis in 1699 and the second one by G. H. Jonker in 1970. None of them gives a reliable and complete study of the textual tradition. This new edition should provide such a critical approach and a French translation, intended for the use of both Hellenists and musicologists. A commentary is provided, as well as a thorough study of the multiple diagrams and of all the sources used by Bryennius. It can be shown that Bryennius was very careful in gathering almost all possible material on the subject of ancient Greek music theory, and that he is therefore the last member of a long lasting tradition dating back to the 4th century BC. At the same time, he constitutes an interesting case study for the intellectual life and milieu of the early 14th century Byzantium

Magdalény Rettigové 4, 116 39 Praha 1 tel.: +420 221 900 111 www.pedf.cuni.cz IČ 00216208 DIČ CZ00216208 Dle čl. 4 Opatření rektora č. 6/2010 o Zpřístupnění elektronické databáze závěrečných prací http://www.cuni.cz/UK-3470.html a čl. 1 Opatření děkana 17/2010 se z časového hlediska závěrečné práce dělí do tří skupin: a. "nové práce", tj. práce odevzdávané k obhajobě počínaje 29. 9. 2010, b. "starší práce", tj. práce odevzdané k obhajobě od 1. 1. 2006 do 28. 9. 2010, c. "práce před rokem 2006", tj. práce odevzdané k obhajobě před 1. 1. 2006. V tomto případě jde o "starší práci" odevzdanou k obhajobě od 1. 1. 2006 do 28. 9. 2010. Omlouváme se, ale dokument není k dispozici.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of New Orleans, 2004.
Title from electronic submission form. "A thesis ... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in the Department of Physics."--Thesis t.p. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

This is an interdisciplinary examination of the office of Sunday Matins as celebrated in the Byzantine cathedral Rite of the Great Church from its origins in the popular psalmodic assemblies of the fourth century to its comprehensive reform by Archbishop Symeon of Thessalonica (fl429), Byzantium's last and most prolific liturgical commentator. Specifically, it studies the influence of developments in liturgical music and piety—notable among which were the advent of monastic hymnody and virtuosic styles of chanting—on the order of service at the Constantinopolitan andThessalonian cathedrals of Hagia Sophia. This is accomplished through reconstructions of the service of Sunday matins as celebrated in the two churches from musical manuscripts, books of rubrics (Typika'), and liturgical commentaries. In general, these demonstrate that the interaction of cathedral and monastic elements in Byzantium's secular churches was far more complex than is generally acknowledged. The final two chapters of this study examine Symeon's revised version of the Sunday morning office, which provides the context for an examination of broader questions concerning the nature of developments in the ethos of Byzantine worship. The focal point for this discussion is an evaluation of the liturgical reforms initiated by Symeon to save the cathedral rite from the indifference of his Thessalonian flock. Symeon himself describes these reforms in his liturgical commentaries as a selective "sweetening" with popular monastic hymnody. The reconstruction, however, shows that in addition to adding hymnody—itself the product of a previous revolution in Byzantine liturgical piety— he updated the archaic service of cathedral matins by incorporating many of the central works of the new repertory of florid chants. Taken together, these discoveries serve to illuminate important differences in liturgical style between a rite originally conceived for the great basilicas of Christian antiquity, and one formed by the fervent spirituality of hesychast monks during Byzantium's twilight.