Some Aspects of the Polyphonic Treatment of Byzantine Chant in the Orthodox Church in Europe1 Ivan Moody Aesthetic and

liturgical arguments for and against the use of polyphony in the services of the Orthodox Church continue to rage in several countries. While in the sphere of influence of the Russian Orthodox Church we are now witnessing in many places a return to monophonic chanting, within the tradition of Byzantine chant, harmonization in other words, the polyphonic treatment of this repertory of chant - is decidedly not seen as the norm. There is a sizeable body of opinion within the Greek Orthodox Church in general that views polyphony with the deepest suspicion. This attitude has reached its most critical point in the USA, where polyphonic choirs and the use of organs in the churches of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, exacerbated by the lack of continuity in the training of psaltes, have polarized opinion to an extent almost unimaginable in Europe. The Byzantinist Dimtri Conomos, for example, states unambiguously that The most appropriate Christian music is monophonic plainchant. It does not have to be Byzantine chant, or Old Believer, or Old Slavonic or Coptic chant; and ideally it should not be polyphonic, though the practical objections he adduces as justifications for this point of view are, in fact, as applicable to monophonic singing as they are to polyphony.2 There has also been a strong tendency to differentiate the use of the ison, or drone, in Byzantine chant from the polyphonic treatment of chant. (See, for example, recent research by the
Published in Musica se extendit ad omnia. Scritti in onore di Alberto Basso per il suo 75 compleanno, a cura di Rosy Moffa e Sabrina Saccomani, Lucca, LIM, 2007, 67-73. Earlier and more extended versions of this paper were read at conferences in Helsinki and Joensuu (Finland) in December 2004, and in Belgrade, Serbia, in April 2005. 2 Conomos, Dimitri: Early Christian and Byzantine Music: History and Performance. http://www.monachos.net/liturgics/chant_history.shtml
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Bulgarian musicologist Elena Toncheva3, and Diane TouliatosMiles recent work on the concept of chant sur le livre). The ison is seen as a way of reinforcing the mode of a monophonic melody, without interfering with it in the way that a polyphonic rendition would. The argument, however, that the use of the ison is a special category of its own, somehow different from polyphony is, in theoretical terms, difficult to sustain. The mere fact of having a second voice creates, in a technical sense, polyphony. Whether it is possible to defend the use of an ison as being a more adequate means of presenting chant than other polyphonic treatments is, of course, a different question, one complicated by the necessity of evaluating the procedure in terms both theological and aesthetic. Given that the polyphonic treatment of Byzantine chant does exist, independent of universal approval, I shall to begin this brief survey with the observation that in fact polyphony has existed within the Byzantine sphere of influence for some considerable time, as is demonstrated by the existence of such works as the koinonikon for Mid-Pentecost by John Plousiadenos, , or by Manuel Gazes, working in the first half of the 15th century, surviving in manuscripts preserved in the Docheiariou Monastery on Mount Athos . These examples come from a time when the Western Church had, of course, definitively absorbed polyphony into its liturgical practice; the two voices of Plousidadenoss setting are labelled as to tenorei (the tenor) and to keimenon (the text) respectively.4 Such experimentation never entirely stopped, though it became decidedly sporadic after that time. What one might describe as the flourishing of polyphony in the Greek Church occurred rather later. Polyphonic choirs thrived in many Greek cities from
3

Toncheva, Elena: Practice In The Eastern Ecclesiastical Chant Of The Orthodox Balkan Region - Idea Of Polyphony, in Bulgarian Musicology (2001), No 3. Abstract available online at http://musicart.imbm.bas.bg/BM_3_2001.htm 4 See Philipopoulos: , Athens, 1990, pp.13-15 for discussion of these works.

the end of the 19th century onwards, under such men as Ioannis Sakellarides (?1853-1938) and Themistokles Polykratis (18631926) - a phenomenon quite independent, it should be noted, from the folk polyphony of Zante and Cephalonia. At the beginning of the 20th century, Greek Church music was the object of a frequently fierce battle between traditionalists and westernizers.5 As early as the 1840s, polyphony had come into use in the Greek churches in Vienna. In Athens, there was controversy over the desire of members of the royal family to hear polyphony in the Russian style in Athens on feast days. The practical result of this was the establishment, during the last twenty years of the 19th century, of polyphonic choirs not only in Athens, but also in Patras and Corfu, places of indisputable western influence. Significantly, it was precisely during this period that Sakellarides, through a series of influential teaching positions in Athens, succeeded in introducing his westernized versions of Byzantine chant, supposedly cleansed from Turkish influence judging, as Alexander Lingas has noted, its melismatic repertories to be formless and disdaining its performance practice as rhinophonia (nasal singing).6 His revised chants, which were in common usage in Greece until at least the 1960s, would have significant consequences for the development of harmonized singing in the Greek churches of America. Emilios Riadis (1880 or 1888-1935), one of the most original and talented composers of the early 20th century, also left a highly interesting liturgical legacy. The unconventional nature of both his harmonic thinking and his audacity in terms of choral texture produced something absolutely unique. His Cherubic Hymn shows both well: emerging from a long stretch of simple two-part writing, Riadis moves into four parts, and, using tonal chords in what is an eminently non-tonal way, both
5 6

See Philipopoulos, op,.cit, passim. Lingas 2002: Lingas, Alexander: Sakellarides, John Theophrastus, in Groves; Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2002. 3

in terms of their relationship to each other and their frequent use in inverted positions, plays with the modal ambiguity (in tonal terms) of the chant, so that he is able to use chords of D major, C major and Db major in the space of three bars.7 Riadis, however, was to have no successors; indeed, his neglect until his recent rediscovery would have ensured this even without the fiercely independent stance of his work. Other harmonizers working in Greece have tended towards a more conservative approach, with the exception of the composer and musicologist Michael Adamis (b.1929). His music, both within the Church and without it, has been quintessentially concerned with penetrating the melodic and modal essence of Byzantine chant. By retaining essentially drone-based textures (though with frequent octave shifts and doublings), and avoiding triadic harmonies, favouring instead open fourths and fifths, Adamis succeeds in creating polyphony that has genuine roots in Byzantine monophony but which is interestingly and often challengingly written for a choir. Little, unfortunately, has been recorded; of his liturgical works, the four Idiomela for the Nativity are the most easily accessible.8 Unlike Greece, Romania saw a genuine upsurge in Byzantinebased polyphony during the early years of the 20th century. Nicolae Lungu (1900-1993) was a crucial, and highly influential, figure in this, publishing chant books in both Byzantine and western notation (notably the Liturghia Psaltic) and writing his own harmonized settings (his Liturghia psaltic pentru 4 voci mixte, appeared in 1957). His choral style is characterized simultaneously by a clear feeling for modal harmony, and an equal willingness to throw it to the winds in the interest of some dramatic effect: the canonic imitations and quite startling alternations of texture in his setting of the Tone 3 Holy
7

Riadis: Riadis, Emilos: Liturgie de Saint Jean Chrysostome, Petite doxologie, Acolouthie du Vendredi Saint, Acolouthie de la Rsurrection, Athens, Institut Franais d'Athnes (Srie musicale, n5), 1952, p.20 8 When Augustus reigned: Cappella Romana, directed by Alexander Lingas, Gagliano GR 502-CD,2000 4

Week Exaposteilarion Camara Ta, are typical examples, as is the very traditional tonal use of dominant sevenths. It is precisely this technical confidence, in moving between modal and tonal worlds, that distinguished Lungu and the work of a number of other Romanian composers, such as Ioan Chirescu (1889-1980), whose setting of Crucii Tale, the antitrisagion for Feast of the Cross, similarly succeeds in reconciling the melodic characteristics of the chant with western tonal techniques. In more recent years, Nicu Moldoveanu (b.1940), composer, priest and professor of theology, has been extremely active in the field of Byzantine musicology as well as that of the history of harmonized music in Romania. His settings of the Paschal Exaposteilarion, Cu trupul adormind, and Kontakion, De Teai i pogort, both display, once again, a typically Romanian mixture of modal sensitivity and strong heritage of late 19th century tonal harmonic practice (for example, the use of the inverted dominant seventh chord in the final bar of the Kontakion) and devices common to earlier, western, polyphonic repertoires (such as the canonic entries in the Exaposteilarion, at the opening and at a treia zi ai nviat). Since in Serbia Byzantine chant has taken a different historical course, with the result that indigenous dialects of Serbian chant have arisen, the Serbian tradition is slightly at a tangent to this discussion, though traditional Byzantine chanting is of course excellently represented by such practicioners as the monks of the Monastery of Hilandar on Mount Athos, the singer Divna Ljubojevi and the Moysey Petrovi Byzantine Choir. While the early history of Serbian chant, and notably the earliest compositions by Serbian composers in Byzantine notation, has, of course, been extensively examined by Dimitrije Stefanovi in his ground-breaking work Stara Srpska Musika9, the basis for polyphonic settings in Serbia, which increased exponentially with the rise of the Serbian choral tradition during the 19th century, was inevitably the traditional Serbian chant which
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Stefanovi 1975: Stefanovi, Dimitrije: , Belgrade, 1975 5

subsequently emerged, and which was later codified by Stankovi and Mokranjac. Mokranjacs setting of the Tone 1 Apolytikion for Theophany, Vo Jordanje kreajuusja, uses a version of the chant very close to that in use in the Byzantine tradition, and illustrates particularly well the extraordinary result of the fusion of chant and Mokranjacs rich choral style. Amongst the techniques employed are imitation, dramatic shifts in texture (moving from imitative counterpoint to rich chordal writing, and from constant movement in all parts to pedal-based writing), and abundant chromaticism (the alternations between A natural and A sharp and E natural and E sharp characteristic of a conflict between F minor and F major). Though Bulgaria has a vibrant tradition of Byzantine ecclesiastical singing, the only composer to have worked with this tradition polyphonically is Petar Dinev (1889-1980). Like Sakellarides, he received a thorough grounding in both Byzantine and Western European music. He was born in Kumanichevo, and graduated from the ecclesiastical seminary in Constantinople. Importantly, he also studied composition in St Petersburg with N. Sokolov, S. Petrov, A. Glazunov and Saketi at the Conservatory until 1915; by 1919, he was teaching Orthodox music at the Kazan Conservatory, and upon his return to Bulgaria, he taught at the State Academy in Sofia, and, from 1926-1934, at the Ecclesiastical Academy. Dinevs studies, in both Constantinople and Russia, laid the groundwork for his subsequent development and his breadth of vision. He set out to codify Bulgarian Byzantine chant, and published a great deal in this area which still forms the basis of the Bulgarian sacred repertoire today. The introduction to the second volume of his Tsrkovno-Pevcheski Sbornik, the Obshiren Vuzkresnik, is a model of erudition and clarity. He was, however, equally at home in the Russian style: his various settings of the Otche nash, and many of the works for male

voices published in his Sbornik, in particular, show a thorough grasp of the Tchaikovskian style as filtered through Glazunov and his other teachers.10 Dinev sometimes takes to extremes the contrasting of Byzantine and Russian romantic styles. The Cherubic Hymn from his 1926 Liturgy, described as being on motives from the 7th papadic tone, begins with the chant intoned over pedals before moving, via a block-chordal transition, to a positively operatic passage for the tenors, with quasi-orchestral commentaries from the upper voices. The martial second section ( ) is entirely Russian in manner, except for a reminiscence of Byzantine Tone 7 near the end.11 This combination of what seems now an almost outrageous Tchaikovskian sentimentality with echoes of Byzantium is highly characteristic of Dinevs work; at its best, it can produce very impressive results indeed, as is the case with the Tone 5 Dostoyno est published in the 1941 Sbornik, in which, by frequent recourse to unadorned octaves and parallel chords over pedal notes, the composer achieves a work that is both aesthetically highly consistent and liturgically appropriate. Though Dinev was an isolated case in Bulgaria, it seems clear that his work, together with that of the best Romanian composers and, to a lesser extent by virtue of the differences between chant repertoires of which mention has been made above, Serbians such as Stankovi and Mokranja, could be of very great interest and inspiration to those currently working in this field. Though it falls outside the scope of the present article, its should be noted here that the most intensive activity as regards the polyphonic treatment of Byzantine chant is currently to be found in the USA, in the polyphonic tradition now widespread in the
10

Dinev, Petar: - , Sofia, 1941; Dinev, Petar: - , Vol.2: , Sofia, 1943? (reprinted 2000) 11 Dinev, Petar: . , Sofia, 1926 7

Greek Orthodox Archdiocese. The peak of Greek emigration to the USA occurred precisely at the time when western influence on Greek music was at its highest, and Archbishop Athenagoras, himself an aficionado of harmonized music from his time as Metropolitan of Kerkyra, encouraged the reproduction of this kind of music in the Greeks new home. However, factors such as the lack of trained psaltes, the presence of mixed choirs (often including girls), and the supporting of choirs by the use of the organ, meant that music in the churches of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese acquired particular characteristics of its own, reinforced by the restrictive immigration laws in force that meant the cultural renewal which took place in Greece subsequent to World War II and the Greek Civil War had little impact in the USA. The acculturation of Byzantine music in North America is, consequently, a process that continues to this day. In the countries of Western Europe, the process has barely begun. Though he has written little for strictly liturgical use, and his present spiritual and musical concerns are from those of the Orthodox Church, mention should be made of Sir John Tavener (b.1944), who has employed Byzantine chant (usually in Sakellaridian versions) in a number of works, most notably his Vigil Service of 1984. His setting of the Great Doxology is a particularly felicitous combination of the received chant and his own compositional voice. Aside from Tavener, the only other British composer who has worked in this field is the author of the present article.12 While in the United States a rift has occurred between chanters and polyphonic choirs, composers from the Balkans such as Dinev, Lungu and Mokranjac, immersed as they were in the traditions of Byzantine chanting, when it came to composing polyphonic music, absorbed it naturally as an essential element with which to work. Neither unadorned monophonic chant nor
12

See for example, the Akathistos Hymn (1998), Bogoroditse Devo (2003) and He Who clothed Himself with Light (2004). 8

polyphonic settings were felt to be a threat: here, surely, is a lesson for the future.

This article is copyright 2007 and 2011 Ivan Moody and may not be reprinted in any form without permission from the author (ivanmoody@gmail.com)