Octaechia and Melismaticity in Byzantine Music. Collations and Musicological Reductive – Statistical Analysis

Abstract

Two characteristic elements of the Byzantine melos are the Octaechia (the system of the eight modes) and the melismatic texture of many pieces of its vast repertory. Through the 20 th century and until today, attention has been drawn in Byzantine Musicology to the importance of comparative studies between the Middle- 43 and New-Byzantine notations, while taking in mind the so-called theseis and the oral tradition. In this study we examine the so-called Greatest Kekragaria ascribed to St. John of Damascus in the eight modes, through a comparative study of manuscripts in the old notation (14 th -18 th cent.) and in the new notation from the exegesis (musical interpretation) of the Three Teachers (19 th cent.). A detailed multi-perspectival musicological analysis is applied to the material, including reductive analysis of the Kekragaria on both micro-, medial- and macrostructural level. The findings of this study reveal: a) structural and perceptual mechanisms of the old notation in its different evolutionary levels, b) the modality as it is stenographically embodied in the old notation, c) some elements of the technique of the exegesis and d) the relation between melismatic texture and octaechia because any change of the melismatic texture influences the idioms of the eight modes.