The Lord’s Birth Troparion, Transylvanian Exegeses

Abstract

"Church music of Transylvanian tradition expresses itself through the two quintessential styles, one through the voice and one through the text. The musical variants are recorded for the first time in musical notation by Dimitrie Cunțanu, in the year 1890, they also have a singed recording, which is still the today standard. The Lord’s Birth Troparion represents a good example of the music style in Transylvania. Fixed in musical notation and singed in most churches around here, this one met the most fixes and “repairs” out of them all and because of this today we have numerous versions of it. On another note, the musical double use, liturgical and ceremonial, it made it that this song to become the musical model which the church singers use when they want to sing without a noted song or book from which they are regulated. The multiple musical variants that exist nowadays demonstrate the presence of common background music, from which the ones that wrote the songs a long time ago and the today singers inspired themselves and sing like that today. The songs analyzed show us the value of the song variants ensemble, which together mark a singing style in the local zone. Keywords: troparion (hymn), The Lord’s Birth (song used in church), Dimitrie Cunțanu (song writer) "