Hagiopolitan Octoechos

Semi-Autonomous: Oktōēchos (here transcribed "Octoechos"; Greek: ὁ Ὀκτώηχος pronounced in koine: Ancient Greek pronunciation: [okˈtóixos];[1] from ὀκτώ "eight" and ἦχος "sound, mode" called echos; Slavonic: Осмогласие, Osmoglasie from о́смь "eight" and гласъ "voice, sound") is the name of the eight mode system used for the composition of religious chant in most Christian churches during the Middle Ages.

The octoechos as a liturgical concept which established an organization of the calendar into eight-week cycles, was the invention of monastic hymnographers at Mar Saba in Palestine, at the Patriarchates of Antiochia and of Constantinople.

The latter has the reputation that he once connected in his time the current tradition with the past of Byzantine chant, which was in fact the work of at least four generations of teachers at the New Music School of the Patriarchate.

This division of the history into three periods begins quite late with the 8th century, despite the fact that the octoechos reform was already accepted some decades earlier, before John and Cosmas entered the monastery Mar Saba in Palestine.

[2] The common schedule and the focus on the circle around John of Damascus is confirmed by a ninth-century treatise called Hagiopolites (from hagia polis [ἡ ἁγία πόλις], "Holy City", referring to Jerusalem) which only survived in a complete form as a late copy.

[4] Nevertheless, the theological and liturgical concept of an eight-week cycle can be traced back to the cathedral rite of Jerusalem during the 5th century, and originally it was the Christian justification of Sunday as the eighth day after Sabbat.

[9] He adored the universality of the Greek octoechos: —Al-Kindi Al-Kindi demonstrated the intervals on the keyboard of a simple four-stringed oud, starting from the third string as well seven steps in ascending as in descending direction.

According to Eckhard Neubauer, there is another Persian system of seven advār ("cycles"), outside the Arabic reception of the Byzantine octoechos, which was possibly a cultural transfer from Sanskrit treatises.

Echos was translated as sonus by the anonymous compilator who commented with a comparison of the Byzantine octoechos:[11] Sciendum quoque, quod Dorius maxime proto regitur, similiter Phrygius deutero, Lydius trito, mixolydius tetrardo.

[13] —Alia musicaThis Latin description about the octoechos used by Greek singers (psaltes) is very precise, when it says that each kyrios and plagios pair used the same octave, divided into a fifth (pentachord) and a fourth (tetrachord): D—a—d in protos, E—b—e in devteros, F—c—f in tritos, and C—G—c in tetartos.

ἐρωταποκρίσεις, erotapokriseis) refer to the Hagiopolitan diatonic eight modes, when they use the kyrioi intonations to find those of the plagioi: Περὶ πλαγίων Ἀπο τοῦ πλαγίου πρώτου ἤχου πάλιν καταβαίνεις τέσσαρας φωνάς, καὶ εὑρίσκεται πάλιν πλάγιος πρώτου· ὅυτως δὲ / ἄνανε ἄνες ἀνὲ ἄνες· Ὁμοίως καὶ ὁ β' ἤχος καταβαίνων φωνάς δ', εὑρίσκεις τὸν πλάγιον αὐτοῦ, ἤγουν τὸν πλάγιον τοῦ δευτέρου.

This raises the question, when the music in the near eastern Middle Ages became entirely diatonic, since certain melodies were coloured by the other enharmonic and chromatic gene according to the school of Damascus.

The earliest sources are those of the Slavic reception of Constantinople which can be dated back not earlier than to the 12th century, and they used a system of 12 church tones called glas'.

The exact point of reference concerning this 24 mode system was not clarified in the treatise, but it is evident, that there was a canonised wisdom which was connected with an ethical doctrine excluding certain passions (πάθη, pathe) as corruptions.

Inside this wisdom, there was a Neoplatonic concept of an ideal and divine existence, which can be found and classified according to a modal scheme based on four elements.

The contemporary invention of a proper Latin version of the eight mode system was mainly studied from two perspectives: Latin theorists who knew the Hellenic tropes only through Boethius' 6th-century creative translation of Claudius Ptolemy's Books of Harmonics (Ἁρμονικῶν βιβλία, Harmonikōn biblia) tried to apply Ancient Greek music theory to the octoechos as a system of eight church tones, identified with the tropes of Antique music theory.

It played a key role in memorising chant and the earliest tonaries referred to the Greek names as elements of a tetrachord: πρῶτος, δεύτερος, τρίτος, and τέταρτος.

Since the 10th century the eight tones were applied to eight simplified models of psalmody, which soon adopted in their terminations the melodic beginnings of the antiphons, which were sung as refrains during psalm recitation.

This practice made the transitions smoother, and in the list of the antiphons which can be found since the earliest tonaries, it was enough to refer to the melodic beginnings or incipits of the text.

[32] But in a later study he mentioned an even earlier tonary which was brought as a present by a Byzantine legacy which celebrated procession antiphons for Epiphany in a Latin translation.

The main concern of Latin cantors and their tonaries was a precise and unambiguous classification of whatever melody type according to the local perception of the octoechos system.

The most common among all tonaries was also used by Guido of Arezzo in his treatise Micrologus: Primum querite regnum dei, Secundum autem simile est huic etc.

[37] In comparison with Byzantine psaltes who always used notation in a more or less stenographic way, the exact patterns used during the so-called "thesis of the melos" (τὸ θέσις τοῦ μελοῦ) belonged to the oral tradition of a local school, its own modal system and its genre.

Before Chrysanthos' Theoretika (the Eisagoge was simply an extract, while the Theoretikon mega was published by his student Panagiotes Pelopides), exact proportions were never mentioned in Greek chant theory.

The use of tyronic letters for dieses clearly shows, that it was used as a kind of melodic attraction within the diatonic genus which sharpened the ditonus under the semitonium.

The authors of one theoretical tonary of the compilation called Alia musica used an alternative intonation with the name AIANEOEANE, the name was obviously taken from a Byzantine enechema ἅγια νεανὲς, a kind of Mesos tetartos with the finalis and basis on a low E, and applied the Byzantine practice to certain pieces of Roman-Frankish chant which were classified as tonus tertius or Autentus deuterus.

[46] In the following section De quarto tono the author quotes Aristoxenos' description of the enharmonic and chromatic division of the tetrachord, the remark on it in precisely this section had been probably motivated by the Hagiopolitan concept of the phthora nenano which connected the echos protos on a with the plagios devteros on E.[47] Latin cantors knew about the theoretical concept of the practice of transposition since Boethius' translation of Ptolemy.

The Hagiopolites did neither explain it nor did it mention any tone system nor the metabolē kata tonon, but this was probably because the hymn reform of Jerusalem was mainly concerned with simple models exemplified by heirmoi or troparia.

This might explain that Charles Atkinson discussed Carolingian theory in comparison with the later Papadikai, in which all possible transpositions were represented by the Koukouzelian wheel or by the kanõnion.

[50] Wheels are also used in Arabic music theory since the 13th century, and Al-Farabi was the first who started a long tradition of science, which did not only find the proportions of the untransposed diatonic system on the oud keyboard, but also those of all possible transpositions.