The problem of defining the criteria for the authenticity of Byzantine liturgical chant
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54700/az11vr29Keywords:
Byzantine chant, authenticity, liturgy, church tradition, theology of cultureAbstract
The article explores the problem of defining the criteria for the authenticity of Byzantine liturgical chant, taking into account the tension between historical-reconstructive and liturgical-practical approaches. It examines the perspectives of Western scholars alongside those of practitioners within the living tradition, and identifies the theological nature of “authenticity” in this context as conformity with liturgical tradition. The article argues that authenticity should not be understood as a return to a fixed historical form, but rather as participation in the continuous tradition of the Church. The methodological foundation of the study is an analysis of the interaction between liturgical text and musical form, grounded in a theological and cultural-semiotic interpretation of the Byzantine chant tradition. Byzantine chant is considered here as a vehicle of interpretation that structures and highlights the meaning of liturgical texts. The article concludes that the authenticity of Byzantine chant is determined primarily by its rootedness in the liturgical life of the Church, rather than by the reconstruction of presumed historical models.
References
Bendix R. In Search of Authenticity: The Formation of Folklore Studies. Madison : University of Wisconsin Press, 1997. 318 р.
Cohen J. Music Institutions and the Transmission of Tradition // Ethnomusicology: The Journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology. 2009. Vol. 53. No. 2. P. 308–325.
Engelhardt J. Right Singing in Estonian Orthodox Christianity: A Study of Music, Theology, and Religious Ideology // Ethnomusicology: The Journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology. 2009. Vol. 53. No. 1. P. 32–57.
Hiley D. Gregorian Chant. Cambridge Introductions to Music. Cambridge : Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009. 250 p.
Jeffrey P. Re-Envisioning Past Musical Cultures: Ethnomusicology and the Study of Gregorian Chant. Chicago : Univ. of Chicago Press, 1992. 211 p.
Kaldellis A. Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformations of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition. Edited by Susan E. Alcock, Jas Elsner, and Simon Goldhill. Greek Culture in the Roman World. New York : Cambridge University Press, 2009. 468 p.
Kallimopoulou E. Paradosiaka: Music, Meaning and Identity in Modern Greece. Surrey : Ashgate, 2009. 240 p.
Levy K. Byzantine Chant // The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrell. London: Macmillan, 2001. Vol. 4. 743 p.
Lingas A. Medieval Byzantine Chant and the Sound of Orthodoxy // In Byzantine Orthodoxies: Papers from the Thirty-Sixth Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, University of Durham. Publications for the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies. Aldershot : Ashgate, 2006. P. 23–25.
Lingas A. Performance Practice and the Politics of Transcribing Byzantine Chant // Acta Musicae Byzantinae. 2003. Vol. 6. P. 56–76.
McGee T. The Sound of Medieval Song: Ornamentation and Vocal Style according to the Treatises. Oxford : Clarendon, 1998. 216 p.
Reed D. Dan Ge Performance: Masks and Music in Contemporary Côte D’Ivoire. Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2003. 240 p.
Said E. Orientalism. 1994. New York : Vintage, 2003. 378 p.
Tillyard H. Twenty Canons from the Trinity Hirmologium. Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae Transcripta. Boston : Byzantine Institute, 1952. 230 p.
Wellesz Е. History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography. Oxford : Clarendon, 1961. 461 р.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Nemets F. A.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
