Composite Character

Composite Character of Byzantine Civilization and Music: Classical vs. Oriental

Hypothesis (Egon Wellesz: A History of Byzantine Music)

• A) The Classical Hypothesis: 

  • • Greek culture was transmitted through the expansion of the Hellenic Empire by Alexander the Great. There was development in language, music, and in the arts in general. Hellenic culture influenced the nations so much that according to Plutarch the philosopher, “On the Fortune of Alexander”, wrote,

“Homer became an author of high esteem, and the Persian, Susian and Gedrosian youth sang in public the tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles”.

• Judeo-Christians of the diaspora had been thoroughly Hellenized. Instead of the Hebrew texts, they widely used the Greek translation of the Septuagint.

• The Gentiles (Greek and Roman Christians): even as Greek Romans had departed from their traditional religious practices*, they did not abandon their language or their philosophical approach, nor their arts and music.

*Note: Diocletian’s Reforms were based on the assumption that the Roman Empire would again gain its former glory by restoring their ancient religious and cultural practices.

• Constantine the Great built “New Rome” in 319 AD upon the ruins of the ancient Byzantium, where he transferred the command center of the Roman Empire. The leading class of Ancient Rome follow him there. This city is named “New Rome” and was inaugurated in 333 AD.

• The citizens of this city considered themselves to be Romans. The language of the courts continued to be Latin and were gradually Hellenized into eastern Romans and leading up to the centuries preceding the fall of Constantinople, as Hellenes and Romioi.

• The technical term, “Byzantium”, is artificial, as the name of Eastern Romanism only appeared in the 14th C, in the West . The West ceased to refer to East Romans as Greeks by the 11th C, but certainly never called them “Byzantines”.

• Ecclesiastical music, as all Byzantine culture in general, was Roman and Greek. Consequently, beyond political characterizations, so-called Byzantine Music is none other than the ecclesiastical music of the Orthodox Church in the East.

• B) The “Eastern or Anatolian” Hypothesis:

  • • It signifies the effects of Semitic and Persian culture influencing regions of the East Roman Empire.

    • The result of the decline of Hellenic domination of Alexander the Great’s Empire in the Levant and in the Middle East. This permitted middle-east religion and culture to undergo a renewal. Christianity emerged from this Hellenistic cultural environment.

    • The Church, Christian ethics, reshaped the Hellenistic image of Greco-Roman culture. Ancient Hellenism was transformed into a “Christian Hellenism*”, having acquired the language of philosophy, poetry, rhetoric, arts (i.e. architecture, painting, music and aesthetics in general).

*Note: Christian Hellenism is a category coined by the great theologian of the 20th C, Fr. George Florovsky.