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Welcome to the website of the School of Byzantine Ecclesiastical Music
Stages of Development
The Church worship has been evolving continuously and has known many stages of evolution in art (iconography), hymnography and music. Nominally, there have been 4 important stages of development, and are identified today by the names of their reformers:Stages of Development
- Saint John of Damascus (675/676-749): a doctrinal theologian, a defender of Orthodoxy during a time of iconoclasm and the challenge of anti-Chalcedonianism, and a sublime composer of hymnography. To him, we owe a large part of the Sunday Octoechos and festal hymns for dominical and "theometorical" (i.e. mariological) feasts and celebrations of the Orthodox Church. He composed hymns on the eight-tone system laying the foundations for the prevailing Octoechos.
- Saint John Koukouzelis (c. 1280 – c. 1360): further developed the Papadic melody, elevating it to the apex of musical development of this musical genre. He significantly contributed to the enrichment and codification of Byzantine musical formulas with his composition, a lesson to memorize formulas, the Mega Ison (Το μέγα ίσον). Composers attempted to follow his development style for two more centuries. Afterwards, as the liturgical mode of the Church of Constantinople evolved from the asmatic liturgy to the present strict monastic form, we see a turn to more concise and truncated musical compositions as the role of the Papadic melody began to take second place in worship.
- Petros Peloponnesios Lambadarios (1735-1778): a reformer of ecclesiastical music and composer of the New Sticheraric melody. He played a crucial role in systematizing and documenting Byzantine music in his own musical notation system, ensuring the continuity of this sacred art form for future generations.
- Metropolitan Chrysanthos of Madytos (c. 1770-c. 1840): Developed the New Method of musical notation used today. It is sometimes referred to as the Chrysanthian method. It is an analytical method of notation that can transcribe music, meter by meter, note by note, with interval, time and qualitative neumes. It is currently used today to transcribe ecclesiastical music in simple or highly descriptive form.
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