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Experimental polyphony, ‘according to the… Latins’, in late Byzantine psalmody*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Dimitri Conomos
Dimitri Conomos
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Extract

No-one has ever seriously questioned the exclusively monophonic character of medieval Byzantine ecclesiastical chant. The introduction of the drone, or ison singing, so familiar in contemporary Greek, Arabic, Romanian and Bulgarian practice, is not documented before the sixteenth century, when modal obscurity, resulting from complex and ambiguous chromatic alterations which appeared probably after the assimilation of Ottoman and other Eastern musical traditions, required the application of a tonic, or home-note, to mark the underlying tonal course of the melody. Musicians in Constantinople and on Mount Athos were probably oblivious of the rise of polyphony in the West, particularly after the formal break between the two Churches in the eleventh century, which was preceded by a long period of increasing estrangement. And with the Latin occupation of a part of the Byzantine Empire between 1204 and 1261, there was a general distaste for and rejection of the culture of the ‘Franks’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Early Music History , Volume 2 , October 1982 , pp. 1 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

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Footnotes

*

I am very grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for providing generous support for this study, making it possible for me to visit libraries in Italy and Greece. I would also like to thank Thomas E. Binkley of Indiana and Edward Roesner of New York for reading the manuscript and for making several useful suggestions, many of which were subsequently incorporated into the text.

References

1 The earliest notification of the custom appears to have been made in 1584 by the German traveller, Martin Crusius; see Levy, K., ‘Byzantine Rite, Music of the’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Sadie, S., 20 vols. (London, 1980), n, p. 561Google Scholar.

2 Quoted in Zernov, N., Moscow, the Third Rome (London, 1937), p. 37Google Scholar.

3 The following information on Ioannes (Joseph) Plousiadenos has been gathered from numerous sources, including Petit, L., ‘Joseph de Méthone’, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, ed. Vacant, A. and Magenot, E., viii (Paris, 1925), cols. 1526–9Google Scholar; Hofmann, G., ‘Wie stand es mit der Frage der Kircheneinheit auf Kreta im XV. Jahrhundert?’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 10 (1944), pp. 106–11Google Scholar; N. Tomadakis, ,, 21 (1951), pp. 110–39, esp. pp. 136–9; Candal, M., ‘La “Apologia” del Plusiadeno a favor del Concilio de Florencia’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, 21 (1955), pp. 36–57Google Scholar; Manoussakas, M., ‘Recherches sur la vie de Jean Plousiadénos (Joseph de Méthone) (1429?–1500)’, Revue des Etudes Byzantines, 17 (1959), pp. 28–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; S. G. Papadopoulos, , vii (Athens, 1965), pp. 117–19.

4 The work's full title is ; it was published as the work of Gennadios, ed. J.-P. Migne, in Patrologia Graeca 159 (Paris, 1857), cols. 1109–393.

5 , ed. Migne, Patrologia Graeca 159, cols. 1024–93; , ed. Migne, Patrologia Graeca 159, cols. 960–1024.

6 The kanōn to St Thomas Aquinas is published in Cantarella, R., ‘Canone greco inedito di Giuseppe vescovo di Methone (Giovanni Plousiadeno: sec xv) in onore di San Tommaso d'Aquino’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 4 (1934), pp. 145–85Google Scholar, see pp. 151ff. That for the Eighth Ecumenical Council, ed. Migne, Patrologia Graeca 159, cols. 1095–101, forms part of a discussion of this genre of Greek medieval literature in Mitsakis, K., ‘Byzantine Parahymnography’, Studies in Eastern Chant, v, ed. Conomos, D. (New York, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

7 MS Docheiariou 315, fols. 66v–67r. These unusual items are noted in G. Stathis, Tά, i (Athens, 1975), p. 352; Stathis also provides excellent colour facsimiles on pp. 350–1. Although only the Mid-Pentecost communion is directly attributed to Plousiadenos, Stathis is obviously correct in assuming that the Sunday chant, immediately preceding and in the same unique style, is the work of the same hand. Plousiadenos's musical compositions are preserved in many liturgical anthologies (for example, Mount Sinai, St Katherine's Monastery, MSS 311,312; Lesbos, Leimonos Monastery, MSS 238, 243, 249, 255; Athens, National Library of Greece, MSS 886, 893; etc.) but these are the only known examples of polyphony by him. See Beneshevich, V., Catalogus codicum manuscriptorum graecorum qui in monasterio S. Catharinae in Monte Sina asservantur, i (St Petersburg, 1911), pp. 165–632Google Scholar; A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus, , i (Constantinople, 1884), pp. 115, 116, 118, 119; I. Sakkelion, (Athens, 1892) pp. 160–1.

8 But see note 26, below.

9 A domestikos is the precentor in a Byzantine choir; see K. Rallis, , 12 (1937), pp. 294–6.

10 Adamis, M., ‘An Example of Polyphony in Byzantine Music of the Late Middle Ages’, Report of the Eleventh International Musicological Society Congress, Copenhagen, 1971, ed. Glahn, H., Sørensen, S. and Ryom, P. (Copenhagen, 1972), ii, pp. 737–47Google Scholar.

11 The first hymn (Example 3) is also transmitted in Athens, National Library of Greece, MS 904, again of the fifteenth century, on fols. 241v–242r, but without attribution. A rubric merely states that ‘The red [neumes] are to be sung in the fourth plagal [mode] and the black [neumes] in the fourth authentic [mode].’ (.) Adamis misread for in Athens 2401 and consequently mistranslated the rubric; see Adamis, ‘An Example of Polyphony’, p. 783, and n. 3.

12 See K. Rallis, , 9 (1934), pp. 259–61.

13 , see Papadopoulos-Kerameus, , p. 117.

14 For these details I have relied on the results of the splendid investigations carried out by Adamis: see. ‘An Example of Polyphony’, pp. 738–9.

15 Mount Athos. Great Lavra, MS ⊝ 162 (‘1788’). fol. 339v. and Paris. Bibliothèque Nationale. MS sup. gr. 1171 (seventeenth century), fol. 5 lv respectively. The second setting begins from the article, ‘And in the Holy Spirit …’.

16 For further details on the music of the Creed in the East, see Levy, K., ‘The Byzantine Sanctus and its Modal Tradition in East and West’, Annales Muskologiques. 6 (1958–1963). pp. 40–2Google Scholar.

17 In the case of Example 1. the first red neumc directs a beginning from the fourth below the theoretical home-note of mode 4 plagal.

18 See Conomos, D., The Late Byzantine and Slavonic Communion Cycle (Washington, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

19 von Fischer, K., ‘Organal and Chordal Style in Renaissance Sacred Music: New and Little-Known Sources’, Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: a Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, ed. La Rue, J. (New York, 1966), pp. 173–82, esp. p. 179Google Scholar.

20 Pirrotta, N., ‘Church Polyphony Apropos of a New Fragment at Foligno’, Studies in Music History: Essays for Oliver Strunk, ed. Powers, H.S. (Princeton, 1968), pp. 113–26, esp. p. 126Google Scholar.

21 See, for example, Gallo, F. A. and Vecchi, G., eds., I piü antichi monumenti sacri italiani, Monumenta Lyrica Medii Aevi Italica, ser. iii. Mensurabilia 1 (Bologna, 1968)Google Scholar: and von Fischer, K., and Gallo, F. A., eds., Italian Sacred Music, Polyphonic Music ol the Fourteenth Century 12 (Monaco, 1976)Google Scholar. The entire subject has been widely researched and the reader is referred to the bibliographical notes in Levy, K., ‘Italian Duecento Polyphony: Observations on an Umbrian Fragment’, Rivista ltaliana di Musicologica, 10 (1975), p. 11. n. 10Google Scholar. and in Ziino, A., ‘Polifonia “arcaica” e “retrospettiva” in Italia ccntrale: nuove testimonianze’, Ada Musicologica, 50 (1978). p. 193. n. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, Gallo, F. A., ‘Cantus planus binatim: polifonia primitiva in fonti tardive’, Quadrivium, 1 (1966), pp. 79–90Google Scholar: Cattin, G., ‘Church Patronage of Music in Fifteenth-Century Italy’, Music in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Patronage, Sources and Texts, ed. Fenlon, I. (Cambridge, 1981). pp. 22–3Google Scholar: and Martinez, M. L., Die Musik des frühen Trecento (Munich, 1963). pp. 117–28Google Scholar.

22 Docheiariou 315, although of the late sixteenth century, refers to Plousiadenos as Ioannes not Joseph. This may mean that the works were written before 1492. at which time he was ordained to the See of Methone and given his new name.

23 See Arnold, D., ‘Music at a Venetian Confraternity in the Renaissance’. Acta Musicologica, 37 (1965), p. 62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cattin, G., ‘Formazione e attività dclle cappelle polifoniche nelle cattedrali: la musica nelle città’, Storia cultura Veneta, iii (forthcoming)Google Scholar.

24 See Gallo and Vecchi. eds., I più antichi monumenti sacri italiani.

25 von Fischer, K., ‘The Sacred Polyphony of the Italian Trecento’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 100 (1973–1974), pp. 149–50, esp. exx. 2, 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Perhaps Plousiadenos was not as bewildered as at first sight he may appear to have been. His use of the term ‘tenōri’ may represent a Hellenisation of the title ‘tenorista’, which by the late fifteenth century was given to a highly skilled singer in the West who was able to perform not merely the lower lines of polyphony but also the top parts. It could even be given to an individual who functioned as the leader of the chant (domestikos). See Fallows, D., ‘Tenor’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, xviii, p. 688Google Scholar. As for the term ‘keimenon’: this may represent the expression ‘res facta’, which Johannes Tinctoris used in Chapters 20 and 22 of his Liber de arte contrapuncti (1477) to distinguish between written counterpoint and the improvised style, which he labelled ‘super librum cantare’. See Wright, C., ‘Performance Practices at the Cathedral of Cambrai’, Musical Quarterly, 64 (1978), p. 314, and nn. 37, 40Google Scholar.

27 These reforms contributed decisively to the sharp decline of fashionable and progressive polyphonic invention in Italy after the Council of Ferrara-Florence. A new emphasis given to plainchant or, at best, polyphony strictly dependent upon it was accompanied by a condemnation of the artificiality of polyphonic practice, and it may well be that the Byzantine composers were observers of this renewal of enthusiasm for simplicity in sacred music. See Pirrotta, N., ‘Musical and Cultural Tendencies in Fifteenth-Century Italy’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 19 (1966), p. 135CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 The performance of polyphony by one or two soloists was not at all uncommon in the cathedral churches of Italian towns. According to Nino Pirrotta, ‘three or four was a maximum sometimes reached but seldom sustained’ (‘Musical and Cultural Tendencies’, p. 129). See also Pirrotta, , ‘Rome’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, xvi, p. 155Google Scholar; and F. d'Accone, ‘Florence’, ibid., vi, pp. 645–6.