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Two chants in the Byzantine Rite for Holy Saturday

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2009

Simon Harris
Simon Harris
Affiliation:
London
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Extract

Among the ten celebrations of the Mass of St Basil in the Orthodox Church during the year are the conclusions to the three Vesper services immediately before the three major feasts of Christmas, Epiphany and Easter. Two of these Vesper services – those for Christmas Eve and the Eve of Epiphany – are of particular musical interest since they contain psalms with troparia or antiphons, for both of which the entire music can be transcribed from thirteenth-century manuscripts, so that these two services can be celebrated with what are, almost certainly, the oldest known complete examples of Byzantine psalm singing. From a recent paper of mine on these psalms, it can be gathered that they are examples of what is known as ‘responsorial psalmody’, the psalm itself being sung by a soloist, and the attached troparion by a choir of trained singers or psaltae. In both services they occur as punctuations of a series of readings, appearing in each case after the third and the sixth reading. On the Eve of Epiphany we should perhaps expect to find further psalms after the ninth and twelfth readings, since the series extends to thirteen readings in modern service books and to twelve in the early Middle Ages; yet no such psalms appear now or seem ever to have been sung at this point. And similarly, on Holy Saturday, when according to the ancient Jerusalem cursus twelve readings were given, to be extended in Constantinople to fifteen, no equivalents seem to have been performed at any point.

Type
Research Article
Information
Plainsong & Medieval Music , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , October 1992 , pp. 149 - 166
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

1 These I have listed as: (1–3) the conclusions of Vespers for Christmas Eve, the Eve of Epiphany and Holy Saturday; (4–8) the five Sundays in Lent; (9) Maundy Thursday; and (10) St Basil's Day (1 January). See note 10 to my transcriptions of the Communion Chants of the Asmatikon, to be published by the Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society.

2 ‘Psalmodie Traditions and the Christmas and Epiphany Troparia as Preserved in 13th Century Psaltika and Asmatika’, in Dobszay, Lászlo, Papp, Ágnes, Sebo, Ferenc, eds., Cantus Planus: International Musicological Society Study Group: Papers Read at the Fourth Meeting, Pécs, Hungary, 3–8 September 1990 (Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Musicology, 1992), 205–19.Google Scholar

3 See the Menaeon (Athens, 1970)Google Scholar, for December pp. 381 and 383, and for January pp. 123–4 and 125–6, for the texts as preserved in today's rite.

4 For the modern Epiphany readings see the Menaeon for 01 pp. 122–9Google Scholar; and for the corresponding situation in the early Middle Ages, see Baumstark, A., Nocturna Laus (Münster, 1956), p. 67Google Scholar (vol. 32 of Liturgiewissenschaftliche Quellen und Forschungen). The comments of Bertonière, Gabriel, The Historical Development of the Easter Vigil and Related Services in the Greek Church (Rome, 1972), pp. 127–32Google Scholar (vol. 193 of Orientalia Christiana Analecta) are also worth reading.

5 Baumstark, A., Liturgie Comparée, 3rd edn (Paris, 1953), p. 121Google Scholar; translated as Comparative Liturgy (London, 1958), p. 110.Google Scholar

6 Bertonière, , The Historical Development, p. 229.Google Scholar

7 The passage concerned, in Sozomenos's History of the Church, can be found in Migne, J. P., Patrologia… Series Graeca (Paris, 1857–), vol. 67, col. 1275Google Scholar. A short passage from the middle of the psalm (the beginning of verse 7 in the English Psalter) seems to have been used as a respond. Apel, who may have been influenced by the use of the word ‘antiphonatim’ in Migne's Latin translation, takes this to be an early description of antiphonal psalmody – without justification I feel (see Apel, , Gregorian Chant (London, 1958), p. 187).Google Scholar

8 Itinerarium Egeriae XXXI. 2, ed. Prinz, Otto, 5th edn (Heidelberg, 1960), p. 42.Google Scholar

9 Of the many examples of this in the Byzantine Rite, perhaps that of the stichera to the psalms in the morning and evening offices is the clearest. See Tardo, Lorenzo, L'Ottoeco nei manoscritti melurgici (Grottaferrata, 1955), pp. x–xvGoogle Scholar; Wellesz, Egon, A History of Byzantine Music, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1961), p. 129Google Scholar, and, no doubt, many other places.

10 Bertonière, , The Historical Development, pp. 137, 157–8, 192 and 287.Google Scholar

11 For the singing of a chant by a reader, see Bertonière, , The Historical Development, p. 158Google Scholar. For the singing of a chant by an ecclesiarch, see Dmitrievskii, A., Opisanie Liturgičeskikh Rukopisei, vol. 3 (St Petersburg, 1917), pp. 21 and 25.Google Scholar

12 The chants for the psalms and troparia of Christmas Eve and the Eve of Epiphany are contained in many thirteenth-century manuscripts, but only two, to my knowledge, have both the psalms and the troparia. These are Messina gr. 129 and Vatican gr. 1606, both large compilations of Psaltikon and Asmatikon repertoires. Although both these manuscripts have chants for the evening of Holy Saturday the Benedicite is not among them (see fols. 109r–10v and 104r–5v respectively). Nor, as far as I know, is it to be found in any other thirteenth-century psaltika or asmatika.

13 Bertonière, , The Historical Development, pp. 132–5.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., pp. 134, 137–8 and 189.

15 These rubrics are on fols. 107v and 108v in Messina gr. 120, and on fols. 109r and 109v in Messina gr. 129. All three major feasts are associated with baptism – presumably adult baptism – and the newly baptized took part in the main celebration of Mass on Christmas morning, Epiphany morning and Easter morning, at all of which the Trisagion was replaced by a baptismal chant using the text of Galatians 3:27, a setting of which is found in the Asmatikon. But only on Holy Saturday does baptism seem to have been part of the previous evening's Vesper service.

Both psalms have on occasions been described as prokeimena. The tenth-century typika of St Sophia, Patmos 266 and Holy Cross 40, indicate that the first two sections of Psalm 31 may be sung by themselves as a prokeimenon if there are no baptisms; and Psalm 81 was incorporated into the cycle of Great Prokeimena by several thirteenth-century psaltika, whence part of it was transcribed by Strunk, Oliver (Essays on Music in the Byzantine World (New York, 1977), p. 51)Google Scholar as an illustration of the style of the Psaltikon. In both cases, such a description seems to me confusing rather than useful.

16 See for example Messina gr. 129, fols. 53v–4v, or Vatican gr. 1606, fols. 49v–50v.

17 One of the three manuscripts containing Psalm 31, Vatican gr. 1606, alternates the cadence FDFEF with FEGEF, but the other two manuscripts, Messina gr. 120 and 129, have only the first of these on all occasions except the very last.

18 In Appendix 3 all eight passages occur in the three manuscripts from which Appendices 1 and 2 are transcribed – line nos. 1, 2, 5 and 6 on fols. 49v–50v, 51r–2v and 53v–4v in Vatican gr. 1606 and Messina gr. 120 and 129 respectively; line nos. 3, 4, 7 and 8 on fols. 104r–5v, 107v–9v and 109r–10v also respectively in the same manuscripts.

19 For the texts of these two psalms see the Vatican publication of the Greek Psalter (1873–4), pp. 25 and 70–71. Psalm 31 here has fourteen verses of which ten are omitted (verses 3–5 and 7–13) from the musical manuscripts.

20 Nor do the thirteenth-century musical manuscripts contradict this, though it should be remembered that they contain only the music for a soloist, that for the congregation probably never having been written down. The fact that the respond appears here at all is probably because the first and last performances of it were themselves responsorial between soloist and congregation.

21 The evidence on which these conclusions are based is drawn from the following: (1) for early typika of St Sophia, Mateos, J., Le typicon de la Grande Eglise, vol. 2 (Rome, 1963), pp. 88–91Google Scholar (Orientalia Christiana Analecta, vol. 166)Google Scholar; (2) for Messina gr. 115, Arranz, M., Le typicon du monastère du Saint-Sauveur à Messine (Rome, 1969), pp. 245–6Google Scholar (Orientalia Christiana Analecta, vol. 185)Google Scholar; (3) for the Euergetis typikon, Dmitrievskii, A., Opisanie Liturgičeskikh Rukopisei, vol. 1 (St Petersburg, 1895), p. 556Google Scholar; (4) for an early printed typikon, that published by Pinelli, A. (Venice, 1615), pp. 86–7.Google Scholar