Autocephaly recognized by some autocephalous Churches de jure :
111-425: Autocephaly and canonicity recognized by Constantinople and 3 other autocephalous Churches: Spiritual independence recognized by Georgian Orthodox Church: Semi-Autonomous: A sticheron ( Greek : στιχηρόν "set in verses"; plural: stichera ; Greek : στιχηρά ) is a hymn of a particular genre sung during the daily evening (Hesperinos/Vespers) and morning ( Orthros ) offices, and some other services, of
222-409: A troparion which is nothing else than a refrain sung with psalmody, might become a more elaborated chant from a musical point of view, so that it is sung thrice without the psalm verses, but with the small doxology . The troparion in its melodic form tends to move towards the sticheraric or even papadic melos , and this way, it becomes an own chant genre by itself. Christian Troelsgård described
333-570: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,
444-630: A cycle of stichera anastasima . Probably for this reason John of Damascus is regarded as the creator the Hagiopolitan Octoechos and the Hagiopolites treatise itself claims his authorship right at the beginning. It has only survived completely in a 14th-century copy, but its origin likely dates back to the time between the Council of Nicaea and the time of Joseph the Hymnographer (~816-886), when
555-552: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in
666-556: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on
777-509: A feast observed on the eighth Sunday before Christmas ( Yaldo ). The 1st mode is sung on this day. The following Sunday makes use of the 2nd mode, and so on, repeating the cycle until it starts again the next year. The cycle is interrupted only by feasts which have their own tones assigned to them. Similar to the Byzantine usage, each day of Easter Week has its own mode, except the Syriacs do not skip
888-531: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near
999-508: A hexaechos, since it used a tone system based on triphonia with three modes organised in fourth equivalence. Often the Parakletike was divided in two volumes as Pettoglasniks. Another popular book, also characteristic for the Obihod reception, was the so-called Sbornik ("Anthologion" or better "Synekdemos")—a chant book which contained all the chant of the divine liturgy, including proper chant of
1110-594: A hymn is " Ἡ Παρθένος σήμερον ", the prooimion of the Christmas kontakion composed by Romanos the Melodist , set to a melody in the third mode of the Octoechos . This hymn has served as the metrical basis for many other Kontakia. In the current tradition the kontakion exists as well as a model to recite many other kontakia prosomoia which was also translated into Old Church Slavonic. In the particular genre kontakion this model
1221-503: A volume about 1900 pages, an expansion in chant which could be hardly performed during celebrations of any cathedral of the Empire. During the reform of the 17th century the book Sticherarion was replaced by the Doxastarion , called after the main genre of the former book, the doxastikon : the sticheron which was introduced by both or one of the two stichoi of Δόξα πατρὶ , but it followed
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#17328515125941332-766: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout
1443-742: Is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system
1554-474: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During
1665-448: Is composed in one of these eight modes. Some modes have variants ( shuhlophe ) similar to the "special melodies" mentioned above. Only skilled chanters can master these variants. The modal cycle consists of eight weeks. Each Sunday or Feast day is assigned one of the eight modes. During the weekday offices, known in Syriac by the name Shhimo , the 1st and 5th modes are paired together, so are
1776-513: Is never sung, its irmos is nonetheless specified so as to indicate the melody. A volume called an " Irmolog " contains the irmosi of all the canons of all eight tones as well as a few sundry other pieces of music. Abridged versions of the Octoechos printed with musical notation were frequently published. As simple Octoechos they provided the hymns for the evening (večernaja molitva) and morning service (utrenna) between Saturday and Sunday. In Russia
1887-510: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to
1998-787: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Octoechos (liturgy) The book Octoechos (from
2109-518: Is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around
2220-455: Is still regarded as an idiomelon due to the complexity of the poetic form. Usually the arrangement of the syllables with their metric accentuation are composed as a well-known hymn tune or sticheron avtomelon within the melos of a certain echos. These melodic stichera are called automela , because they can easily be adapted to other texts, even if the number of syllables of verse varies—the so-called prosomoia . The prooimion which precedes
2331-758: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,
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#17328515125942442-630: Is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with
2553-670: Is the Slavonic term for echos ), the Slavic book did rather correspond to the unnotated Tropologion, and often it included the hymns of the Irmolog as well. The Slavic reception, although it can be regarded as faithful translation of the Byzantine books, is mainly based on early Theta notation, which was used by Slavic reformers in order to develop own forms of notation in Moscow and Novgorod ( znamenny chant ). The translation activities between 1062 and 1074 at
2664-651: Is the Voskresnik with the repertoire of the simple Osmoglasnik. Within the Russian Orthodox church a chant book Octoechos with notated with kryuki developed during the late 15th century. The first print edition Oktoikh notnago peniya, sirech' Osmoglasnik was published with Kievan staff notation in 1772. It included hymns in Znamenny Chant as well as the melodic models (avtomela) for different types of hymns for each Glas. Northern Slavs in modern times often do not use
2775-486: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It
2886-463: The Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches. Stichera are usually sung in alternation with or immediately after psalm or other scriptural verses. These verses are known as stichoi (sing: stichos ), but sticheraric poetry usually follows the hexameter and is collected in a book called sticherarion ( Greek : στιχηράριον ). A sticherarion is a book containing the stichera for
2997-479: The Greek : ἡ [βίβλος] Ὀκτώηχος Greek pronunciation: [okˈtoixos] ; from ὀκτώ 'eight' and ἦχος 'sound, mode' called echos ; Church Slavonic : Осмѡгласникъ , Osmoglasnik from о́смь 'eight' and гласъ 'voice, sound') is a liturgical book containing a repertoire of hymns ordered in eight parts according to eight echoi ( tones or modes ). Originally created in the Monastery of Stoudios during
3108-510: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as
3219-562: The Paschal cycle (moveable cycle) of the church year, the so-called Pentecostarion starting with the second Sunday of (the eighth day of) Easter . The first usually changes the echos each day, while the third week started the eight-week cycle with the second echos, each week in just one echos. The same cycle started in the triodion with the Lenten period until Easter, with the Lenten Friday preceding
3330-522: The Sticherarion were created during the Studites reform between the 9th and the 10th centuries, its repertoire was completed until the 11th century, but until the 14th century the whole repertoire had been reduced among scribes who changed and unified the numerous redactions. The 10th-century reform already defined the gospel lectures and the doxastika connected with them. The oldest copies can be dated back to
3441-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in
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3552-445: The sticheron quite similar to the troparion and regarded the sticheron as a subcategory, only that a sticheron as an intercalation of psalmody, has been longer as a poem than a troparion , thus it had been chanted without repetitions of its text, but in sections. There had been a lot of stichera , but the book sticherarion was a rather dislocated collection of stichera from different local traditions and their singer-poets. It
3663-672: The "Doxastarion syntomon" of Petros Peloponnesios ( 1820 ), the "Doxastarion argon" of Iakovos the Protoposaltes ( 1836 ), and the "Doxastarion argosyntomon" of Konstantinos the Protopsaltes ( 1841 ). The medieval Sticherarion had been divided into four books, which also existed as separated books of their own: the Menaion , the Pentekostarion , the Triodion , and the Octoechos . These books of
3774-521: The "Plagal" modes are called "Side" ( Koghm ), and are utilized in the following order: This order is important, because it is the order in which the modes are used liturgically and different from the order of the Greek traditions. Instead of using one tone per week, the Armenians use one tone per day. Easter Sunday is always the First Voice, the next day is First Side, and so on throughout the year. However,
3885-429: The "embellished sticheron" ( sticheron kalophonikon ), but he emphasized that he always followed step by step the model, as it has been written down in sticherarion . Especially in the kalophonic genre, a systematic collection of compositions by Constantinopolitan maistores, made after the menaion of sticherarion , could already grow, as one part of the sticherarion kalophonikon (see also GB-Lbl Ms. Add. 28821 ), to
3996-540: The 10th and 11th centuries, and like the Heirmologion the Sticherarion was one of the first hymn books, which was entirely provided with musical notation ( Palaeo Byzantine neumes ). But the complete form still appeared in the time of the 14th-century reform, which had been notated in Middle Byzantine neumes . The genre sticheron already existed since centuries, it can be traced back to Tropologia written during
4107-413: The 10th century. The stichera idiomela are commonly written in two liturgical year cycles, the immobile one or sanctoral, and the mobile one between Great Lent and Pentecost. Usually, this collection of idiomela consists of three books, the menaion for the immobile cycle and two books called triodion and pentecostarion for the mobile cycle: The old sticherarion had even a fourth book which contained
4218-427: The 13th century. But there was as well the practice of using certain stichera as models ( avtomela ) to compose other poems ( prosomoia ), similar to the heirmos . This classification became even more complex by the translation of the hymn books into Slavonic, which forced the kanonarches , responsible for the preparation of the services, to adapt the music of a certain avtomelon to the translated prosomoia and
4329-724: The 17th century different collections of the Octoechos had been separated as their own books about certain Hesperinos psalms like the Anoixantarion an octoechos collection for Psalm 103, the Kekragarion for Psalm 140, and the Pasapnoarion for the Psalm verse 150:6. The Octoechos also included other stichera dedicated to particular saints according to the provenance of a certain monastery, which also allows conclusions concerning place, where
4440-611: The 2nd and 6th, the 3rd and 7th, and the 4th and 8th. If a particular Sunday makes use of the 1st mode, the following Monday is sung with the 5th mode, Tuesday with the 1st mode, etc., with the pair alternating every day of the week (see the table provided in Guide to the Eight Modes in the External Links below). The ecclesiastical year starts with Qudosh `Idto (The Consecration of the Church),
4551-465: The 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into
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4662-580: The 6th century, but the repertoire as it can be reconstructed by Georgian Iadgari Tropologion seems to be different from the Byzantine redaction which was based on the Tropologion of Antioch and later expanded by the hymnographers of Mar Saba (Jerusalem). The book Tropologion was still used until the 12th century and it also contains the canons of the Heirmologion . Originally the Heirmologion and Sticherarion were created as notated chant books during
4773-646: The 7th mode. Thus, the Sunday after Easter, called New Sunday ( Hadto ) is in the 8th mode rather than the 1st. In one type of hymn used by the Syriac Church, the Qole Shahroye (Vigils), each of the modes is dedicated to a theme: The 1st and 2nd modes are dedicated to the Virgin Mary , the 3rd and 4th to the saints , the 5th and 6th to penitence , and the 7th and 8th to the departed . The primary collection of hymns in
4884-477: The 9th century as a hymnal complete with musical notation, it is still used in many rites of Eastern Christianity . The book with similar function in the Western Church is the tonary , and both contain the melodic models of an octoechos system ; however, while the tonary serves simply for a modal classification, the octoechos is organized as a cycle of eight weeks of services. The word itself can also refer to
4995-479: The 9th century. Cyril and Methodius and their followers within the Ohrid -School were famous for the translation of Greek hymnody between 863 and 893, but it is also a period of a reformative synthesis of liturgical forms, the creation of new hymnographical genres and their organisation in annual cycles. Though the name of the book "Oktoich" derived from the Greek name Octoechos (Old Slavonic "Osmoglasnik," because "glas"
5106-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit
5217-425: The Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than
5328-491: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in
5439-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow
5550-661: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community
5661-558: The Kievan Pechersk Lavra had been realised without the help of South Slavic translators. The earliest known Slavonic manuscripts with neumes date from the late 11th or 12th century (mainly Stichirar, Kondakar and Irmolog). Concerning the earlier translations of the hymns and later translations in Russia, we can observe two different approaches to translation, one which favours the musical and metrical structure and another which favours
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#17328515125945772-407: The Octoechos' kontakion for Sunday Orthros in echos tritos has the indication, that it should be sung to the melody of the above Christmas kontakion. Both kontakia have nearly the same number of syllables and accents within its verses, so the exact melody of the former is slightly adapted to the latter, its accents have to be sung with the given accentuation patterns. The printed book Octoechos with
5883-504: The Octoechos. The less hymns are sung from the Octoechos the more have to be sung from the other books. On major feast days, hymns from the Menaion entirely displace those from the Octoechos except on Sundays, when only a few Great Feasts of the Lord eclipse the Octoechos. Note that the Octoechos contains sufficient texts, so that none of these other books needs to be used—a holdover from before
5994-698: The Oktoich was the very first book printed ( incunabulum ) in Cyrillic typeface, which was published in Poland ( Kraków ) in 1491—by Schweipolt Fiol , a German native of Franconia . Only seven copies of this first publication are known to remain and the only complete one is in the collection of the Russian National Library . In 1905 the Zograf Monastery published a set of Slavonic chant books whose first volume
6105-447: The Pentecostarion, this cycle was often written within the Octoechos section. Nevertheless, a temporal eight-week-order was always the essential part of the Octoechos, at least as a liturgical concept. The temporal organisation of the mobile feast cycle and its lessons was result of the Studite reform since Theodore the Studite; their books had already been translated by Slavic monks during the 9th century. The eight tones can be found as
6216-415: The Southern Slavic reception did not change the system of prosomoia , it corresponded to the Hagiopolitan Octoechos . Glas ("voice") 1–4 are the authentic modes or kyrioi echoi , and the remaining 5–8 are the plagal modes or plagioi echoi , the latter term coming from the Medieval Greek plagios , "oblique" (from plagos , "side"). Unlike the Western octoechos, glas 5–8 (the plagioi echoi ) used
6327-411: The Sticherarion books (Miney, the Triods, and the Oktoich). Today heirmological melodies used primarily for canons have their own octoechos mele and their tempo, which employ a slightly modified scale for each tone; in canons, each troparion in an ode uses the meter and melody of the ode's irmos (analogous to prosomoia for sticheraric modes of a tone) and, therefore, even when a canon's irmos
6438-413: The Studite for the evening service during Lenten period which belong to the Triodion book. Since the 14th century, sticheraria also had notated collections of the prosomoia sung within Paschal tide (tesserakostes). They were made over idiomela of the menaion and notated with the new verses, while most of the prosomoia relied entirely on an oral tradition. Although these prosomoia were part of
6549-421: The Sunday cycles is often without any musical notation and the determination of a hymn's melody is indicated by the echos or glas according to the section within the book and its avtomelon, a melodic model defined by the melos of its mode. Since this book collects the repertoire of melodies sung every week, educated chanters knew all these melodies by heart, and they learnt how to adapt the accentuation patterns to
6660-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),
6771-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of
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#17328515125946882-632: The book Octoechos, while the Octoechos contained the best known hymns called stichera avtomela which also served as model for the prosomoia. Originally many of them were even notated quite late, since the singers knew them by heart. The early form was quite short and not yet divided into eight parts according to the eight echoi of the weekly cycle. Examples of different liturgical contexts where stichera are commonly used include: Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized : Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized : Hellēnikḗ )
6993-428: The books Octoechos and Heirmologion had been collected earlier in a book called Troparologion or Tropologion . It already existed during the 6th century in the Patriarchate of Antiochia , before it became a main genre of the centers of an Octoechos hymn reform in the monasteries of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai and Mar Saba in Palestine , where St. John Damascene (c. 676–749) and Cosmas of Maiuma created
7104-400: The chant book was used. The Sticherarion did not only include the book Octoechos , but also the books Menaion , Triodion and Pentecostarion . Certain stichera of the other books, stichera prosomoia which rather belonged to an oral tradition, because they were later composed by using the avtomela written in the book Parakletike . The early prosomoia composed by Theodore
7215-460: The church history of Armenia and Georgia preceded the Byzantine imperial age about 50 years and both traditions were more oriented to the Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem. This section describes Oriental and Caucasian hymnals as they have been used by Armenians until the genocide by the end of the Ottoman Empire, and as they are still used among Orthodox Christians in Syria, Persia, Armenia and Georgia. The Tropologion developed also in Syria and
7326-446: The cycle does not actually begin on Easter day, but counts backwards from Easter Sunday to the First Sunday in Lent, which is always Forth Side, regardless of what mode the previous day was. Each mode of the oot tzayn has one or more tartzwadzk‘ (auxiliary) modes. The Šaraknoc' is the book which contains the Šarakan , or Šaragan ( Canons ), hymns which constitute the substance of the musical system of Armenian liturgical chant in
7437-442: The development of hymnography and the cathedral rite of Jerusalem. Other hymn books developed between the 7th and the 11th centuries starting from the Hagiopolitan hymn reform of 692. They contain stichera, kontakia all kinds of troparia and canons without being necessarily dependent on the tradition of Byzantine chant and later developments of the Stoudios Monastery since the 9th century. The reason of this independence is, that
7548-404: The early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of
7659-412: The eight modes is the Beth Gazo d-ne`motho , or "Treasury of Chants." In the Armenian Apostolic Church , the system of eight modes is referred to as oot tzayn (eight voices). Although there is no structural relation between the Greek and Armenian modes, the division into "authentic" and "plagal" modes is parallel. In Armenian terminology, the "Authentic" modes are referred to as "Voice" ( Tzayn ) and
7770-424: The eight modes of the Octoechos . Although the hymns of the sticherarion have to be sung in the same melos, there is no direct relation with the poetic hymn genre, because its musical definition rather follows the practice of psalmody. Today the sticheraric melos as opposed to the troparic melos are two different cycles of the Octoechos. In the past, they had been closer related by the practice of psalmody, and
7881-440: The eight modes. Originally, these were Psalms and Biblical Canticles that were chanted during the services. A Sharagan was composed of verses which were interspersed between the scriptural verses. Eventually, the Šarakan replaced the biblical text entirely. In addition, the eight modes are applied to the psalms of the Night office, called Kanonaklookh (Canon head). the Armenian Church also makes use of other modes outside of
7992-526: The eight-tone music system—although they always do use the book Octoechos —rather singing all hymns in the same scale but with different melodies for each tone for each of several types of classifications of hymns. Although the Georgian Iadgari is not the oldest manuscript among the complete tropologia which could be preserved until the present day, the Iadgari offers the most complete insight into
8103-455: The emperors Leo VI and Constantine VII (10th century) as well as numerous anonymous authors. This reduced version was simply called Octoechos and it was often the last part of the sticherarion , the new notated chant book of the reformers. Until the 14th century the book Octoechos, as far as it belonged to the Sticherarion , was ordered according to hymn genre of the repertoire. Later
8214-602: The epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute
8325-452: The following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in
8436-509: The hymns of a third regularly repeated cycle. It was usually the abridged form that only contained the hymns of Saturday hesperinos preceding the orthros and divine liturgy on Sunday. In most of the Orthodox rites the octoechos meant a cycle of eight weeks which opened with the four kyrioi echoi (each echos per week) and continued with the plagioi echoi. Sometimes the sticherarion also had a separated collection of notated stichera prosomoia preceding
8547-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn
8658-658: The invention of printing and the completion and wide distribution of the rather large 12-volume Menaion—, but portions of the Octoechos (e.g., the last three stichera following "Lord, I have cried," the Hesperinos psalm 140 ) are seldom used nowadays and they are often completely omitted in the currently printed volumes. Even before a direct exchange between Slavic monks and monks of the Stoudios Monastery, papyrus fragments offer evidence of earlier translations of Greek hymns. The early fragments show that hymns and their melodies developed independently in an early phase until
8769-675: The kontakion for Christmas is recited today with a simple melody in a rather sophisticated heirmologoc melos of echos tritos; its most important part is the conclusion called "ephymnion" (in italic characters) which uses one and the same melody for all kontakia of the same echos (at the end of the prooimion as well as at the end of each following oikos): Ἡ Παρθένος σήμερον τὸν ὑπερούσιον τίκτει καὶ ἡ γῆ τὸ σπήλαιον τῷ ἀπροσίτῳ προσάγει, Ἄγγελοι μετά ποιμένων δοξολογούσι, Μάγοι δὲ μετά ἀστέρος ὁδοιπορούσιν, δι’ ἡμάς γὰρ ἐγεννήθη παιδίον νέον, ὁ πρὸ αἰώνων Θεός. A hymn may more or less imitate an automelon melodically and metrically—depending, if
8880-463: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write
8991-425: The literal translation of the hymns. The school represented by Kliment of Ohrid , Naum , or Constantine of Preslav endeavoured to match the Greek text in the number of syllables in the hymns and to preserve the verse structure indicated by the corresponding neumes, but the resulting meaning of the hymns could change so considerably that, in certain cases, the only aspect the original and the translation had in common
9102-421: The melodic patterns could be rather classified according to one of the eight or ten modes ( echos or glas ) of the Hagiopolitan Octoechos . The reference to it is given by the modal signatures, especially the medial signatures written within notation, so the book sticherarion constituted the synthetic role of its notation (Byzantine round notation), which integrated signs taken from different chant books during
9213-621: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek
9324-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and
9435-617: The morning and evening services throughout the year, but chant compositions in the sticheraric melos can also be found in other liturgical books like the Octoechos or the Anastasimatarion , or in the Anthology for the Divine Liturgy . In the current traditions of Orthodox Chant, the sticherarion as a hymn book was also used to call a chant genre sticheraric melos , which is defined by its tempo and its melodic formulas according to
9546-399: The needs of Christian hymnography. Then John of Damascus started a new, third period in the history of Church singing. He introduced what is known as the osmoglasie — a system of singing in eight tones, or melodies —, and compiled a liturgical singing book bearing the title "Ochtoechos," which literally signifies "the book of the eight tones." The earliest version of a Tropologion dedicated to
9657-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks
9768-521: The objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It
9879-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as
9990-494: The printed texts of the hymns while singing out of other text books like the menaion . The Great Octoechos ( ὀκτώηχος ἡ μεγάλη ), or Parakletike , contains proper office hymns for each weekday. The earliest state of a Great Octoechos collection are Mss. gr. 1593 and 776 of the Library at Saint Catherine's Monastery which had been identified as belonging to one manuscript ( ET-MSsc Ms. Gr. 776 & 1593 about 800). The hymns of
10101-461: The prosody of the Slavonic language, in certain cases the adaptation needed a musical recomposition of the prosomoion. In practice, the avtomela as well as the prosomeia are often omitted in the books of the sticherarion, they rather belonged to an oral tradition, since the avtomela were known by heart. Often the prosomoia had been written apart before the Octoechos part of Sticherarion, which
10212-621: The repertoire of Octoechos was created by Severus of Antioch , Paul of Edessa and John Psaltes between 512 and 518. The Tropologion was expanded upon by St. Cosmas of Maiuma († 773), Theodore the Studite († 826) and his brother Joseph of Thessalonica († 832), Theophanes the Branded (c. 775–845), the hegoumenai and hymnographers Kassia (810-865) and Theodosia , Thekla the Nun , Metrophanes of Smyrna († after 880), Paul, Metropolit of Amorium , and by
10323-461: The repertoire of hymns sung during the celebrations of the Sunday Office . Many hymns in the Octoechos, such as Kathismata , Odes, and Kontakia are set in a strict meter —a fixed number of syllables with particular stress patterns, consistent throughout multiple verses. Complex poems are written with syllabic patterns matching the meter of a familiar hymn written prior. One example of such
10434-408: The same compositions written down in the old Sticherarion. During the 18th century, the repertoire was created which had been printed as Doxastarion since 1820. It was based on transcriptions of the hyphos, short versions created by the generation of Ioannes Trapezountios and Daniel the Protopsaltes who had recomposed the traditional melodies. The hyphos was supposed to abridge the traditional melos in
10545-508: The same octave species like glas 1–4, but their final notes were a fifth lower on the bottom of the pentachord with respect to the finales of the kyrioi on the top of each pentachord, the melodic range composed in the plagioi was usually smaller. There was an alternative tonal system based on the obihodniy zvukoryad which was used in the Northern Slavic reception in Novgorod. It was based on
10656-516: The school of Manuel Chrysaphes , as it had been delivered by 17th-century composers like Panagiotes the New Chrysaphes and Germanos of New Patras. They had grown very long, obviously under influence of the kalophonic method to do the thesis of the sticheraric melos, but also by a hybridisation of the great signs during the traditional thesis of the sticheric melos. Between the 1820 and 1841, the abridged Doxastarion had been published in 3 versions:
10767-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of
10878-480: The subsequent Palm Sunday . Each day of the week has a distinct theme for which hymns in each tone are found in the texts of the Octoechos. During this period, the Octoechos is not sung on weekdays and it is furthermore not sung on Sundays from Palm Sunday through the Sunday of All Saints. After Pentecost, the singing of the Great Octoechos on weekdays continued until Saturday of Meatfare Week, on Sundays there
10989-453: The text has exactly the same number of syllables with the same accents as those of verses in the corresponding automelon. Such a hymn was usually called sticheron prosomoion or in the case of kontakion, kontakion prosomoion , the echos and opening words of the model (a sticheron avtomelon or in this particular case the prooimion of the Nativity kontakion) were usually indicated. For example,
11100-514: The thematic structure of the stichera anastasima which had to be sung during Hesperinos on Saturday and during Orthros on Sunday, were emphasised and ordered according to the eight echoi, each of the eight parts structured according to the order, as they had to be sung during the evening and morning service. They became a well structured book for the daily use of chanters like the later book Anastasimatarion or in Slavonic Voskresnik . Since
11211-617: The treatise could still have introduced the book Tropologion . The earliest papyrus sources of the Tropologion can be dated to the 6th century: Choral singing saw its most brilliant development in the temple of Holy Wisdom in Constantinople during the reign of Emperor Justinian the Great. National Greek musical harmonies, or modes — the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixolydian modes — were adapted to
11322-568: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or
11433-549: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of
11544-546: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe
11655-533: Was another cycle organised by the eleven heothina with their exaposteilaria and their theotokia . In the daily practice the prosomeia of the Octoechos are combined with idiomela from the other books: On the fixed cycle, i.e. , dates of the calendar year, the Menaion and on the movable cycle, according to season, the Lenten Triodion (in combination from the previous year's Paschal cycle). The texts from these volumes displace some of those from
11766-586: Was called in Syriac Tropligin . A Syriac translation of the "Octoechos of Antioch", tropologion created by Severus of Antioch, Paul of Edessa and John Psaltes (early sixth century), was copied in 675, but still during the 9th century Tropligins were organised in a similar way like the Georgian Iadgari . The Syriac Orthodox Church today still makes use of a system of eight modes (usually classified as makam ). Each hymn ( Syriac : qolo , plural: qole )
11877-429: Was obviously not used on a pulpit during celebrations, but rather an exercise book with various examples which could be studied for own compositions with similar accentuation patterns. Concerning this paradigmatic use of notation the musical setting of a sticheron , the sticherarion had been mainly a collection of idiomela which had to be understood as individual compositions for a certain sticheron poem, although
11988-414: Was the prescribed music, i.e. , the indicated melos and echos. On the other hand, the later translations during the missions in Russia had their emphasis on a literal translation of the texts, but this resulted in altering the metrical structure given by the avtomela and the heirmoi so much that the music had to be recomposed. Another difference between the two Slavic receptions was the tonal system. Since
12099-566: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect
12210-463: Was usually not organised according to the eight modes unlike the Great Oktoechos. Since John Koukouzeles and other contemporary scribes who revised the sticheraria , there was development from the traditional sticheron , sung by a whole congregation or community, to a rather representative and elaborated performance by a soloist. Manuel Chrysaphes regarded John Koukouzeles as the inventor of
12321-653: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage
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