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The Byzantine prokeimena

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2008

Simon Harris
Simon Harris
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London
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Extract

It is possible to attach too much significance to the names of both the hypakoae and the prokeimena. The word ‘hypakoe’ means ‘respond’, but this by itself does not mean that the Byzantine hypakoae were chants that derived from responsorially performed psalms (even though that is what they may ultimately have been), for the name might well refer simply to a responsorial method of singing them which, evidence suggests, prevailed between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.

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Articles
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Plainsong & Medieval Music , Volume 3 , Issue 2 , October 1994 , pp. 133 - 147
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 For the hypakoae see my articles ‘The Byzantine Responds for the Two Sundays before Christmas’, Music and Letters, 74 (1993), 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and ‘The Evolution of the Thirteenth-Century Hypakoae orResponds of the Yearly Cycle’, Current Musicology (forthcoming).

1 Hintze, Gisa, Das byzantinische Prokeimena-Repertoire, Hamburger Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft 9 (Hamburg, 1973; henceforth BPR)Google Scholar, provides a transcription of medieval sources for the prokeimena(thus making musical examples unnecessary here) and is a valuable source of information about them. This explanation, which seems to be assumed by most service books, appears on p. 11.There seems to me no justification, however, for the subsequent contention (also expressed or assumed by many others) that the prokeimenon was the Byzantine equivalent of the Latin Gradual.

3 Mateos, Juan, ‘La psalmodie dans le rite byzantin’, Proche-Orient Chrétien, 15 (1965), 107–26Google Scholar, discusses the prokeimena and gives this explanation on pp. 107–19.

4 Of the forty-eight prokeimena of the Psaltikon, nine begin with the psalm-opening (including the only two prokeimena taking their texts from biblical Canticles). Thirty-one have the opening of the psalm at the second verse (‘verse 1’), and eight draw all their verses from the later part of a psalm.

5 The MSS of the first group are: Vatican gr. 345; Grottaferrata Γ.γ.III; Sinai gr. 1280; Sinai gr.1314; Patmos 221; Paris, Bibliothèque Narionale, ancien fond grec 397; and Ochrid 59. Those of the second, purely Italian, group are: Vatican gr. 1606; Messina University gr. 120 and 129; and Grottaferrata Γ.γ.V. and E.β.I. See also Hintze, BPR, 26; Thodberg, C., Der byzantinische Alleluiarionzyklus, Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, Subsidia 8 (Copenhagen, 1966; henceforth BAZ), 20–31Google Scholar; and below p. 143.

6 The word ‘doche’ (δοχή) probably meant ‘respond’, since the verb δὲχομαι(‘receive’) seems to have been a normal word for singing a respond. But if so, then those prokeimena for which dochae are not found in the Asmatikon must have had responds or dochae, as Hintze says (BPR,87), though she uses the word ‘refrain’.

7 See below, pp. 146–7.

8 For the chants in question, see Hintze, BPR, 101–81 and (critical commentary), 184–265. Two prokeimena of the Mass (Κύϱιοζ πϱóζ με and Κύϱιομóζ) and all but one of the great prokeimena have four verses in the Psaltikon. The rest have three.

9 These two chants are the subject of an article of mine, ‘Two Chants in the Byzantine Rite for Holy Saturday’,Plainsong and Medieval Music, 1 (1992), 149–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In one case, Mαχάϱιοι ἀφέθησαν, the main text of the chant (verses 1–3) is from Psalm 31. The added fourth verse, from the end of the same psalm, has the text of the first verse or respond of another prokeimenon, whose second and third verses have the same text as the first and second verses of the chant in question (that is, they return to the beginning of the same psalm). The second prokeimenon, Eνφϱάνθηε ὲπὶ ϰύϱιον, is No. I 19 in Hintze's transcription. For the procedure (apparently the same) followed by Holy Cross 40 for the Vespers prokeimenon of the Saturday after Easter see below, p. 139.

10 These two MSS are Grottaferrata Γ.γ.V and E.β.I. The one in question is Γ.γ;.V. The prokeimena in the other three are in composite yearly cycles. See also my article cited in note 9, especially p. 152 and n. 15.

11 The text of this print of the Kαευνήω appears in Swainson, C. A., The Greek Liturgies (Cambridge, 1884), 179Google Scholar. See also my article cited in note 9, pp. 157–8.

12 The passage can be seen in Migne, J. P., Patrologia Graeca (Paris, 1857–1866), vol. 99, cols. 1687, 1689.Google Scholar

13 That is the typikon Messina gr. 115 (ed. Arranz, Miguel as ‘Le typicon du monastére du Saint-Sauveur á Messine’, Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 185 (Rome, 1969; henceforth TMSM); see p. 209)Google Scholar, and the musical MS Grottaferrata E.α.XIII (fols. 149r–152v).

14 Hintze, , BPR, 151–4, 235–40Google Scholar. The rising sixth in Hintze's transcription of the fourth verse of the S. Salvatore version (p. 154, line 5) is, I think, a rare rising octave, which would obviate her further correction at σὺν ἀνϱώποιξ. The four MSS I have looked at all give this, although only Vatican gr. 1606 has the sign precisely in the form given by Wellesz, in A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography (Oxford, 2/1961) on p. 289Google Scholar. There is no trace of this interval in the other Psaltikon tradition.

15 On fol. 83 of Sinai 1280. See Hintze, , BPR, 22Google Scholar and Thodberg, , BAZ, 21Google Scholar. Besides being slightly incomplete, the melody looks untranscribable, for not only do there seem to be no intonations or mode-signs, but the notation itself is odd.

16 Baumstark, A., Comparative Liturgy, Eng. trans. Cross, F. L. from the 3rd edn of Liturgie Comparée (London, 1958), 197Google Scholar, explains the use of the Presanctified Mass in the week before Lent.

17 Ed. Mateos, J. as ‘Le typicon de la grande église’, Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 165 (I), 166 (II) (Rome, 1962, 1963; henceforth TGEGoogle Scholar). See I (Introduction), xxii–xxiii, II, 6, 8, 14. Also ed. Dmitrievskii, A., Opisanie liturgičeskikh rukopisei I (Kiev, 1895; henceforth OLR), 111–12.Google Scholar

18 Ed. Arranz, , TMSM, 192, 209Google Scholar.

19 Hintze, , BPR, 234Google Scholar; Thodberg, , BAZ, 23–5.Google Scholar

20 For the prokeimena that have four verses in the Psaltikon see note 8 above. Aνάοα ό Θεόζ, including the respond, has six verses in Messina gr. 115 (ed. Arranz, TMSM, 245–6) that are co-extensive with the four verses elsewhere; as already pointed out, Aνάοα ό Θεόζ is not really typical of prokeimena if indeed it is to be counted as one at all. There are also several great prokeimena with only three verses in one or more sources, most notably perhaps the Vespers prokeimenon for Easter Tuesday, which lacks a fourth verse in all S. Salvatore psaltika (Hintze, , BPR, 173, 257–60Google Scholar).

21 The MS with dochae is Vatican gr. 1606. The incomplete MS is Messina gr. 129.

22 The Sunday after Easter, also known in Greek as New Sunday and St Thomas's Sunday.

23 ‘Apokreo’ is perhaps not an ideal term (possibly it should be ‘Apokreos’), but it is Hintze's. Apokreo Sunday's position before Lent is the same as that of Sexagesima Sunday. From the evidence, one can gather that the two prokeimena for Vespers on this and the following Sunday (Tyrophagou Sunday) continue alternating on the Sundays of Lent and are then replaced on Palm Sunday evening by the usual Vespers prokeimenon, Iδοὺ δὴ εὴλογειε, and that the main difference between medieval monastic practice and modern practice is that whereas the former continues to use a two-verse form of prokeimenon, the latter has expanded it for this period to a three- or four-verse form (ed. Arranz, TMSM, 192, 214, 229; ed. Drnitrievskii, OLR, 522, 525, 529, 535, 539, 543; Horologion (Rome, 2/1937), 713–14, 718, 719, 720, 721–2, 724–5).

24 Ed. Mateos, , TGE, II, 186Google Scholar; Hintze, , BPR, 14, 113, 200.Google Scholar

25 Ed. Mateos, , TGE, II, 178Google Scholar; Horologion, 226–7.

26 Mateos, , TGE, II, 170–4Google Scholar, gives this text for the first and third plagal modes in a two-verse form, and in a four-verse form in the yearly cycle on p. 82 of vol. II for the third plagal mode. In the later psaltika it is in the second plagal mode.

27 Ed. Mateos, , TGE, I, 20, 370Google Scholar; Hintze, , BPR, 105–6, 190–1Google Scholar. See also p. 134 above.

28 Ed. Mateos, , TGE, II, 96, 98Google Scholar; Hintze, , BPR, 120–1, 121–2, 212–13, 213–14Google Scholar. I have assumed here that the prokeimenon in Holy Cross 40 for Easter Monday Mass can be equated with the prokeimenon for Apostles in Hintze's edition as both text and mode are the same.

29 Ed. Mateos, , TGE, II, 84Google Scholar; Hintze, , BPR, 104, 121, 198–9, 212–13.Google Scholar

30 Ed. Dmitrievskii, , OLR, 555–6, 565, 379Google Scholar.

31 Ed. Mateos, , TGE, II, 174–6Google Scholar; Hintze, , BPR, 13–16Google Scholar. The word ἄμνημον (literally ‘without remembrance’) must indicate a chant not associated with a particular feast, whose proper place was therefore in an Octoechus.

32 Ed. Dmitrievskii, , OLR, 610Google Scholar; ed. Arranz, , TMSM, 308Google Scholar (not in the same hand as the earlier part of the MS).

33 Ed. Mateos, , TGE, II, 174–6.Google Scholar

34 Hintze, , BPR, 13–16.Google Scholar

35 σύ, Kύϱιε, φυλξειζ ήμᾶζ ϰαι διϰηϱήσειζ ήμᾶζ, in the first plagal mode (Hintze, , BPR, 13, 103, 187–9)Google Scholar. This may be the same as the second prokeimenon for tritoekte on Good Friday in Holy Cross 40, in which case it is not new (ed. Mateos, , TGE, II, 78)Google Scholar.

36 And in that of S. Salvatore at Messina. See ed. Dmitrievskii, , OLR, 610Google Scholar; ed. Arranz, , TMSM, 308Google Scholar. See also Hintze, , BPR, 36Google Scholar.

37 See, for example, Arranz, , TMSM, 203, 209Google Scholar.

38 Swainson, C. A., The Greek Liturgies (Cambridge, 1884), 179Google Scholar. Ed. Mateos, , TGE, II, 170–4Google Scholar. Tritoekt (ϱιοέϰη), literally ‘terce-sext’, was a service that replaced the day hours during Lent and Holy Week at St Sophia in Constantinople (for the rest of the year there was nothing). ‘Akroteleution’ (ᾀϰιοέη) was a term for the reprise of just the final half of a respond, which presumably also involved some measure of musical elaboration. Evidence for such a respond in the prokeimena appears to my knowledge only at this point in Holy Cross 40, and this presumably prompted Mateos's note on p. 171. The evidence strikes me as rather tenuous if it is only the repetition (or not) of the closing words of the respond at the end of the verse. In his article ‘La psalmodie dans le rite byzantin’ (see note 3), pp. 112–13, Mateos also argues that the prokeimenon was originally a complete psalm responsorially performed; he adduces further evidence from the Armenian rite, and also makes the point that the indefatigable ninth-century translator of Greek into Latin known as Anastasius the Librarian translates the word prokeimenon as ‘responsorium’.

39 Wellesz, E., A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography (Oxford, 2/1961), 138Google Scholar, and von Gardner, J., Russian Church Singing I (New York, 1980), 49Google Scholar, both make it clear that in modern Orthodox services the prokeimenon has no more than two verses, unless it is one of the few great prokeimena that have four. A process of reduction must therefore have taken place, and since both the Russian and the Greek churches were affected, it seems likely that this reduction occurred early. For this reason it seems that typika like Patmos 266 and Holy Cross 40 should be taken at their face value when they record that a prokeimenon had two verses, even though the second in most cases embodies the beginning of a psalm. For to claim, as Mateos does (‘La psalmodie’ 112), that such typika thereby concealed the responsorial performance of a complete psalm is in effect to shift this reduction to a later date. Paradoxically perhaps, an early reduction tends to be confirmed by the prokeimena for which a two-verse form may never have existed -chants like the Kαευνὴω and the Tίζ Θεὸζ μέγαζ. Such chants must have come into being by the same process, having once been a complete psalm; and if they already existed more or less in their present textual form by 900, why not the others? An early reduction also tends to be confirmed by information like that in note 23.

40 The most comprehensive published catalogue of thirteenth-century psaltika is probably that to be found in Thodberg, , BAZ, 20–31Google Scholar.

41 Hintze, , BPR, 126–9, 218–19Google Scholar; ed. Mateos, , TGE, II, 178–80.Google Scholar

42 Hintze, , BPR, 150, 234–5Google Scholar. And see above, notes 17, 18.

43 Ed. Mateos, , TGE, I, 20Google Scholar; Hintze, , BPR, 105–6, 190–1.Google Scholar

44 See note 14 above.

45 For the mode of the Kαευυνήω, see Hintze, , BPR, 151, 235Google Scholar. She has taken the mode in Messina gr. 120 as correct, whereas it seems to me more likely to be an incorrect alteration to bring it in line with the other tradition. For that of the Iδοὺ δὴ εὐλογειε see Hintze, , BPR, 123, 216Google Scholar; ed. Mateos, , TGE, II, 178Google Scholar.

46 See, for example, Ostrogorsky, G., History of the Byzantine State (New Jersey, rev. edn 1969), 210–315Google Scholar.

47 Minisci, Teodoro, ‘I typika liturgici dell'Italia bizantina’, Bollettino della Badia Greca di Grotaferrata N.S. VII (Grottaferrata, 1953), 97–105Google Scholar, esp. p. 97.

48 Only one of the five psaltika transmitting the S. Salvatore tradition is known to have been written at S. Salvatore, and this was almost certainly not destined for use in the monastery since it was written ‘for the priest Leontios’. See Grottaferrata Γ.γ.V. fol. 129v.

49 For the asmatic dochae see Hintze, , BPR, 24–5.Google Scholar

50 Grottaferrata Γ.γ.VI and E.α.XIII. About the latter (in the S. Salvatore tradition) there can be no doubt since, although it does have a single doche at the end, it is complete. Γ.γ.VI might originally have contained the dochae, as it consists of a series of fragments from at least two MSS – though this seems unlikely since the points at which the dochae are inserted in other MSS are present among these fragments (di Salvo, B., ‘Asmatikdn’, Bollettino della Badia Greca di Grottaferrata N.S. XVI (Grottaferrata, 1962), 156, 158Google Scholar).

51 The age of the Byzantine communions is discussed in my forthcoming edition of them.

52 The age of Athos Laura Γ.3 seems to be controversial. It is taken by Kenneth Levy to be a MS with an essentially thirteenth-century repertory (‘0Music in the Byzantine Rite’, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Sadie, Stanley (London, 1980), vol. 3, 561 (Ex. 12)Google Scholar; and Fundamental Problems of Early Slavic Music and Poetry, ed. Hannick, C., Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, Subsidia 6 (Copenhagen, 1978), Fig. 9 and comment on p. 207)Google Scholar. By others it is assigned to the fifteenth century, presumably on palaeographic grounds, by which time the repertory may no longer have existed (Hintze, , BPR, 25Google Scholar; Touliatos, Diane, ‘Research in Byzantine Music since 1975’, Ada Musicologica, 60 (1988), 223Google Scholar). A date of about 1350 might perhaps reconcile both points.

53 Early discussion is usefully summarized by Thodberg, , BAZ, 44–5 (Chapter IV, Section 3)Google Scholar. The subject was revisited by Strunk, but nothing much was added (Strunk, O., ‘The Chants of the Byzantine-Greek Liturgy’, Essays on Music in the Byzantine World (New York, 1977), 297–330)Google Scholar.

54 See note 11 above.

55 From ninety-eight such abbreviations I have found two places where words might have been omitted in these typika.

56 Thodberg, , BAZ, 44–5.Google Scholar

57 This explanation could well apply to the second and subsequent verses of a prokeimenon, but not necessarily to the first – the original respond – in which the soloist's function must have been largely introductory. Since the respond was going to be sung and repeated complete by the congregation (or whoever sang it), there would have been no obligation of textual completeness on the soloist, who might therefore have sung no more than is in the Psaltikon for the first verse. In two cases it seems that the respond was not precisely a psalm-verse, being slightly more in Ducas's 1526 print of the KaTEuOuvOfjxco and slightly less in the indications in Messina gr. 115 for the Aάοα ὁ Θεόζ. But neither was a typical prokeimenon, and there is therefore no reason to suppose that the respond of a prokeimenon did not cover exactly those words of a psalm indicated for it, as outlined above for the Tίζ εὀζ μέγα,