Chapter 5 shows how the text–music relationships in the Matins office for the feast of Saint Mark’s Apparition supported the construction of narrative history. Unlike the public-facing office of Vespers, the night office of Matins—an enormous and lengthy complex of readings, psalmody, and chant—offered a robust formal structure on which narrative history could be built up and elaborated. An analysis of the chants and readings from the Matins office reveals the composer’s careful curation of source material and inventive use of the conventional melodic features of mode and melody, showing just how much craft went into the representation of miraculous history in a liturgical format. The composer’s reliance on the technical and medium-specific tools of chant to make Mark “appear” within the office suggests that such formal devices served as viable substitutes for, or representations of, the miraculous. The office itself seems to argue that good storytelling, whether accomplished on the page or in plainchant, could produce miracles merely at the level of form and technique.

This chapter explores the liturgical performance of Andrew of Crete’s Great Kanon. It examines the genre of this hymn (kanon), its liturgical context and its manuscript tradition, investigating how its performance sought to arouse compunction in the faithful. Given there is no critical edition of the Great Kanon currently available, three of the earliest manuscripts of the Triodion where this hymn appears are cited: Sinai Graecus 734–735, Vaticanus Graecus 771 and Grottaferrata Δβ I.This approach, together with an examination of rubrics and other relevant sources, assists in reimagining how the Great Kanon was performed in Byzantium. For the Byzantines, the singing of the Great Kanon became a liturgical act that could mirror, shape and transform the passions of the singer’s soul.