By the way speaking of the word Immaculate which I put an asterisk next to in my earlier post, no. 51, I forgot to provide a footnote:
While the Orthodox deny the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception as superfluous and an innovation, since our understanding of original sin which is derived from St. John Cassian is more sophisticated than that proposed by St. Augustine*, we absolutely describe the Theotokos in our hymnody as immaculate.
For example, today the Tone of the Week is the First Tone (or Mode, equivalent to Mode I in Gregorian Chant), and the hymns appointed for Matins in Tone 1 refer to the Blessed Virgin Mary thrice using the word Immaculate, and to the Body of Christ our True God four times as Immaculate. This makes sense, because the immaculate body of the Theotokos, immaculate because of her self-restraint, gave birth to He who is the Incarnation of Purity and Virtue, for according to St. Basil the Great,
“God is the fullness of all qualities and perfections in their highest and infinite form.”
These three hymns from Matins include such beautiful Theotokia as this:
The Forefathers of mankind rejoice in thee, immaculate Virgin, for through thee they regain Eden, which they had lost through transgression; for thou art pure both before child-bearing and after giving birth.
*St. Augustine we instead venerate for his morality, his moving repentence from sin, the exquisite hymn he wrote with St. Ambrose, Te Deum Laudamus (of which there is a Byzantine Rite version, although I’m not sure where it is actually used; the recording I have of it is in the context of a Russian Orthodox marriage liturgy, but it is not sung at every Matins, which is good, because there are so many other things sung at every Byzantine Rite Matins such as the Six Psalms that if we dared include it St. Ambrose might reprimand us for having made the service too long to the point of tedium … forgive the pun.** Nonetheless this hymn is exquisite and is also used by the Western Rite Orthodox at Matins, just like in the Western liturgical tradition. Many of us, myself included, also love his work The CIty of God, for it moves our mind away from material distractions and lifts it up to things spiritual, thus helping guide us away from the sinful passions, and it provided a great comfort for the people of Rome by causing them to focus on their salvation even as their city collapsed around them due to a failing government and the predations of Gothic tribes.
**But St. Ambrose cared a great deal about liturgy being beautiful - during the vigil he held in a church that Emperor Theodosius had been frightened by the thought of unrest into offering to the Arians, which St. Ambrose would not allow - he was not giving the Arians so much as a disused storage shed in Milan, not under his Episcopate, but the laity and clergy who volunteered to hold the vigil with him, for his benefit he introduced antiphonal singing “in the manner of the Greeks, lest they perish in soulless monotony”, for indeed at the time the very traditional Roman church only sang in monotone, and in this manner antiphonal music finally was introduced into the Western church, and in the late 6th century St. Gregory the Great would introduce a system of chant in eight modes based on Byzantine Chant (in turn closely related to West Syriac Chant, both of which use eight modes, although the numbering of the modes differs between them, but the core idea of having eight sets of melodies and eight sets of lyrics to go with them originated with the Syriac hymnal, the Beth Gazo (Treasury) and the Byzantine hymnal, known as the Parakletike or less romantically as the Octoechos. However, as late as the ninth century, the Low Mass was still being chanted in monotone, before the Roman church decided to say it quietly or silently. In the Slavonic churches, we still use something very close to monotone for the Third, Sixth and Ninth hours, except on the eves of certain feasts such as Christmas, the Baptism of Christ and Pentecost Sunday, and also on Good Friday, when we sing much longer and more beautiful services at those hours, more akin to the Syriac third, sixth and ninth hours, which are known as the Royal Hours.