What unites (most) traditional churches (EO, OO, RC) together, musicologically: The Octoechos

[dzheremi]

Being a member of one of the only two traditional churches which does not use the octoechos/8 mode system common to traditional Christian liturgical singing (the other church being that of the Orthodox Tewahedo Ethiopians and Eritreans who have their own Zema system credited to St. Yared in the 6th century), the octoechos fascinates me. I have a hard time grasping how it's supposed to work, but yesterday when I was searching for a specific Syriac hymn for use in another thread I kept getting YouTube results from the Syriacs in India that included examples of this system as they use it. The texts they are singing are in their native language, Malayalam, which I can't speak or read (wish I could...it looks really cool and fancy!), but I do sort of recognize some of the melodies from my limited exposure to their hymns via YouTube already, so I feel like I'm kind of starting to get it. Maybe.

But then I had the thought: What if all the other churches use it, but they use it differently from one another? Because obviously Syriac and Latin chant are pretty different, even if they're organized around the same principles. Would you octoechos-using people necessarily recognize the Syriac Indian "second mode" as being equivalent to your own Byzantine or Latin second modes? Would the Armenian second mode necessarily correspond to that of the Georgians? I don't know. And I feel like I have no real way of knowing, since this is all still so very foreign to me and to my tradition. (In brief, Coptic chant is organized mostly around "tunes" which are used according to the type of day or season we are chanting in: 'sad' tune for penitential/fasting days, 'joyful/happy' tune for feast days, and 'annual' tune for days that are neither; there are also special chants and tunes for certain other times of year, like for the month of Kiahk when we sing special praises to the Theotokos; it's mostly very straightforward.)

So I thought maybe some of you might find it interesting to compare the various modes as used by the different churches to see what similarities and differences there might be between them.

To start with, here is the Greek Orthodox chorus SEM Lebanon chanting in all eight modes for the Nativity:

Here are 7 out of 8 modes (not idea why they didn't include all 8) as sung by the Malankara Syriac Orthodox in India:

And here's a nifty page thanks to Catholic University of America that explains the use of the octoechos in the Syriac Orthodox liturgical tradition and the Beth Gazo (the Syriac treasury of chants, dating back to the 3rd-4th century).

Here's an example of the octoechoes (mode 1) in use in Latin/Gregorian chant by Schola Antiqua (one of those ancient music ensembles a la Ensemble Organum), who did a whole album dedicated to exploring old Gregorian chant and its melodic systems. (I meant to link to the entire thing here, but I guess that's not possible; search for it on YouTube if you want to under the title "Octoechos Latino" and it should come up, though the full title of the album is longer.)

And finally (because I think this website only allows so much media in one post), I couldn't find a full demonstration of all of the modes (tzayn) by the Armenians, but I did find one video by Chorale Akn, an Armenian chant ensemble, which is clearly marked "2nd mode", so here's the 2nd mode as it is used by the Armenians:

Most helpfully, this very ensemble has an explanation of the Armenian octoechos on their website. I haven't checked it against the Syriac, which seems to be the most detailed I could find and hence the most amenable to comparison, but I will.

What do you octoechos-using people think? Did I miss some major point on the use of this system or some people that buck the trend (maybe the EO or RC Albanians have their own system or something...how would I even know)? Can you hear the Syriac modes with your Greco-Roman ears and feel comfortable with it as you would your own chant, due to its basic structural similarity? I should say that Syriac chant as used in India seems to vary quite a bit in certain contexts from the Middle Eastern Syriacs in Mesopotamia or elsewhere, though this may be a matter of the difference between liturgical chant and chanting the shhimo (Syriac horologion/Agpeya), because I've heard some Indian Orthodox chant that just nails the 'Syriac tone' in a way that video doesn't (cos it's in Malayalam, maybe?). I'm not Syriac so I can't say; I just know what my dumb ears hear.

Please, if any of you have anything to say or any other/better examples to present, feel free to do so! Again, my own church doesn't have this, so to me this is all very mysterious and fascinating.

 

[All4Christ]

Great post! Need to get to work now so can’t post, but will very much enjoy looking at it later.

 

[dzheremi]

I'm trying to find examples of Ethiopian chant done according to zema (instead of the popular 'mezmur', which I guess are their paraliturgical songs; it's weird because in Arabic mezmur is the word for Psalm), just to have another musical form to compare it to, but I'm not sure I've done that since I don't speak the language, so all I can do is type in it and hope that "Yaredawi zema" (okay...I know a little bit! ) yields something. I was hoping to get a page or something that shows the actual musical notation, since it's fascinating, but instead YouTube gave me this:

So, uh...that's pretty different...not sure what I'm listening to, honestly. I do know there are pages out there that will explain the Ethiopian system, but I still don't really "get" it.

 

[tz620q]

the octoechos fascinates me. I have a hard time grasping how it's supposed to work

I think you are talking about the diatonic scale, where musical instruments are tuned to have 12 tones (pitch or semitone) or equal temperament. This predates Christianity with most of the early work being done by Pythagoras. The difference between two pitches is on a exponential scale, even though the human ear seems to hear this as a linear scale. Two notes an octave apart have a frequency ratio of 2:1. There are many other scales and tunings; but most Western music since the 1700's has been written to play with this tuning.

 

[All4Christ]

I think you are talking about the diatonic scale, where musical instruments are tuned to have 12 tones (pitch or semitone) or equal temperament. This predates Christianity with most of the early work being done by Pythagoras. The difference between two pitches is on a exponential scale, even though the human ear seems to hear this as a linear scale. Two notes an octave apart have a frequency ratio of 2:1. There are many other scales and tunings; but most Western music since the 1700's has been written to play with this tuning.

The octoechos is different than the diatonic scale. It is the eight-mode system used for the composition of religious chant.

For example, we have our Psalms chanted in first tone, second tone, third tone, up through eighth. Some of our hymnography changes depending on the tone of the day. There are varying modes of the tones depending on the day of the week or liturgical season, such as resurrection tones vs Lenten tones etc.

 

[All4Christ]

This may be of interest:

Octoechos | Encyclopedia.com

 

[tz620q]

This may be of interest:

Octoechos | Encyclopedia.com

Thank you. We use modes in our chant as well. There have been a lot of different modal schemes written, so there is not a standard as it appears to be in Byzantine chant. Our parish has adopted a modal scheme written by a monk that teaches music and chant at the local seminary. This has allowed the congregation to get used to those modes and try to imitate them. It is a long process in education. So I can see the benefit in having a standard modality. I am curious though, I had a chance to talk to one of the chanters at our local Greek Orthodox church and he was learning the ancient Byzantine chants. They appeared to be written in a notation that was quite complex and did not seem to be in simple modes.

 

[All4Christ]

Thank you. We use modes in our chant as well. There have been a lot of different modal schemes written, so there is not a standard as it appears to be in Byzantine chant. Our parish has adopted a modal scheme written by a monk that teaches music and chant at the local seminary. This has allowed the congregation to get used to those modes and try to imitate them. It is a long process in education. So I can see the benefit in having a standard modality. I am curious though, I had a chance to talk to one of the chanters at our local Greek Orthodox church and he was learning the ancient Byzantine chants. They appeared to be written in a notation that was quite complex and did not seem to be in simple modes.

Not everyone uses the Byzantine notation. As a member of an OCA parish, we use the Slavic version of the tones but have it in the standard notation most western musicians would understand. The Gregorian chant, for example, in the traditional, older, Western churches has its own notation system. It often has similar underlying concepts, but is, as you can see, a different style of notation.

An example of our tones:

https://oca.org/PDF/Music/Tone4/LordICall.T4.kievan.pdf

Music Downloads - Tone 4

In the OCA, we tend to use Znamenny chant, Obikhod (simple) or Kievan (still simple but more movement, etc.)

 

[dzheremi]

Thank you. We use modes in our chant as well. There have been a lot of different modal schemes written, so there is not a standard as it appears to be in Byzantine chant. Our parish has adopted a modal scheme written by a monk that teaches music and chant at the local seminary.

This is interesting. Do you have any examples of it that you can share? As far as I understand it, Latin chant is traditionally built around the octoechos system.

 

[tz620q]

Not everyone uses the Byzantine notation. As a member of an OCA parish, we use the Slavic version of the tones but have it in the standard notation most western musicians would understand. The Gregorian chant, for example, in the traditional, older, Western churches has its own notation system. It often has similar underlying concepts, but is, as you can see, a different style of notation.

An example of our tones:

https://oca.org/PDF/Music/Tone4/LordICall.T4.kievan.pdf

Music Downloads - Tone 4

In the OCA, we tend to use Znamenny chant, Obikhod (simple) or Kievan (still simple but more movement, etc.)

I had never heard of octoechos until the OP. In the Roman Catholic rite, there are two forms of what might be called chant. The most common is intonation, where the text is sung using a set mode of pitches. This is often written in the 5 line staff of western music, like what you posted. The second and less frequent is Gregorian chant that uses the older 4 line staff and neumes used in Gregorian compostion. I have done both. Tomorrow I will see if I can get an example of each.

 

[dzheremi]

Just by the way, since I mentioned it in the OP, here is an example of Syriac chant as used in a proper Syriac Orthodox Indian liturgy (I think this is Syriac Orthodox/'Jacobite' rather than the autocephalous Malankara Orthodox Church; maybe that makes a difference? I have no idea, as we do not meddle in the affairs of the Indians beyond praying that their internal problems are solved), which is very well done by one Abouna Osthatheos, who according to the video uploader is a metropolitan (of somewhere; he doesn't specify). You don't need to know anything in particular about the octoechos to be able to hear how different it is than the 7 mode video in the OP, though I don't doubt that this is also using that system. (Though it is less clear in this video, since obviously it's not made for instructional purposes concerning the modes themselves as the other one is.)

In comparison to a portion of the Syriac Orthodox liturgy as prayed by HH Mor Ignatius Jacob III (r. 1957-1980):

At first blush it seems that these two are more similar to each other than either would be to the Malankara Syriac Orthodox video in the OP, though I guess you'd have to really know the modes to be able to tell exactly what is going on where and why, and I don't. Still, it's interesting to see these differences between two churches in the same communion, even though such things might be more expected among the OO than among any other communion (the Roman excepted, since for the most part their Eastern churches came directly from these preexisting EO or OO churches, so the extent to which they can be said to be 'separate' rite wise is something of a question, and seems to vary based on their age/length of separation from their mother churches; but this is ultimately a separate topic anyhow).

 

[prodromos]

I had a chance to talk to one of the chanters at our local Greek Orthodox church and he was learning the ancient Byzantine chants. They appeared to be written in a notation that was quite complex and did not seem to be in simple modes.

Byzantine notation is completely different to the music most people are accustomed to.
There will be a notation which indicates which of the eight 'tones' the hymn is to be sung in and the starting note (similar to Do-Re-Mi...etc). After that the music consists of symbols which indicate how many steps up, or down the scale the next note is from the previous note. Every note is relative to the previous note unlike Western notation where every note is absolute.
At regular intervals the starting note for the next section will be given, just in case you lose track.
As you become more accustomed to reading Byzantine notation it becomes a lot like how we learn to read. We start off by reading the individual letters and working out what the word is but as we become proficient we recognise whole words, even phrases, at a time. With Byzantine notation we start to recognise 'words' and 'phrases' of melody instead of "up three notes, down two notes, down four then up one", etc. so it becomes much easier to follow the music and allows us to concentrate more on the words we are chanting.
Hymns can also change briefly from one tone to another then back again, which is something I struggle with, but I am just a beginner.
Only a couple of the eight tones correspond to the Western diatonic scale. The rest have note intervals which range from slightly less than a semitone to more than a tone, which is what gives Eastern music that exotic sound to Western ears.
Historically, the eight tones were taken from an existing music tradition which was much broader, but there were other tones which were deemed inappropriate for worship such as tones used by the military or for the bawdy songs you might hear in the Taverna's, much how it would not be considered appropriate to use jazz music for worship today (although I'm sure there is a Protestant Church out there somewhere which does).

 

[All4Christ]

We often have chant notated just by “points”



http://files.oca.org/service-texts/2019-0113-texts-tt.docx

 

[~Anastasia~]

We often have chant notated just by “points”

View attachment 249171

http://files.oca.org/service-texts/2019-0113-texts-tt.docx

I've never seen anything like that. I tried to make a simpler notation as "reminders" for myself since I'm very much an aural learner in this, but it grew too complicated and I gave up. No sense re-re-inventing the wheel lol.

What do the markings represent?

 

[All4Christ]

I've never seen anything like that. I tried to make a simpler notation as "reminders" for myself since I'm very much an aural learner in this, but it grew too complicated and I gave up. No sense re-re-inventing the wheel lol.

What do the markings represent?

Heading to work so this will be short - I’ll share more later.

Essentially, there is a general melody (four part melody actually) for each tone. The pointing essentially provides a marker to indicate where the melodic phrases turn or hold. So if it is lord I call upon thee, hear me - we move a note up on the “hear” and we hold out the note for awhile / give emphasis to it. This allows for a natural chanting for the phrase, and gives a visual indicator for any turns or strong points in the melody. I’ll show an example with music and the equivalent pointing later when I’m back from work that should clear it up more.

Do you follow / read either traditional Western notation or solfeggio notes (do re me)? Or primarily through hearing it?

 

[dzheremi]

The pointing essentially provides a marker to indicate where the melodic phrases turn or hold. So if it is lord I call upon thee, hear me - we move a note up on the “hear” and we hold out the note for awhile / give emphasis to it. This allows for a natural chanting for the phrase, and gives a visual indicator for any turns or strong points in the melody.

It's interesting how similar this appears to be to the "hazzat" system the Copts developed as informal reminders for passing down their hymns. While I've never used it myself (we just learned by ear at my old parish), from what I understand the various dots and dashes placed around the hymn text on a page of hazzat indicate the very same sorts of turns and holds, with the possible difference that you also get some amount of information regarding the degree to which you are stepping up from where you are starting from, and note length. (Though I have no idea how/if they indicate the starting pitch. I guess there's only so much you can expect out of a system meant to remind you of what you should already be learning.)

The Papal hymn "Piehmot Ghar" with its hazzat, for example:

Being informal as it is, you can get a lot of variation in terms of how a particular change is represented, e.g., the "pointing arrows" on this handwritten hazzat chart for the gospel response for the Nativity, which as far as I can tell are absent from the computer font developed for the same notation (shown in the previous video).

All the way to stuff like this, which looks like someone repeatedly bumping into one of those machines they use to measure earthquakes at geological observatories:

God bless the 17 people who apparently found that last one helpful...even if they took the reverb off of the recording, I'd still find it virtually impossible to follow!

 

[tz620q]

I had never heard of octoechos until the OP. In the Roman Catholic rite, there are two forms of what might be called chant. The most common is intonation, where the text is sung using a set mode of pitches. This is often written in the 5 line staff of western music, like what you posted. The second and less frequent is Gregorian chant that uses the older 4 line staff and neumes used in Gregorian compostion. I have done both. Tomorrow I will see if I can get an example of each.

Here is a short example of Gregorian chant.

The mark that looks like a bolded C on the top line at the left is the placement of C on the diatonic scale. So this chant would start on A. The neumes for this are square "notes" and indicate pitch. The first neume has one square and a second above it with a flat sign. You start on the A pitch and slide to the Bflat on the first syllable of the first word of text. This neume is called a podatus. The first word is Kyrie. So the podatus is sang on the "Ky". I won't go too much farther into the notation except to note that the square "notes" with the point after them are lengthened. Ideally the chant rhythm should flow freely and follow the meter of the text more than traditional Western metrical music.

 

[tz620q]

Byzantine notation is completely different to the music most people are accustomed to.
There will be a notation which indicates which of the eight 'tones' the hymn is to be sung in and the starting note (similar to Do-Re-Mi...etc). After that the music consists of symbols which indicate how many steps up, or down the scale the next note is from the previous note. Every note is relative to the previous note unlike Western notation where every note is absolute.
At regular intervals the starting note for the next section will be given, just in case you lose track.
As you become more accustomed to reading Byzantine notation it becomes a lot like how we learn to read. We start off by reading the individual letters and working out what the word is but as we become proficient we recognise whole words, even phrases, at a time. With Byzantine notation we start to recognise 'words' and 'phrases' of melody instead of "up three notes, down two notes, down four then up one", etc. so it becomes much easier to follow the music and allows us to concentrate more on the words we are chanting.
Hymns can also change briefly from one tone to another then back again, which is something I struggle with, but I am just a beginner.
Only a couple of the eight tones correspond to the Western diatonic scale. The rest have note intervals which range from slightly less than a semitone to more than a tone, which is what gives Eastern music that exotic sound to Western ears.
Historically, the eight tones were taken from an existing music tradition which was much broader, but there were other tones which were deemed inappropriate for worship such as tones used by the military or for the bawdy songs you might hear in the Taverna's, much how it would not be considered appropriate to use jazz music for worship today (although I'm sure there is a Protestant Church out there somewhere which does).

To me it is beautiful when done right. The chanter that I talked too had been a voice major in college and could certainly do it well. I do wonder why they have not recorded this like the many monastic orders have done for plainchant pieces.

 

[All4Christ]

Regarding the pointing, it looks like the Anglican Church retained some of that in the chanting of the Psalter. It’s a variation slightly different than the one we use and the one @dzheremi mentioned, but it has similarities.

 

[dzheremi]

Regarding the pointing, it looks like the Anglican Church retained some of that in the chanting of the Psalter. It’s a variation slightly different than the one we use and the one @dzheremi mentioned, but it has similarities.

Paging @Philip_B or anyone else who might have examples!