Orthodox Music

The last post I did, the one about bringing Tahitian music into the Church was a joke - kind of like Bishop Tikhon's joke about Barbershop Qurtet music. But the music was beautiful, wasn't it?

The thing about Orthodox Christian music that makes it very difficult for us to adopt other forms of music is that much of it is of Heavenly origin. We all know the story of the Trisagion Hymn: Anatolian child who was liften up into a tornado and heard the angels singing. And we know how in the 1st (or was it the 2nd?)century an angel taught St. Ignatius of Antioch to use antiphony. THere is more to it than that, though. Below is a paper I wrote for school a year ago. It isn't the best structured paper, but the facts are all researched. There is a problem with posting footnotes that I haven't figured out, but I've included the bibliography and will be happy to email the paper with footnotes to anyone who wants a copy.

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A Preliminary Inquiry into the Spiritual Origin and Significance of the Eight Tones

By Matt Karnes

A visitor to an Orthodox temple is likely hear a reader announce “the prokeimenon in Fourth Tone…” and this might be the only hint a first time visitor notices that there is something markedly different about Orthodox Christian music. Oliver Strunk of Princeton University has pointed out, rightly, I think, that “one striking characteristic of the Eastern Service book is that each melody – indeed, each text intended for singing – is headed by some indication of its mode.”# The eight tones or modes (Greek: ekhoi - tone and mode are only two of the possible English translations of this word.#) are the “eight different melody stores or variants”# in which all Orthodox Church singing is firmly rooted. The term “mode” can be confusing to Westerners. The reason for this is that in the West modality is predominantly associated with a certain scale, while in the Byzantine system, the mode is defined by types of melodic patterns that are grouped together, each group forming the mode.# This modality is not merely happenstance, rather it is ancient tradition - from the creation of the world#, and it is spiritual – reflecting or participating in the music in heavenly realms. Therefore we read Ben Sira’s words praising, Isaac, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, and Enoch, in Ecclesiasticus 44:5, which can be translated “such as adapted music according to tradition”.#

The idea of spiritual power residing in, or being controlled by music is not confined to the Orthododox Church or the people of God in the Old Testament. For example, in Indian religion each mode is mystically connected to a god or goddess.# Also, in the Chinese Book of Ceremonies there are prescriptions for which melodies can be played at certain time of the day so that disorder can be avoided.#
In Plato’s Timaeus is written the story of the demiurge# who created the world according to Pythagorean# mathematics and musical theory#. This resulted in a World-soul and human soul that are in relation to each other according to their shared ratios, or harmonia. Therefore Plato writes,

“… so much of music…is granted to us for the sake of harmony; and harmony, which has motions akin to the revolutions of our souls, is not regarded by the intelligent votary of the Muses as given by them with a view to irrational pleasure, which is deemed to be the purpose of it in our day, but as meant to correct any discord which may have arisen in the courses of the soul, and to be our ally in bringing her into harmony and agreement with herself; and rhythm too was given by them for the same reason, on account of the irregular and graceless ways which prevail among mankind generally, and to help us against them.” #

Thus we can see that in the great human civilizations in India, Greece, and China there is a shared notion that music is more than mere vibration of air on timpanic membranes. Rather, music is deeply spiritual or magical.

Yet there is one extremely important civilization I have yet to discuss: Egypt. Egypt is so important because of Moses. According to Philo, “…[Moses] speedily learnt arithmetic, and geometry, and the whole science of rhythm and harmony and metre, and the whole of music, by means of the use of musical instruments…” #

Assuming Philo’s information is correct, there are two reasons why we need to take note of it. Firstly, Moses is a bridge back to the hierophantic tradition of Egypt. The Egyptian hierophants believed in the spiritual power of music (all art, really), as though it was magic. And their influence is known to have set music into forms that remained unchanged# even after the reforms of the 18th Dynasty.#

Secondly, unlike he did with images#, Moses never prohibited the use of music, which seems very odd, given the sacral context of music in Egypt and the jealousy of the God of Abraham.# But does this mean that the spiritual tradition of the ancients was passed down to the Orthodox Church? Can we even be sure that the tradition made its way from Abraham to Moses without being polluted by Egyptian idolatry? Maybe.
The conservatism in the music of the Church (both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament) is well known. For example, Wellesz mentions the fact that after thousands of years of separation the tune formulae for the Psalms is essentially the same in modern Persian and Moroccan synagogues, the 10th century Roman Church, and the modern Orthodox Church.# But that has more to do with the structure of the music than with the spirituality or theology of the music.#

One doesn’t have to look very hard at the Old Testament to see the post-Exodus Israelites’ “belief in the power of music”#. Elisha used music in the miraculous watering of a valley.# David used music to relieve the torment King Saul endured at the hand of an evil spirit.# David#, Job#, and Jeremiah# all expressed concern because of their enemies’ singing. Though these and many other Old Testament passages# show us the theology in the music, they don’t seem to say much about modality in Israelite religious music. However, such references do exist.

In the superscription to the 12th Psalm is this word, ‘al-hasseminit# The whole phrase could be translated “For the chief musician in the 8th tone”.# In 1 Chronicles 15:20-21# both the 1st tone, ‘alamot and the the 8nd tone, ‘al-hassemint are mentioned, almost in a way similar to Jesus use of A and Ω in Revelation.#


Bibliography

Drillock, David, Byzantine Chant, Jacob's Well, Fall-Winter 1998-99, http://www.liturgica.com/html/litEOLitMusDev3.jsp#byzantine Accessed 8 December 2006

Philo, De Vita Mosis, I, 23. http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/yonge/book24.html
Accessed 9 December 2006

Plato, Timaeus (Trans: Jowett, Benjamin), http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html Accessed 9 December 2006

Pythagoreanism, EncyclopÊdia Britannica. Accessed 9 December 2006 from EncyclopÊdia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-68377

Seppala, Hilkka, The System of the eight Ekhoi and Orthodox Church Music in Finland, Ortodoksisen teologisen laitoksen julkaisuja no:22 (Joensuu, 1996)

Seppala, Hilkka, The Solemn Recitation, Byzantium and the North, Acta Byzantina Fennica, Volume IV (Finnish Association for Byzantine Studies: Helsinki)

Strunk, Oliver, Essays on Music in the Byzantine World (W.W. Norton & Co.: New York, 1977)

Wulstan, David, The Origin of the Modes, Studies in Eastern Chant Volume II (Oxford University Press: New York, 1971)

Wellesz, Egon, A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography (The Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1949)