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A Byzantine Musical Handbook at Milan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

Professor Aug. Heisenberg, editor of the Byzantinische Zeitschrift, made a copy some years ago of a text of the Papadike or singer's manual preserved in the volume Codex Ambrosianus O. 123 supra (598 in the printed catalogue), and he has now very kindly passed this on to me for study and publication. Being at Milan in 1925, I verified his transcript, which of course proved to be quite accurate. The Papadike is the most familiar of the mediaeval treatises, and it has already been published in slightly differing versions by M. Paranikas, O. Fleischer and W. Christ. I have collated several manuscript copies, and in the present article it will only be needful to point out a few divergences in the Milan text. The number of MSS. containing the Papadike is very great, which shows it to have been the standard manual of the Round Notation; and probably the essential part was drawn up by the inventors of that notation. But the work was re-edited by many theorists, one of them, according to tradition, being John Cucuzeles (A.D. 1300), although we must reject the notion that he was the original author. Most of the copies, like ours, were made in the fifteenth century.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1926

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References

1 Authorities.—The English reader may refer to my little book, Byzantine Music and Hymnography, noticed in Laudate, vol. ii., No. 2, p. 127.

A good summary of recent progress in the subject, with full references, will be found in E. Wellesz, Aufgaben u.Probleme auf d. Gebiet d. Byz. u. orient. Kirchenmus.

The important article of Hoëg, C., Revue des Études grecques, tome xxv., No. 162, p. 321Google Scholar, shouldalso be consulted on the origin of the Byz. modal system and some recent papyrus-finds.

2 p. 164 (Hadrianople MS.).

3 Neumenstudien, T. 3, pp. 17 ff.

4 Sitzungsber. d. k. bay. Akad. d. Wiss., phil.-hist. Klasse, 1870, vol. ii., p. 270 (appendix). W. Christ did not observe that the Papadike contained the key to the Round Notation, then undeciphered.

5 Fleischer, op. cit., p. 18, has as title, The preamble and the first two sections agree (save for a few trifling verbal points) with ours.

6 So also in Fleischer, p. 20.

7 On questions connected with the names of the mediaeval modes and their origin see Mountford, J. F. article, J.H.S., vol. xl., p. 37.Google Scholar Fleischer, pp. 36 ff., has gathered the same information from the Codex Chrysander (fourteenth century). But the latter adds the Echemata (melodic formulae), which our MS. gives more fully elsewhere. See also B.S.A., XXII., 137.

8 Missing in Fleischer's MSS. For a discussion of these see my article, B.S.A., XXI., pp. 125 ff. I hold fast to the views there set out.

9 Cf. Fleischer, op. cit., pp. 49 ff.

10 Christ, W. and Paranikas, M., Anthol. Gr. Carminum Christianorum, p. cxxii.Google Scholar

11 Fleischer, pp. 21–3.

12 Quoted in Psachos, (K. A.): Ἡ παρασημαντικὴ τῆς Βυζ̣ Μουσικῆς (Athens, 1917), p. 65.Google Scholar (For a criticism of the ‘stenographic theory’; advocated by Psachos see my article in Laudate, December 1924, p. 216.)

13 Op. cit., Transcriptions, pp. 1–10.

14 See Chrysanthus, , Φεωρητικὸν Μεγὰ τῆς Μουσικῆς (Athens reprint), p. 190.Google Scholar In Byzantine MSS. the syllables (from to warble) are used in florid passages where no verbal sense was conveyed.

15 The medley of classical and Byzantine theory ascribed to Hagiopolites is undoubtedly the work of many hands. A complete text is not available; the best is that of Thibaut, , Monuments d. l. Notation Ekphon. et Hagiopolite, etc., p. 57.Google Scholar

16 The formulae given by Chrysanthus are transcribed by Rebours, , Traité de Psaltique, p. 280.Google Scholar Both writers note the difference between the modern and the mediaeval Echemata. The syllables were sometimes confused. Cf. Fleischer, op. cit., pp. 37 ff., where Mode III. is called Nana.

17 See for Russian music, O. von Riesemann, Die Notationen d. altruss. Kirchengesanges; for late Byzantine, Psachos, op. cit., Plate ΙΣΤ′; for Syrian and Serbian, Wellesz, E., Zeitschr. f. Musikwissenschaft, II Jahrgang, 3 Heft, p. 140.Google Scholar

18 My article, B.S.A. XXII., 147. Thibaut's experiments, Jeannin, Dom, Mélodies lit. syriennes et chaldéennes (Paris, 1924), p. 137.Google Scholar