Octoechos (liturgy)

This article is about the book of liturgical texts set to the ancient Byzantine musical system of eight modes, and their use liturgically. For the musical system itself, see Octoechos.

A liturgical book called an Octoechos containing sets of hymns for each of eight echoi (tones or modes) exists for many rites of Eastern Christianity. These are somewhat analogous the tonaries of the Western Church but differ by being organized as temporal cycles and, generally, being significantly longer as well as containing only text and never musical notation.

Eastern Orthodox

The Octoechos (Greek: Ὀκτώηχος; Slavonic: Октоихъ, Oktoikhə, or Осмогласникъ, Osmoglasnikə)—literally, "Eight-Tone"—contains texts for each day of the week for each of the eight tones.

The origins of this book go back to the Monastery of Mar Sabba in Palestine, with compositions by St. John Damascene (c. 676–749).

Choral singing saw its most brilliant development in the temple of Holy Wisdom in Constantinople during the reign of Emperor Justinian the Great. National Greek musical harmonies, or modes — the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, and Mixolydian modes — were adapted to the needs of Christian hymnography. Ven John of Damascus started a new, third period in the history of Church singing. He introduced what is known as the osmoglasie — a system of singing in eight tones, or melodies —, and compiled a liturgical singing book bearing the title "Ochtoechos," which literally signifies "the book of the eight tones."

This was expanded upon by St. Cosmas of Maiuma († 773) and other prominent hymnographers including Saint Joseph the Hymnographer (810-886); Saint Theophanes the Branded, Bishop of Nicaea (c. 775-845); Paul of Amorium; Metrophanes of Smyrna; as well as numerous anonymous authors.

The Oktoechos was the very first book printed (incunabulum) in Cyrillic typeface, published in 1491 in Kraków by Schweipolt Fiol, a German native of Franconia. Only seven copies of this first publication are known to remain and the only complete one is in the collection of the Russian National Library.

Use

The cycle of the eight tones is a part of the Paschal cycle (moveable cycle) of the church year, commencing with the second Sunday of (the eighth day of) Easter, that week using the first tone, the next week using the second tone, and so, though all eight tones, thereafter repeating and continuing through the Friday preceding the subsequent Palm Sunday. Each day of the week has a distinct theme for which hymns in each tone are found in the texts of the Octoechos.

The book "Octoechos" is not used until the Sunday after Pentecost, the hymns for the cycle of the tones until then being found in the Pentecostarion, albeit including some text duplicated from the Sunday services in the Octoechos. Thereafter, the singing of the Ochtoechos on weekdays commences, finishing before Saturday of Meatfare Week. During the most of the period when the lenten Triodion is used as well as the period from Pascha until Pentecost, the Ochtoechos is not sung on weekdays and it is furthermore not sung on Sundays from Palm Sunday athrough the Sunday of All Saints.

The hymns of the Octoechos are combined with hymns from two other sources: On the fixed cycle, i.e., dates of the calendar year, the Menaion and on the movable cycle, according to season, the Lenten Triodion (in combination from the previous year's Paschal cycle). The texts from these volumes displace some of those from the Octoechos so that the less text from the Octoechos is used on days when more is used from the other books; on major feast days, hymns from the Menaion entirely displace those from the Octoechos except on Sundays, when only a few Great Feasts of the Lord eclipse the Octoechos. Note that the Octoechos contains sufficient texts so that none of these other books needs to be used — a holdover from before the invention of printing and the completion and wide distribution of the rather large 12-volume Menaion — but portions of the Octoechos (e.g., the last three stichera on "Lord, I have cried") are seldom used nowadays and often are omitted from printed volumes.

Musical execution

Main article: Octoechos

Further information: Byzantine music

Further information: authentic mode

Further information: plagal mode

The first four of the tones are the authentic modes, and the remaining four are plagal modes, the latter term coming from the Medieval Greek plagios, "oblique" (from plagos, "side"). The plagal modes have a range from the fourth below to the fifth above their final tone and in Byzantine music, there are further subtle differences.

The Octoechos is not printed with musical notation and the determination of a hymn's melody — as is the melody of hymns from other liturgical books where a tone is specified — is based on several criteria:

Some stichera, kathismata, kondakia, etc., are written in strict meter — with a fixed rhythmic element where the number of lines in a verse, the number of syllables in each line, and the arrangement of those syllables as accented or unaccented — and are designated as having their own hymn tune or melody in a specified tone, called an automelon. For example, the kondakion for Christmas is designated to be sung in tone 3 as an automelon: having its own distinct meter with each stanza having the same number of syllables with accents in the same places, it was composed with its own distinct melody that repeats for each stanza,

Ἡ Παρθένος σήμερον τὸν ὑπερούσιον τίκτει
καὶ ἡ γῆ τὸ σπήλαιον τῷ ἀπροσίτῳ προσάγει,
Ἄγγελοι μετά ποιμένων δοξολογούσι,
Μάγοι δὲ μετά ἀστέρος ὁδοιπορούσιν,
δι’ ἡμάς γὰρ ἐγεννήθη παιδίον νέον,
ὁ πρὸ αἰώνων Θεός.

A hymn may imitate an automelon both melodically and metrically, the text having the same number of syllables with the same accent placements as the corresponding automelon, and therefore can be, and is, sung to exactly the same melody as the pattern hymn. Such a hymn, called prosomoion, is designated by the tone and opening words of the hymn it imitates. For example, the Octoechos' kondakion for Sunday matins for tone 3 is designated to be sung to the melody of the above kondakion for Christmas; both kondakia have the same number syllables with accents in the same places, so the exact melody of the former is simply used for the latter, the text of the latter being patterned on that of the former.
Irmological melodies, which employ a slightly modified scale for each tone are used primarily for canons; in canons, each troparion in an ode uses the meter and melody of the ode's irmos (analogous to prosomoia for sticheraric modes of a tone) and, therefore, even when a canon's irmos is never sung, its irmos is nonetheless specified so as to indicate the melody.

Texts with musical notation

A volume called an "Irmologion" contains the irmosi of all the canons of all eight tones as well as a few sundry other pieces of music

Sundry abridged texts of the Octoechos that include musical notation are frequently published; most commonly, these contain the texts for vespers and matins for Saturday nights and Sunday mornings. For example, in 1905 Zographou published a set of music books in Slavonic, the first volume of which consists of Saturday night vespers and Sunday morning matins from the Octoechos. A singer's Octoechos with musical notation developed commencing in the late fifteenth century in the Russian Church, the first printed edition of which, the Oktoikh notnago peniya, sirech' Osmoglasnik, using square notation, was published in 1772 containing hymns in Znamenny Chant, as well as generic "pattern melodies" for different types of hymns for each tone; a newer analogous volume, the "Sputnik Psalomshcika" ("The Chanter's Companion") was republished in 1959 by Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY, USA. Also, "The Church Obihod of Notational Singing" contains, among other hymns, hymns from the Ochtoechos.

Nomenclature

The names ascribed to the eight tones in the texts of the Octoechos (and other books) differs in translations into Church Slavonic. For reference, these differences are shown here together with their equivalents in the music of ancient Greece and in Gregorian chant; the sundry names used by the Oriental Orthodox churches are found below in the appropriate sections.

Original Byzantine	Church Slavonic	Ancient Greek	Gregorian
First	First	Dorian	First
Second	Second	Phrygian	Third
Third	Third	Lydian	Fifth
Fourth	Fourth	Mixolydian	Seventh
Plagal of the First	Fifth	Hypodorian	Second
Plagal of the Second	Sixth	Hypophrygian	Fourth
Grave	Seventh	Hypolydian	Sixth
Plagal of the Fourth	Eighth	Hypomixolydian	Eighth

Note that southern Slavs use the Byzantine musical system and, nonetheless, use the variant numbering that is always found in Church Slavonic texts

Caveat

Northern Slavs in modern times often do not use the eight-tone music system — although they always do use the book Octoechos — rather singing all hymns in the same scale but with different melodies for each tone for each of several types of classifications of hymns.

Oriental Orthodox

Syriac Usage

The Syriac Orthodox Church also makes use of a system of eight modes (makams). Each hymn (Syriac: qolo, plural: qole) is composed in one of these eight modes. Some modes have variants (shuhlophe) similar to the "special melodies" mentioned above. Only skilled chanters can master these variants.

The modal cycle consists of eight weeks. Each Sunday or Feast day is assigned one of the eight modes. During the weekday offices, known in Syriac by the name Shhimo, the 1st and 5th modes are paired together, so are the 2nd and 6th, the 3rd and 7th, and the 4th and 8th. If a particular Sunday makes use of the 1st mode, the following Monday is sung with the 5th mode, Tuesday with the 1st mode, etc., with the pair alternating every day of the week (see the table provided in Guide to the Eight Modes in the External Links below).

The ecclesiastical year starts with Qudosh `Idto (The Consecration of the Church), a feast observed on the eighth Sunday before Christmas (Yaldo). The 1st mode is sung on this day. The following Sunday makes use of the 2nd mode, and so on, repeating the cycle until it starts again the next year. The cycle is interrupted only by feasts which have their own tones assigned to them. Similar to the Byzantine usage, each day of Easter Week has its own mode, except the Syriacs do not skip the 7th mode. Thus, the Sunday after Easter, called New Sunday (Hadto) is in the 8th mode rather than the 1st.

In one type of hymn used by the Syriac Church, the Qole Shahroye (Vigils), each of the modes is dedicated to a theme: The 1st and 2nd modes are dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the 3rd and 4th to the saints, the 5th and 6th to penitence, and the 7th and 8th to the departed.

The primary collection of hymns in the eight modes is the Beth Gazo d-ne`motho, or "Treasury of Chants."

Armenian Usage

In the Armenian Apostolic Church, the system of eight modes is referred to as oot tzayn (eight voices). Although there is no structural relation between the Greek and Armenian modes, the division into "Authentic" and "Plagal" modes is parallel. In Armenian terminology, the "Authentic" modes are referred to as "Voice" (Tzayn) and the "Plagal" modes are called "Side" (Koghm), and are utilized in the following order:

Greek	Armenian
First	First Voice
Plagal of the First	First Side
Second	Second Voice
Plagal of the Second	Second Side
Third	Third Voice
Grave	Third Side
Fourth	Fourth Voice
Plagal of the Fourth	Fourth Side

This order is important, because it is the order in which the modes are used liturgically. Instead of using one tone per week, the Armenians use one tone per day. Easter Sunday is always the First Voice, the next day is First Side, and so on throughout the year. However, the cycle does not actually begin on Easter day, but counts backwards from Easter Sunday to the First Sunday in Lent, which is always Forth Side, regardless of what mode the previous day was. Each mode of the oot tzayn has one or more tartzwadzk‘ (auxiliary) modes.

The Sharagnots is the book which contains the Sharakan, or Sharagan (Canons), hymns which constitute the substance of the musical system of Armenian liturgical chant in the eight modes. Originally, these were Psalms and Biblical Canticles that were chanted during the services. A Sharagan was composed of verses which were interspersed between the scriptural verses. Eventually, the Sharagan replaced the biblical text entirely. In addition, the eight modes are applied to the psalms of the Night office, called ganonaklookh (Canon head). the Armenian Church also makes use of other modes outside of the oot tzayn.

On-Line Texts of the Octoechos (Eastern Orthodox)

• [9] "Complete text of the Ochtoechos in Church Slavonic as 56 PDFs (excludes thse stichera always eclipsed by the Menaion)", Retrieved 2012-01-19
• [10] "Vespers from the Sunday Ochtoechos, with music, in English", Retrieved 2012-01-19
• [11] "Matins from the Sunday Ochtoechos, with music, in English", Retrieved 2012-01-19

See also

• Syriac sacral music
• Armenian chant
• Sticherarion

References

• Archbishop Averky († 1976); Archbishop Laurus (2000). "Liturgics". Holy Trinity Orthodox School, Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, 466 Foothill Blvd, Box 397, La Canada, California 91011, USA. Retrieved 15 January 2012. 
• Тvпико́нъ сiесть уста́въ (Title here transliterated into Russian; actually in Church Slavonic) (The Typicon which is the Order), Москва (Moscow, Russian Empire): Сvнодальная тvпографiя (The Synodal Printing House), 1907 
• "The Three Classes of Melodic Forms for Stichera". HYMNOGRAPHY. PSALOM – Traditional Eastern Orthodox Chant Documentation Project. Retrieved 16 January 2012. 

External links

• Use of the Eight Tones by St. Kosmas of Maiouma
• The Armenian Octoechos Ensemble Akn
• "ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ ΛΕΙΤΟΥΡΓΙΚΑ ΚΕΙΜΕΝΑ ΤΗΣ ΟΡΘΟΔΟΞΗΣ ΕΚΚΛΗΣΙΑΣ". Retrieved 24 August 2012. 
• "Texts from Oktoikh, sirech Osmoglasnik". Moscow: Editions of the Moscow Patriarchate. 1981. Retrieved 24 August 2012.