Illustration of byzantine musical manuscripts

The focus of this essay is the Easter doxastikon Άγγελοι σκιρτήσατε. It is a sticheron of the Greek Orthodox Church of special importance, from the textual point of view and also from that palaeographic-musical. Just think that this chant, which is traditionally ascribed in some medieval manuscripts to the Palestinian hymnographer St. John of Damascus or to the Emperor of Constantinople Leo VI “the Wise”, was passed down through the most ancient Byzantine liturgico- musical books, and with all the main Byzantine notational systems. In this study, therefore, is analyzed this important sticheron, trying to trace the origin of the composition. It will be found that there are several versions, both textual that melodic.
Particularly interesting are the draftings transmitted only by codes producted in the scriptorium of Grottaferrata and then published in the earliest Roman printed editions, or that handed down by the manuscripts preserved at Mount Athos and from Constantinopolitan origin. More reviews instead seem to bring us back to a tradition of sabaitic- Palestinian matrix. Accompanying this study some plates, figures and tables, and finally some musical transcriptions from the Middle Byzantine notation, particularly related to important codes that transmit simultaneously a twofold editing of the doxastikon, textual and melodic, attributable to a single scribe, with the musical styles syllabic and melismatic-kalophonic.

The idea of illustrating melodies it’s a given in Byzantine Music Theory; it’s mainly related to the technique of the so-called Cheironomia [gesticulation]; it’s really admirable, for instance, what Kyrillos Marmarinos, former bishop of Tenos, relevantly writes in his theoretical treatise: “cheironomia is the movement of the hands which designs the melody”. Going through analogous Byzantine and post-Byzantine theoretical treatises one can easily find some kind of “Iconographical Instructions” regarding basic elements of Byzantine Music Theory and Practice, such as (for example) musical signs; in the well known anonymous treatise of Questions and Answers on the Interval Signs there are such instructions about Ison sign: “…about how <Ison> is the beginning and foundation of all the signs, that is because neither a master-builder, nor a painter, nor a copyist can accomplish anything without a point. For when […] a painter is drawing a face, or a hand, or a foot, it is impossible for him not in the beginning to make a point; and when he makes a circle, a point is always being made in the middle of the circle; and how? since the compasses have two parts, he places one part on his piece of paper or on the wall and turns the other and the point is being made […] Thus also the beginning of the Ison is a point, and from the point there is a horizontal stroke going neither up nor down, and for thet reason it is called Ison”. In addition, Ison sign is similarly described in Chrysanthos’ Great Theory of Music [: “The Ison was thus called because it keeps the sound unbending; its cheironomia was done the way we do the sign of the cross, three fingers forming the symbol of the Holy Trinity”], since he is mostly influenced by (and frequently quotes from) a very interesting theoretical text of the 13th century, the Interpretation of the Signs by Michael Blemmydes, where the same sign is known under the following Question-and-Answer form: “What sign is the ison cheironomized by? By the sign of the Holy Trinity; just as the Holy Trinity is trinal – [for] in holiness the Father, nor the Son, nor the Holy Spirit exceeds [each other]; so is the ison chanted, when the fingers are put together”. This paper will be an attempt to further investigate that phenomenon; an attempt to combine usual theoretical instructions (based on the description of Byzantine Music signs, for instance) with a drawing (designed through some iconographical representations, taken from specific scenes from the life of Christ, well known to Byzantine Iconography), an image that can be considered as a visual example of possible illustrated version of any melody.