page_title: Byzantine music
section_title: The transformation of the kontakion
hierarchical_section_title: Byzantine music / The monastic reform of the Stoudites and their notated chant books / The transformation of the kontakion
caption_attribution_description: English: Kontakion for Saint Anthimus Hieromartyr (3 September) in a 10th-century kontakarion (Sin. gr, 925, fol. 2v)
context_page_description: Byzantine music is the music of the Byzantine Empire. Originally it consisted of songs and hymns composed to Greek texts used for courtly ceremonials, during festivals, or as paraliturgical and liturgical music. The ecclesiastical forms of Byzantine music are the best known forms today, because different Orthodox traditions still identify with the heritage of Byzantine music, when their cantors sing monodic chant out of the traditional chant books such as sticherarion, which in fact consisted of five books, and the heirmologion.
  Byzantine music did not disappear after the fall of Constantinople. Its traditions continued under the Patriarchate of Constantinople, which after the Ottoman conquest in 1453 was granted administrative responsibilities over all Orthodox Christians. During the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, burgeoning splinter nations in the Balkans declared autonomy or "autocephaly" against the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The new self-declared patriarchates were independent nations defined by their religion.
context_section_description: The former genre and glory of Romanos' kontakion was not abandoned by the reformers, even contemporary poets in a monastic context continued to compose new liturgical kontakia (mainly for the menaion), it likely preserved a modality different from Hagiopolitan oktoechos hymnography of the sticherarion and the heirmologion.
  But only a limited number of melodies or kontakion mele had survived. Some of them were rarely used to compose new kontakia, other kontakia which became the model for eight prosomoia called “kontakia anastasima” according to the oktoechos, had been frequently used. The kontakion ὁ ὑψωθεῖς ἐν τῷ σταυρῷ for the feast of cross exaltation (14 September) was not the one chosen for the prosomoion of the kontakion anastasimon in the same echos, it was actually the kontakion ἐπεφάνης σήμερον for Theophany (6 January). But nevertheless, it represented the second important melos of the echos tetartos which was frequently chosen to compose new kontakia, either for the prooimion (introduction) or for the oikoi (the stanzas of the kontakion called "houses"). Usually these models were not rubrified as “avtomela”, but as idiomela which means that the modal structure of a kontakion was more complex, similar to a sticheron idiomelon changing through different echoi.
  This new monastic type of kontakarion can be found in the collection of Saint Catherine's Monastery on the peninsula of Sinai (ET-MSsc Ms. Gr. 925–927) and its kontakia had only a reduced number of oikoi. The earliest kontakarion (ET-MSsc Ms. Gr. 925) dating to the 10th century might serve as an example. The manuscript was rubrified Κονδακάριον σῦν Θεῷ by the scribe, the rest is not easy to decipher since the first page was exposed to all kinds of abrasion, but it is obvious that this book is a collection of short kontakia organised according to the new menaion cycle like a sticherarion, beginning with 1 September and the feast of Symeon the Stylite. It has no notation, instead the date is indicated and the genre κονδάκιον is followed by the dedicated Saint and the incipit of the model kontakion (not even with an indication of its echos by a modal signature in this case).
  Folio 2 verso shows a kontakion ἐν ἱερεῦσιν εὐσεβῶς διαπρέψας which was composed over the prooimion used for the kontakion for cross exaltation ὁ ὑψωθεῖς ἐν τῷ σταυρῷ. The prooimion is followed by three stanzas called oikoi, but they all share with the prooimion the same refrain called “ephymnion” (ἐφύμνιον) ταὶς σαῖς πρεσβεῖαις which concludes each oikos. But the model for these oikoi was not taken from the same kontakion, but from the other kontakion for Theophany whose first oikos had the incipit τῇ γαλιλαίᾳ τῶν ἐθνῶν.
caption: Kontakion ἐν ἱερεῦσιν εὐσεβῶς διαπρέψας for Saint Anthimus (μηνὶ τῷ αὐτῷ ·Γ᾽· “in the same month 3rd”: 3 September) sung with the melody of the idiomelon ὁ ὑψωθεῖς ἐν τῷ σταυρῷ (prooimion) and with the melody of the oikos τῇ γαλιλαίᾳ τῶν ἐθνῶν (oikoi) in echos tetartos (ET-MSsc Ms. Gr. 925, f.2v)
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