page_title: Hagiopolitan Octoechos
section_title: Latin reception
hierarchical_section_title: Hagiopolitan Octoechos / Latin reception
caption_attribution_description: English: Beginning of the tonary-fragment of Saint-Riquier (section of the autentus protus)—one of the oldest Carolingian tonaries, "Psalter of Charlemagne" (8th century)
context_page_description: Oktōēchos is the name of the eight mode system used for the composition of religious chant in Byzantine, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, Latin and Slavic churches since the Middle Ages. In a modified form the octoechos is still regarded as the foundation of the tradition of monodic Orthodox chant today.
  The Octoechos as a liturgical concept which established an organization of the calendar into eight-week cycles, was the invention of monastic hymnographers at Mar Saba in Palestine and in Constantinople. It was formally accepted in the Quinisext Council of 692, which also aimed to replace the exegetic poetry of the kontakion and other homiletic poetry, as it was sung during the morning service of the cathedrals.
  One reason why another eight mode system was established by Frankish reformers during the Carolingian reform, may well have been that Pope Adrian I accepted the seventh-century Eastern reform for the Western Church as well during the 787 synod. The only evidence for this is an abbreviated chant book called a "tonary". It was a list of incipits of chants ordered according to the intonation formula of each church tone and its psalmody.
context_section_description: The introduction of the eight mode system in Western chant traditions was part of the Carolingian reform. Officially, it was motivated by Pope Adrian I's confirmation of an earlier Eastern chant reform during the synode in 787, during which he accepted the reform for the Western traditions as well. Nevertheless, a Carolingian interest for the Byzantine octoechos can already be dated back to a visit some years earlier, when a Byzantine legacy introduced a series of antiphons sung during a procession for Epiphany. These antiphons served as a model for the eight modes according to the Hagiopolitan system.
  The contemporary invention of a proper Latin version of the eight mode system was mainly studied from two perspectives:
  the reception of Ancient Greek music theory since Boethius and the synthesis between music theory as a science and a liberal art of the mathematic Quadrivium on the one hand, and as a medium of chant transmission on the other hand. The eight church tones were called after the names of octave species, which were not connected with modal patterns and plainchant theory in earlier times.
  the simplification of chant transmission by a Western manuscript type called tonary which allowed the transfer of a huge chant repertoire like the Roman one, but also its deductive modal classification which changed the oral transmission of chant entirely.
caption: The earliest tonary: the fragment of Saint-Riquier (F-Pn lat. Ms. 13159, fol. 167r)
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