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Although Nabataean Painted Fine Ware (NPFW) has been examined in light of Stephan Schmid's chronological typology since the late 1990s, few stratified contexts with NPFW from outside Petra have been published, and none derived from contexts occupied continuously from the Nabataean through Byzantine periods. Questions remain about the dating of later Dekorphases (3-4) due to a lack of contexts. This paucity is remedied, however, by Area K at Roman Aqaba/Aila, Jordan. Area K was a domestic complex, just inside the later Byzantine city wall, excavated from 1994 through 2002. Using associated numismatic evidence and imported fine wares (primarily Eastern Sigillata A and African Red Slip), this paper argues that NPFW Dekorphase 3b appeared at Aila in the second half of the 1st century CE, and Dekorphase 3c appeared shortly afterwards, around the time of the Roman annexation in the beginning of the 2nd century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Soundscapes of Byzantium, a collaborative effort across the world aimed at seeking to investigate the liturgical spaces of Byzantine through the scientific analysis of acoustics. The role of sound in the experience of the medieval worshipper and the association of chant, acoustics and architecture are explored. The mystagogical interpretation of worship as attested as early as late antiquity is also tackled.

Mastering an art form as elaborate and rich in heritage as the psaltic art is difficult. Apart from the necessary zeal and talent on behalf of the student, it requires access to resources and experienced teachers as well as a learning methodology suitable for preserving the art as it has been traditionally transmitted over hundreds of years from its primary source, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. By tracing the learner journey of Angelos Voudouris from a young child to becoming an accomplished Patriarchal psaltis in the early 20th century, as documented in his musicological memoirs, this article examines the challenges and opportunities of his journey contrasted with other approaches in order to make recommendations relevant to learning and teaching the psaltic art today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reimagining Romanos the Melodist's On the Victory of the Cross, this paper explores the relationship between cognition and emotion in the performance of this hymn in Byzantium. It argues that the affective mysticism of Byzantine hymnody portrayed sacred music as a liturgical act that mirrored the heavenly choir of angels and shaped the passions of the singer's soul. Beginning with a brief overview of rhetoric, emotions and mystagogy in Byzantium, the paper then examines Romano's On the Victory of the Cross and how its liturgical performance transformed emotions, placing them within an eschatological context. By reimagining the historical performance of Romano's text--to the extent possible--this paper probes how hymnography and holy ritual embodied godly emotions, inviting the faithful to feel beyond their nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the works of St Maximus the Confessor, the term 'desire' encompasses a number of notions, which have been studied by scholars such as Bathrellos, Blowers, Bradshaw, Gauthier, and Loudovikos. Considering Maximus' views as part of Byzantine philosophy, my focus in this article is primarily based on the famous differentiation of philosophy as a way of life, as certain praxis, from philosophy as a thinking activity. Throughout the Middle Ages, Philosophia Christiana was regarded as a practical way of life. It subsequently became the 'science of sciences' and, as Jean-Luc Marion says, this itself embodies the crisis of philosophy: the divergence of these two ways of understanding philosophy. From this perspective, the text begins with the practical and theoretical differentiation inherited by Maximus from ancient philosophy describing the activities of the soul, and then moves on to the notion of desire in relation to practical reasoning or action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to give an account of the collaboration between a collector of the Byzantine chant tradition of Piana degli Albanesi (Palermo) in Sicily, namely fr. Bartolomeo Di Salvo, and the editorial board of the Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, i.e. an institution under the aegis of the University of Copenhagen. Before describing precisely how this collaboration has developed, I will briefly introduce the "Sicilian-Albanian" oral liturgical chant tradition. Among his publications are Oral performances in a (post)-literate society (Lund, 2016), The songs of the roots (forthcoming chapter on Cretan music, University of Vienna), Creative performance in the liturgy: a formulaic melodic language in the Sicilian-Albanian chant tradition (forthcoming, University of Joensuu, Finland), and several articles as chapters of his doctoral thesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This project examines the communal process of music learning as it occurs in a Byzantine chant learning group at a Greek Orthodox Church. The goal of this project was to investigate the act of music making, as situated in a particular sociocultural context, in order to address the question: Through what processes do individuals share music knowledge and learn together in an informal learning group? These learning practices and this music community allowed me to question and explore how the phenomena of echo (imitation or reflection) and embodiment (internalization) manifest. By contextualizing learning processes socioculturally in a case study, I offer alternative educational theories through examining and understanding music learning as a communal process of knowing and doing, rather than one centered on individual performance and output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sonic and auditory cognitions associated with the sounds and language of the Byzantine Chant are a consequence of the Eastern Orthodox Church's world construction (externalization and objectivation) created through a complex filter of time, place, and identity. Considering varied influences from the European continent, Russia, and the Near East, this paper will explore how geography, culture, cosmogony, and empire conditioned the sonic and auditory developments and perceptions of this sacred chant. Using a cross-disciplinary platform of geo-historical analysis, musical theory, and linguistic philosophy, this paper will consider the following questions: Why does the Eastern Church perceive the monophonic character of this eight-tone (octoechos) chant as the most authentic modus operandi for expressing the language or liturgy of worship? Where does it come from? How was it created? What are its metaphysical, historical, and linguistic roots? How is one called to listen to its sounds? In what ways are the melodic formula, rhythms, and tonality of this chant inextricably linked to specific liturgical texts, human geography, and metaphysical context? The Byzantine Chant illustrates well the connections of sound, tone, and language to Eastern Orthodoxy's inter-civilizational conceptualization and cognition of worship and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Georgian neumatic notation represents one of the oldest phenomena in the musical paleography. The first neumatic examples are dated back at the latest of the 10th century, bearing absolutely original notation system: the neumes are placed above and below of the verbal text, not on each syllable but with intervals. The graphic signs above and below the text-line represent the variations displaced mirror-like. This paper is focused on general principles of the Georgian neumatic system, and on possible comparisons between this system and the Byzantine ekphonetic signs. The author also includes considerations about the sign Theta in Byzantine and Russian Church cultures, and its peculiarities in Georgian sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence and historical development of old Georgian hymnography occurred in parallel with the Byzantine counterpart and implied creation of both translated and original works. Comparison of the Georgian translated hymnography with the Greek original revealed that at different stages of its development the local tradition demonstrates certain differences with respect to the translation method or musical consistent patterns. The present paper deals with only some aspects related to juxtaposition of Georgian translated hymnography with the Greek original, namely, with questions linked to the assignment of echoi and the translation method, which were of equal relevance at various stages of historical development of Georgian chanting culture; however, solutions employed manifest different creative approaches of hymnographers and master composers (xelovantmtavari). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Byzantine Chant performance practice is computationally compared to the Chrysanthine theory of the eight Byzantine Tones (octoechos). Intonation, steps, and prominence of scale degrees are quantified, based on pitch class profiles. The novel procedure introduced here comprises the following analysis steps: (1) the pitch trajectory is extracted and post processed with music-specific filters. (2) Pitch class histograms are calculated by kernel smoothing. (3) Histogram peaks are detected. (4) Phrase ending analysis aids the finding of the tonic to align pitch histograms. (5) The theoretical scale degrees are mapped to the empirical ones. (6) A schema of statistical tests detects significant deviations of theoretical scale tuning and steps from the estimated ones in performance practice. (7) The ranked histogram peak amplitudes are compared to the theoretic prominence of particular scale degrees. The analysis of 94 Byzantine Chants performed by four singers shows a tendency of the singers to level theoretic particularities of the echos that stand out of the general norm in the octoechos: theoretically extremely large steps are diminished in performance. The empirical intonation of the IV. scale degree as the frame of the first tetrachord is more consistent with the theory than the VI. and the VII. scale degree. In practice, smaller scale degree steps (67–133 cents) appear to be increased and the highest scale step of 333 cents appears to be decreased compared to theory. In practice, the first four scale degrees in decreasing order of prominence I, III, II, IV are more prominent than the V., VI., and the VII.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In this paper, I explore general features of the 'architecture' (relations of white space, diagram, and text on the page) of medieval manuscripts and early printed editions of Euclidean geometry. My focus is primarily on diagrams in the Arabic transmission, although I use some examples from both Byzantine Greek and medieval Latin manuscripts as a foil to throw light on distinctive features of the Arabic transmission. My investigations suggest that the 'architecture' often takes shape against the backdrop of an educational landscape. The constraints of the economic marketplace and cultural aesthetic ideals also appear to play a role in determining the 'architecture' of both manuscripts and early printed editions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of the ontological substructions of the Byzantine liturgical chant. The author places the object of study (the sacred Byzantine music) in its natural environment - the church ritual, in which word and gesture, colour and shape, sound and light act synergistically to enable the hierophany. The Orthodox religious practice and the liturgical chant integrated thereto capitalize on the antinomy between circular time and linear time specific to the Byzantine thinking and born from the fusion of the Greco-Roman temporal representations with the Biblical ones. The interaction of the cyclical time with the linear time in the Byzantine chant creates the feeling of a continuous present or of "eternity unfolding in time" (Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite), while the sonic evolution within this perimeter becomes isotropic, almost motionless. The particular kinetics of the melos under analysis could be expressed by the formula "moving stasis", suggesting that in the dynamic/static bipolarity, the latter prevails. The supremacy of the static in Byzantine art stems not only from a certain reference to temporality, but also from its orientation towards capturing the essences, which are by definition unchanging, immutable. Although the Byzantine monody (as, in fact, most of the monodic cultures) relies mainly on temporal suggestiveness, it has absorbed and employs spatial representations.. Space and time subsist here in a primordial and indissoluble unity. The "immateriality" of the Byzantine melos dissolves space into time (or, perhaps, time into space), to eventually annihilate both, transposing the listener into a revealing and somewhat timeless and spaceless reality. Along the way, the author tackles many topics that are closely related to the main one: the apophatism as a means of accessing the transcognitive truths, the theanthropic nature of the sacred song, reflected in its intrinsic vocality, the affinities between the formal archetypes of music and the universal matrix codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some of the most discussed topics in the field of Byzantine musical palaeography are the so-called great hypostases of the Middlebyzantine notation. The present paper provides some general information on the name, historical evidence, graphic forms and musical significance of these signs, according to the recent research conducted in the field. Future research will help to reveal the concrete musical meaning of the great hypostases, by focusing on the styles, genres and forms of Chanting Art, during the different periods of its historical presence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the authenticity of the Byzantine chant as performed in modern times. According to the author, there are suggestions that authenticity may be at best, a quality of experience, rather than something that scholars have quantified. He states that the issue may be more about whose experience will be used as basis to determine authenticity. He adds that self-conscious effort of preserving authenticity through received tradition provides answers to the authenticity question.

The article discusses the Byzantine influence found in "Vigilia," a choral music composed by Einojuhani Rautavaara.The elements of Byzantine chant present in the work of Rautavaara is described as having small intervals and stepwise motion within a range of about an octave. Rautavaara is noted to quote only one Byzantine chant in his composition of "Vigilia" which is the Antiphon movement in Matins. It states that Rautavaara applied the Byzantine models in his own creation ranging from a reciting tone to complex melodic patterns.

The article examines the choral work "Vigilia" by Finnish composer Einojuhani Rautavaara. It provides an overview of "Vigilia" and explores its modernist musical language and form. In addition, it discusses the career of Rautavaara and the history and style of the traditional Russian Orthodox Vigil Service. It also notes that "Vigilia" is a good representation of Rautavaara's eclectic modernist approach to style and his encounters with Byzantine chant.

The present article explores the beginnings of hymnography and liturgical music in the Syriac tradition, trying to bring to the fore the rich exchanges with and influences it exercised upon or it received, in its turn, from the Greek world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that the prohibition on desire in the orthodox Indian systems is not simply a prohibition on selfish desires. The word "selfish" is ambiguous. It can mean either "self-interested" or "excessively self-interested." Since only excessively self-interested actions are prohibited, the prohibition on desire cannot be a prohibition on all self-interested desires. But the prohibition on desire cannot be a prohibition on excessively self-interested desires either, because this class of desires is too insignificant to explain the general preoccupation with the elimination of desire in the tradition. Finally, I argue that selfish desires are indeed prohibited, but only if by "selfish" one means "based on false beliefs about the self." Even then, however, selfish desires do not exhaust the class of prohibited desires because some prohibited desires are based on false beliefs about things other than the self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractComparison of a considerable number of Gregorian sources dating from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries reveals a handful of Mass Proper items that do not belong to the standard repertory and show possible ties with the Byzantine and/or Gallican traditions. These pieces are not recorded in most of the earliest French and German sources of the Gregorian tradition. Some of them seem to have been composed in Italy (but not in Rome), while others would appear to have Eastern or Frankish ties. Comparative melodic analysis, along with the discussion of their position in the liturgical year, discloses insights about their origin, date, routes of transmission and the ways to compare chants belonging to different liturgical families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the factors that affect information management for sources of Byzantine chant. It details the relation of the factors with the development of a database system which provides many points of access. It explores the relationship between the Palaeobyzantine Asmatikon and the Byzantine Asmatikon. The database being developed for the storage of Byzantine and Palaeoslavonic chant includes text, punctuation and intervals for each chant.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including Byzantine chants, the use of internet games to teach music and an interview with American flutist and music educator Barbara Allen.

Focuses on the Byzantine hypakoae contained in two medieval books, the Psaltikon and Asmatikon. Identical texts of the hypakoae in the 13th-century cycles of the two books; Hypakoae as Sunday chants; Evidence of the typika; Medieval typika commonly used in references to hypakoae.

The corpus of glass treated here ranges from Roman through Mamluk and later, but the bulk of the corpus is from the Byzantine and Umayyad periods. Most was recovered from fill and reuse levels, in a Roman theater and from a Byzantine church that remained in use into early Islamic times. The corpus is not merely a large (263 items illustrated), carefully excavated one; the stratigraphy and dating are also briefly discussed. Comparanda for individual forms are given, primarily from dated Near Eastern contexts, but also from the Mediterranean basin and beyond. The corpus is intended as a reference for excavators dealing with Near Eastern glass of ca. A.D. 350-750, with the expectation that it may be used not only for identifying single items, but eventually for group and regional studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is an analysis of examples of creative assimilation of the Byzantine heritage in iconography, liturgy, and liturgical singing using the example of three neocatechumenal religious communities of mixed ethnic composition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on a meeting of the Cantus Planus study group of the International Musicological Society which took place at a Venice International University venue at San Servolo, Venice, Italy, from July 28-August 1, 2014. It discusses the topics of presentations at the meeting including Italian chant manuscripts, the Optical Neume Recognition Project, and Byzantine chant.