St. Anthony's Monastery has a fantastic website. http://www.stanthonysmonastery.org/music/IndexB.html

The blue links on the left lead to a series of articles about the difficulties of adapting chant from Greek and Arabic to English, about notation, about composing new melodies in the Byzantine style, etc. The articles are extensively footnoted. Their "links" section is fantastic, and will lead you much more information.

The orange boxes in the center panel lead to music proper to almost every Orthodox liturgical service. You can download each piece in "western" (5 note staff) or Byzantine notation, and in Elizabethan English, modern English, and Greek. There are often audio files as well. For example, have a listen to this one, a favorite of mine, often sung in some form at weddings.

They even have a tutorial on learning braille byzantine music notation.

Holy Cross Seminary has a tutorial for learning (non-Braille :-)) Byzantine notation: http://chant.hchc.edu, if you are at all interested in that.

And if you are interested in listening to more authentic Byzantine chant in English, please allow me to plug "The Voice of the Lord", by the Friends of the Theophany School, an excellent new recording that also happens to be raising money for a good cause. There are sample tracks on the site.

Email me, if you like. I can put you in touch with people who are currently writing new music in the Byzantine style, though I'll warn you, they tend to promote years of diligent study before suggesting someone give it a try :-)

Learning how to write the music is a matter of living it for a while, and finding the right people to teach you. It is also helpful to learn the Orthodox tonal system... er, systemS, as the Greeks have one, the Russians several others, and so forth... A lot of the texts we sing, propers that is, are assigned specific tones, and so compositions for those propers are designed around the tones.

Rebecca C has put me, one of the token Orthodox members here, to shame! Those are all great resources. A very basic repertoire can be found here as well. Also, if you just want to listen to great Orthodox music sometimes, there is always Ancient Faith Radio.

I rather take exception to that, Adam.


Other than the small font size, I don't see anything to criticize about St. Anthony's site. The sheer quantity of new music available (not to mention that each piece is provided in two to six language/notation combinations), dwarfs anything we currently have on the Roman Catholic side of things, though of course our resources are becoming more numerous daily. I won't get into describing any of the other resources available, but rest assured, they exist, including discussion forums like this one, in SEVERAL different languages.

In St. Anthony's (and most other) western-notation scores, the ison (the drone) is indicated by writing the correct note above the staff, where you'd look for guitar chords in popular music. You'll find it typeset it red.

I'd suggest you have another look at the rhythms. I've read through dozens of their scores, and never remember encountering a major discrepancy with the recordings. They know what they're doing. If there's a particular piece you are indicating, I'll have a look, and see if I can help tease out the reason for any differences.

It's true that the western-notation scores do not indicate the microtonal variations (though they do include almost all of the ornaments, contrary to what you said), but frankly, if you're working at that level of execution, you'd probably be using the Byzantine notation anyway. Consider all the conversations on this forum about the nuances of Gregorian interpretation that require use of the Triplex, not simply square neumes, and definitely not modern notation alone. There are some things that are only indicated with great difficulty or awkwardness in modern western notation, and it's commonly decided that attempting to notate every nuance of Byzantine chant so clutters the score that it becomes unusable for most folk. That's the case here, though they do remain quite detailed.

You won't find the equivalent of an "Idiot's Guide", because honestly, it's just much easier to jump into the reading of square notes than into Byzantine notation. The chant is scored with no staff, using a sophisticated vocabulary of dozens of neumes, each of which is a different symbol indicating a pattern of rhythms and pitches. You need something text-book length to get you started, and such a book is available in Greek on St. Anthony's site, and there are accompanying audio files. You can find it here. An English version is in preparation. However, you'll probably enjoy reading the western scores more at first. If you're looking for an introduction to the modes, one is available here. Sure it's complicated, but that's Byzantine chant for ya :-) If you want a very basic introduction to the concepts, try plumbing Wikipedia or OrthoWiki (http://orthodoxwiki.org/Byzantine_Chant).


I'm sure you meant no offense, but I'd hope that you'd take more consideration before so publicly writing here that the site is cheap, has inaccurate and incomplete scores, and lacks instructional materials. That's simply not true. It's fine if you didn't have time to look around, or spend time with the material. But I need to say for the record that that's just not right. The project is very well-respected, and monumental amounts of work are being put into it.


Again, I'm most happy to help you get started if this is something you're interested in.


Yours in Christ,
Rebecca

Adam, check out this thread:

http://musicasacra.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=2064&page=1#Item_32

I doubt that a western musician could do that. There are simple neume groupings that are definitely not intuitive.

And Gregorian Chant evolved from a form of notation into an advanced form, byzantine never made that leap, which means that there was little interest in formalizing a logical system for writing it so anyone but an elitist group could sing it.

Job security.

There is no difference between what you are describing as modern byzantine notation and what Gregorian Chant was prior to the establishment of the four line staff.

Roman Catholicism is also a lifestyle. So is the Amish way of life. So? Even the Amish have adopted a lined staff for the chanting they do.

I have to admit, and this is very uncharitable of me, but the promotion of the non-Roman Catholic Orthodox groups on this group here hits me like the Jehovah Witnesses knocking on my door. The fact that Adam loved the sound of a chant immediately evolves into a promo session.

This is a group with varied interests in Sacred music BUT a common goal of improving the Roman Catholic Liturgy. The Orthodox church would seem to have nothing to do with that, since adopting anything the Orthodox does is not what the Roman Church is interested in.

Ecumenism is a foe to church unity. Where did the Protestant hymns come from?

Musics Sacra is a rocket into the heavens that is bringing about major change in the Roman Catholic church. Major renewal.

I bow to the superiority of the orthodox.

I didn't mean to cause anyone offense- my issue was:
Clearly (as with Gregorian chant) there is no way to accurately represent the Orthodox chant in modern western notation. That hardly seems like an arguable point.
But I can't find anything that explains anything about how it is actually sung. You pointed out that the drone is written in red in the corner of the page- very helpful to know, but how was I supposed to know that until someone explained it?

I wasn't trying to criticize anyone's work- I was looking for a starting point- where does one begin? There doesn't seem to be basic instruction anywhere. The sites that exist seem completely created for people who already know what's going on. That's fine- it's not anyone's job to make sure I, Adam Wood, know how to read and sing Orthodox chant- I was just hoping that someone knew where I could find that kind of material.


(As to "cheap"... sorry, that was rude of me... but I'm a professional web designer with a focus on web-standards and usability, so my bar is set pretty high).

I've spent more time at the St. Anthony's site. I do wish it was better organized- but I have found my way to some introductory material there that seems helpful.

I have to say, I do find the midi-recordings of western-notated chants to be particularly unhelpful. I wish I could find more "follow the real singer along with the notes" (western or traditional). That's one of the things that makes CCWatershed's work so incredibly useful.

Yes I saw that program. Very helpful.
I wish I had the time to visit the "local" (hour away) Orthodox churches here in the metroplex.

I'm totally with you on the MIDI files. If I try to learn a new chant using them, I think -I- end up sounding like a MIDI recording.

This gentleman blogged about the recording you found on YouTube, which is from a cd by Fr. Apostolos Hill. In the post, he says he doesn't think Father Apostolos ever published the music, so, he made a transcription of the entire CD, and posted it here. The one you're looking for starts on page 13, the "Evlogetaria for the Dead - I" and continues from there. Google suggests that Father is on Facebook, so you might consider contacting him directly :-)

I asked a friend about beginners' materials in English for you. He says they're working on it, and suggests this book, which is regrettably rather pricey. It was "recently published by Basilios Psilacos of Sydney, a student of the late Dimitrios Sourlantzis (+2006), who was one of the most well known psaltai and teachers in Greece during the late 20th century. It contains detailed explanations of Byzantine music theory as well as many exercises."

The same friend has also been preparing a book of 200 melodic exercises in Byzantine notation, with explanations in English, based on a similar book in Greek by Ioannis Margaziotis. I'm given to understand that it will also be available in a web format, with recordings. (The web version, I imagine, will be free.) I'll update this thread when there is more info available.