The Marble Church and the Starved Choir
Orthodox America handsomely funds clergy, buildings, galas, litigation, foundations, and foreign patriarchates. But does it fund church music?
How to Transcribe Byzantine Neumes into Byzantine Polyphony
The neumes are source material and the polyphonic arrangement is the destination. Byzantine Polyphony requires more than symbol-by-symbol conversion of those neumes into staff notation.
Are You Learning Music, or Learning Obedience?
A real music teacher produces musicians. A handler produces loyal followers. Pious language, “lower clergy” mandates, and guru lists are some of the mechanisms used to mask fundamental musical incompetence.
Why The Traditional Byzantine Tuning Is Worse Than Equal Temperament
Traditional Byzantine tuning is not “more natural” than Equal Temperament. It is a patched, contextual, historically compromised system that borrows the prestige of natural ratios without actually matching them.
What Really Makes Dorian Melodies So Compelling?
Most people explain Dorian by pointing to the sixth degree. The sixth degree matters because it defines the mode plus it gives it brightness. But that’s not the whole story.
Konstantinos Psachos: The Musical Future Athens Rejected
In 1904, Konstantinos Psachos came to Athens to teach Byzantine Music. He stood at the crossroads of East and West as a serious musician who understood that musical excellence requires both traditional knowledge and systematic pedagogy. And that’s why he was attacked viciously by “traditionalists”.
The Atzem Affair: How Byzantine Traditionalists Became Ottoman Music’s Loudest Defenders
Traditionalists defend the Atzem drama as untouchable ancient tradition, while simultaneously attacking anyone who suggests using Western notation. But something doesn’t add up.
Byzantine Music is Not There to Create a Prayer Mood
Byzantine chant is not a machine for manufacturing a private devotional mood, nor is “prayer” a magic word that excuses bad singing. The liturgy presents chant first as an offering. That doesn’t exclude prayer or compunction, but it does exclude treating church music as vague atmosphere, emotional self-display, or a shield against criticism.
Western Functional Harmony in Byzantine Polyphony: Where and How to Deploy It
A fundamental error in choral arranging is treating all Byzantine chant as a blank canvas. Traditionalists claim Western harmony destroys the chant, while modernists force it everywhere. Both are structurally wrong. Byzantine Music is not exclusively modal. When the Mode dictates functional gravity, execute Western harmony without apology.
The Second Tone’s Split Personality: A Composer’s Guide to Common-Tone Modulation
One of the most annoying hurdles for Byzantine Polyphony composers and arrangers is the Second Tone’s tendency to snap between the chromatic Byzantine Mode and the Diatonic Mixolydian. This phenomenon is most common in the double Katavasiae when both are in the Second Tone (e.g., on Epiphany), where the plain hymn is chromatic and the Iambic hymn is diatonic. Here is how you harmonize it without losing your mind.
Byzantine Chant vs. Polyphonic Byzantine Music: Understanding the Difference
The inherited monophonic chant tradition and the emerging practice of polyphonic Byzantine music share repertoire and modal roots, but differ fundamentally in structure, tuning philosophy, and performance practice.
What Happens If Byzantine Music Never Evolves?
If Byzantine chant refuses to evolve, it will simply become redundant. Without the development of polyphony, the tradition decays into a system of imitation where pitch instability is romanticized as “expression” and technical analysis is silenced by a culture of blind obedience.