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.
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.
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.
Free Score: “Lord, I have cried” (First Tone)
A definitive example of applied Byzantine Polyphony, free for you to download and implement. This is the sound of the Dorian Mode once the “vertical starvation” of the modern tradition is removed.