The claim that Byzantine music is “strictly monophonic” is not a historical fact but a dogmatic cage. For centuries, ecclesiastical practice has pushed a “vertical starvation” on the music, claiming it to be the only “spiritual” way to chant and condemned polyphony as foreign novelty. But looking deeper into the music itself, we see something else: The structure in practice shows a system screaming for the polyphony it was denied.
The Rhythmic Ison: The Ghost of the Lute
The modern isokratima is just a static, lifeless drone. According to veteran head-chanter Demetrios Nerantzis this is a structural error because, historically and empirically, the ison also functions as the temporal ground.
- The folk evidence: In the typical Greek folk band, say a violin-lute duo, the lute does more than just holding a note. It strikes the rhythm too, just like in modern bands a bass guitarist or a drummer does. This cannot be ignored and treated as a static “hum” and we cannot say that “rhythm-keeping” is nontraditional unless we want to throw the entire music in the garbage.
- The psaltic reality: The ison is the “ground” upon which the melody moves. By holding the rhythm, the isokrates is already performing a polyphonic function, defining time and space: The bass. According to Mr. Nerantzis, this is why isokrates were also called “keepers” (βαστακταί) in the old days.
The Ornaments as Substitution for Harmony
Why can a modern chanter rarely sing a simple scale without distorting the notes with vocal shifts? The answer lies in the structural compensation for the missing vertical dimension.
- The ornament as a void-filler: The reliance on ornamental characters, such as the Flutter (Πεταστή), the Heavy Accent (Βαρεία), the Accented Diminuendo (Ψηφιστό), the Ripple (Ομαλό), the Shake (Αντικένωμα), the Link (Σύνδεσμος) among others, and the more archaic Piasma, Lygisma etc., seems more like a pathological substitution rather than an aesthetic choice. And this is revealed clearly by the need to create a grammar, a set of rules on where and how those are used when inscribing a melody with byzantine neumes. If those were truly ornamental, we wouldn’t need to enforce them. The dictation rules are taught as unescapable but common sense dictates that when a musician is forbidden from the vertical richness of inner voices, they are forced to over-complicate the horizontal line. They have no other option. They “deep fry” a single note because they are not allowed to support it with a chord, let alone a progression.
- The “deep fried” scale: It is revealing that a standard chanter today cannot simply sing a clean, flat scale. Every note sounds “decorated”, or “bent”. This is not natural. Sometimes a cook needs to make a potato salad and needs raw not pre-fried potatoes, If all you provide him with is deep-fried, this is an issue. As if a restaurant manager obsessed with French fries has shaped the entire culture of the kitchen around them. Another symptom of late Ottoman influence. I refuse to believe that those who created this music were singing the notes like that.
Memory Harmony
In monophonic chant, the melody always moves in patterns that clearly outline chords. This is what musicologists call “compound melody” or “latent harmony”. All three styles of byzantine melodies (syllabic, solemn, elaborate) are based on arpeggios which traditionalist theory also documents as dominant notes.
The human ear naturally remembers the previous dominant notes in a sequence, even if additional weak – passing notes are used inbetween. This evokes a vertical harmony in the mind of the listener which is enforced by the sound of the root, held by the ison.
What traditional policy tells us is “you are allowed to play with harmony in the listener’s memory but you cannot give them the whole picture in the present by using an actual chord”.
Where the monophonic myth came from
The idea that Byzantine music must be monophonic because it is based on Ancient Greek music (which was supposedly monophonic) is a historical fraud. As Professor Charalampos Spyridis has documented, we have been systematically blinded by foreign scholars.
We were taught that ancient Greek music is monophonic.
A lie.
Ancient Greek music was polyphonic.
Consonant tones according to Pythagoras are the tones which sound together, sound as one, resonate together. And Euclid says in the introduction: “And the consonants making one mixture from both.“When two tones resonate together, they create a “krasis”—a mixing of sounds which satisfies us. Therefore, ancient Greek music was at least diphonic.
(Prof. Spyridis)
- The proof of “krasis”: You cannot have a “mixture” with only one voice. The very definitions used by Pythagoras and Euclid require a vertical intersection of sound. Consonance means coexistence, it doesn’t mean succession.
- The 12-String Kithara: Why would the Greeks build a dodekabamona kithari (a 12-string guitar) to play a single melody line? As Spyridis notes, you could do that on a monochord. The physical complexity of the instruments reflects the polyphonic complexity of the music.
- The Institutional Error: For centuries, the clergy have claimed that because they based Byzantine music on the “monophonic” Greek tradition, it must remain single-voiced. They used a bad interpretation / misunderstanding about the past to enforce a limitation on the present. This is what destroyed the natural evolution of both Ancient and Byzantine music.
The Restoration of the Structure
The “crime” committed against Byzantine music was the forced amputation of its vertical dimension. By insisting on monophony, the hierarchy trapped the music in a loop of excessive ornamentation and unnatural vocal acrobatics, heavily shaped by the aesthetic pressure of the occupier.
Mastering Byzantine Polyphony is neither a novelty nor an “innovation.” We are not importing something foreign into the chant; we are finally allowing the hidden voices to be heard. We are ending the vertical starvation and restoring the music to its natural, Pythagorean, and polyphonic state of being.
By dropping the excuses built on a lie, we bring forth a music so clear and beautiful that, if Koukouzelis himself were to hear it, he would interrupt his meal to listen to the harmony.