TRADITION AND MODERNITY IN CURRENT PSALTIC MUSIC. VESPERS HYMNS BY ARCHDEACON DR. SEBASTIAN BARBU-BUCUR
TRADITION AND MODERNITY IN CURRENT PSALTIC MUSIC. VESPERS HYMNS BY ARCHDEACON DR. SEBASTIAN BARBU-BUCUR

Summary/Abstract: Byzantine music has deep roots in the Romanian culture and writing music in the spirit of Byzantine tradition has been a constant activity of the servants of the Orthodox Church in the Romanian areal. This genre of music continued to flourish in the second half of the 20th century, and Archdeacon Dr. Sebastian Barbu-Bucur, author of many hymns and services for the Romanian Saints, is one of the most prolific contemporary composers of psaltic music. As a constituent part of the ritual, liturgical music is subject to precise rules that are also reflected in the conditions imposed by the compliance with the melodic patterns of the eight church modes. The purpose of the comparative analysis of the Vespers hymns is to highlight their alignment with psaltic tradition, as well as to point out features of a musical discourse sprinkled with touches of modernity. In these hymns we find common features with the psaltic melos of the last two hundred years, as featured in the Anastasimatarion edited by Hieromonk Makarios in 1823, but also well crafted and original melodic turns, skillfully integrated in tradition by the composer who is also one of the most competent scholars of Byzantine musical manuscripts in our country.

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