THE TYPOLOGY OF PROSOMOIA IN BYZANTINE MUSIC. AUXILIARY TOOLS TO MEMORIZE PROSOMOIA IN THEIR ORIGINAL METRIC PATTERN
THE TYPOLOGY OF PROSOMOIA IN BYZANTINE MUSIC. AUXILIARY TOOLS TO MEMORIZE PROSOMOIA IN THEIR ORIGINAL METRIC PATTERN

Summary/Abstract: In byzantine music, most chants are based on the prosomoia troparia, which follow the pattern of automela troparia. In the original language in which they were composed, namely in ancient Greek, hymnographers (Saint John Damascene, Saint Romanos the Melodist, Saint Andrew from Crete, and others) managed, with a remarkable ability, to synthesize the dogmatic meanings and to ensure the same prosody structure of the prosomoia, according to the automela model melodies. This explains the fact that, in the process of teaching and learning melodies that draw on the original metric, the text of any troparion would always be sufficient to reproduce exactly the melody of the model, without resorting to musical neumes.The translation of liturgical texts in Romanian could not follow the rhythmic pattern of the original automela. Therefore, the translation of the troparia has led to inaccurate musical execution, the interpreter being forced to improvise, to the detriment of the original musical form. The present study offers a few practical solutions to facilitate the process of learning the automela, starting from a better matching of Romanian texts to the original melodies. Also, it proposes an interdisciplinary vision which consists in using the notions of formal analysis to understand the logic of the melodic discourse, which could facilitate the memorising of automela melodies.

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