Journal of the International Society for Orthodox Music
The Journal features papers dealing with aspects of Orthodox or Eastern church music, both monophonic and polyphonic, including history, theory, performance practice, source studies, and cultural and theological aspects.
The International Society for Orthodox Church Music
Connections Between Eastern Rite and Catholic Church Music Traditions in Vilnius
This paper explores the connections between the Orthodox, Uniate (Greek Catholic), and Roman Catholic communities in Vilnius in the historical and contemporary contexts of church music. Christian church music was heard in Vilnius even before the official baptism of Lithuania in 1387. The first Catholic and Orthodox communities settled in Vilnius in the thirteenth century. Over time, these and other religious communities grew, and the proximity of their neighbourhoods in the city may have enhanced the interaction between their musical traditions. Until now, this interaction has never been studied in the context of so-called “wandering melodies” which travelled through different places and religious communities, visited Vilnius, and received local attributions. While having a clearly transnational background, these melodies also indicate the locally significant shared musical heritage, used in local churches in different times. This article discusses this phenomenon in the context of the Orthodox Church that reflect its interactions with Uniate and Roman Catholic music repertoires. Through comparative analysis and drawing from historiographical and musicological methods, the article examines specific examples of such “wandering melodies.”
Copyright (c) 2026 Margarita Moisejeva https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Библейские образы в древнерусской гимнографии:
The author investigates principles of the historical, thematic parallels and semantic connections between the Bible and Early Russian hymnography concentrating on the two basics: similarity and correlation.
Copyright (c) 2026 Elena Kolyada https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
In Memoriam: Evgeny Vladimirovich Gertsman (1937–2025)
Copyright (c) 2026 Irina Starikova https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Sung Performance of Psalms with Refrains and the Stichera Series of the All-Night Vigil in Pre-Reform Russian Polyphonic Practice
The neumatic manuscripts containing early Russian polyphony associated with the office of the All-Night Vigil prior to the mid-seventeenth century reforms suggest that most of the elements constituting this office that by the end of the century were intended only for reading had previously been sung. This applies not only to the unchanging hymns of the All-Night Vigil, most of which were performed polyphonically, but also to the extensive series of changeable elements of the office—entirely sung kathismata, as well as sequences of psalms and stichera. In this article we will try to trace how the pre-reform practice of singing psalm series with integrated stichera was reflected in early Russian neumatic polyphony.
Copyright (c) 2026 Elena Chernova https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Greek Repertory in Ruthenian Irmologia as a Key to Some Questions of Byzantine Musicology
From the very moment they emerged, the staff-notated Irmologia of the Western Rus’ featured Greek hymns. These hymns are unique because, while Byzantine music was being recorded using highly conditional, “symbolic” notation, the Irmologia recorded these hymns using a convenient and, most importantly, rhythmically comprehensible musical language. Although in eastern Slavic musicology, this repertoire is considered supplementary and has been largely ignored for many years, it can serve as both a key to understanding many issues primarily related to the melodic structure of Byzantine chant and a secondary source of information about the nature of Byzantine music. The comparison of these compositions yields valuable information about the melody, rhythmic structure, the modal system, the “encrypted” signs of the great hypostases, and the overall character of Byzantine melos in the Byzantine and post-Byzantine periods.
Copyright (c) 2026 Marcin Abijski https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2026 Alexander Lingas https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This article considers the oldest generation of Russian Sticheraria of the movable cycle as evidence of the intersection of regional traditions of the Byzantine rite. These manuscripts were written in the twelfth to thirteenth centuries, when the Byzantine chant and manuscript traditions were transitioning from a diversity of local practices to a standardized system. The Old Russian Sticheraria reflect a complex picture of this transitional period. They are notated with a variety of Paleo-Byzantine adiastematic notations, even though in the thirteenth century diastematic notation was already widely used in Byzantium. In Old Russian notation, a common archaic layer emerges, on which later layers are visible, containing elements directed towards diastematics that vary from one Old Russian manuscript to another. While the composition of the codices is comparatively more consistent than that found in Greek Paleo-Byzantine Sticheraria, there are many differences between them. This article argues that the similarities and differences came about through an exchange of experience in the field of liturgical practice as reflected in the manuscript tradition of a number of Greek and Slavic monastic, cathedral, and parish centers. In the process of reviewing the composition of dozens of Greek, Slavic, and Old Russian manuscripts while searching for evidence to support this hypothesis, the Greek Triodion Paris, BNF Grec 337 + 353 with Middle Byzantine notation was singled out, as it has a number of characteristics that coincide with the corresponding characteristics of the Old Russian Sticheraria. This article offers a comparative analysis of the characteristics as found in this Triodion, the Old Russian Sticheraria, and the related notated set of Triodia and Pentecostaria in comparison with Greek and Slavic sources.
Copyright (c) 2026 Svetlana Yurievna Poliakova https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Compositional Style and New Testament Theology
My paper addresses how the compositional style of a Communion verse setting affects its efficiency and accuracy in the Divine Liturgy within the borders of Greek Orthodox worship today. Issues that arise include the following: What is the desired aesthetical aim of a Communion verse setting, and how do the composers achieve that? What do churchgoers feel when a Communion verse is heard during the Liturgy, and how should they feel? Can we even mention feelings in this context? A central point of this discussion includes analyzing two contemporary works usually performed during the Holy Communion and focusing on their functionality and meaning. More specifically, Tikey Zes' (b. 1929) Receive the Body of Christ and Steven Cardiasmenos’ (b. 1958) Communion Verse for Sundays will be thoroughly examined, exploring how these composers approach the Holy Communion as a physical manifestation of the nourishment of the spirit. My analysis will examine each work's stylistic particularities in the context of their performance practice and, ultimately, raise questions about their formal musical properties under a theological prism.
Copyright (c) 2026 Pavlos Kordis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
"A Taste of What Desire seeks": Sensing the Holy in Liturgical Life
The spiritual symbology of liturgical phenomena have been the subject of several classic commentaries in the Byzantine patristic tradition, as well as of several modern scholarly studies. However, research on the senses, materiality and their effects on the liturgical experience is still in its early stages. Beyond the aesthetic wonder these phenomena aroused, they could also engender a mystical synaesthesia that invited the faithful to glimpse invisible beauty, sense the intelligible and experience immaterial illumination. This paper explores whether there is a theological framework that underpins and illuminates the process of sense perception in liturgical life that emerges in the early patristic period. The theological construct, “the senses of the soul” (τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς αἰσθητήρια) will be used as a point of departure for exploring this process. After alluding to the senses of sight, smell, touch and taste, the paper will give particular emphasis to the sense of hearing.
Conference Papers: Sounds of the Holy, Joensuu 2019
Copyright (c) 2020 Andrew Mellas, Andrew Psarommatis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Little-Known Indications of Musical Performance from the Fifteenth Century and Their Historical Context
The period of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is extremely rich in the compilation of different traditions in the field of Balkan Orthodox music. One of the reasons for that might be attributed to the spread of the revised liturgical ordo of Jerusalem. Along with this ordo came the revival of hesychasm, a movement for spiritual renewal. The aim was the unity of Orthodoxy, to be fostered at a time when the common fear of Islamic invasion in the Balkans increased. There was a search for both the accommodation of sacred texts to the revised liturgical ordo and the reestablishment of the authenticity of sacred texts that had been lost in the preceding century during the Latin occupation. The hesychasts believed that God could be reached through pure devotion. They paid special attention to the word. The word became a means of expression to reach God. Its “divine beauty” was sought. The style of “плетение словес”(“weaving of words”) was developed, and work focused on “исправление книг” (“the correction of books”). The performance of the musical pieces in the church became very important. Respectively, the role of church singers increased greatly. It is not by chance that their pictures appear just at that time in both frescos in churches and on the pages of manuscripts. Of great interest are the unique musical indications on the margin of an old Glagolitic fragment from the eleventh century, which was found in the inside cover of a manuscript from the 15th century. The performance term “тресене” (“quiver in the throat”) predominates in them: “quiver slowly in the throat”, “quiver faster in the throat”, “with quiver”, etc. Who the writer of these indications was and where they were written are questions for discussion.
Copyright (c) 2020 Svetlana Kujumdzieva https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Orthodox Liturgical Chant Traditions and Their Development in Lithuania Today
Research on contemporary Orthodox church music has shown that there is a number of specific Orthodox chant traditions in Lithuania, which differ from the general model of Orthodox chanting in the country. Musical tradition is a quite rare term in ecclesiastical music research, and thus the author presents her perception of the term of Orthodox liturgical chant tradition in the context of her particular study. There are several specific liturgical chant traditions existing in Lithuania. The first is the chanting tradition of the first Lithuanian parish (established in 2005). In this case, we witness the development process of Orthodox chanting particularly within European Catholic culture, and we can see the development of a specific Lithuanian chanting tradition. The second specific tradition is noticeable in the Monastery of The Holy Spirit in Vilnius as a model of the chanting of an Orthodox cultural administrative centre. The monastery’s chanting is mainly inseparable from the chant of the Diocesan choir. This kind of tradition must have appeared in the 19th century, and continues to this day. The tendency to revive old chant appears infrequently in different parishes in Lithuania. However, with a lack of knowledge and education there is no possibility for development in this area across the country, but there is notable exception in the Parish of Sts Constantine and Michael in Vilnius. This choir’s is the typical chanting model across Lithuania: old Russian chant melodies and music by the Lithuanian Orthodox composer Deacon Victor Miniotas. The author has been conducting fieldwork related to Orthodox chanting in Lithuania for the past ten years; the topic of interest is also, therefore, the processes of changes in tradition and their causes.
Copyright (c) 2020 Margarita Moisejeva https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Visible and Invisible, Audible and Inaudible Chant Performance in Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents
The present contribution discusses Byzantine monastic foundation documents, dating from the ninth to the fifteenth century, through the lens of performance theory. As the author argues, the way these documents arrange liturgical performance is not egalitarian, but instead introduces different categories of performers and audiences among the monastic community, justifying this arrangement theologically with the analogies of angelic hierarchies and the community as the body of Christ. The performance is intended to be heard not only by the community, but naturally the most important audience is God Himself; in the cases of an “elitistic” performance, in which the more educated monastics perform to God, the task of the rest of the community is to observe and overhear this dialogue. Most importantly, the success of liturgical performance is primarily dependent on the spiritual state of the performer, regardless of the fact how important their role in the performance is.
Fr Damaskinos (Olkinuora) of Xenophontos
Copyright (c) 2020 Damaskinos Olkinuora https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A Movie with the Structure of Byzantine Liturgy: Megalexandros by Theo Angelopoulos
The most important Greek film director of all times, Theo Angelopoulos is known for his leftist and humanist themes, but he was also influenced and inspired by the aesthetics of the Orthodox Church. In particular, Megalexandros (1980) is full of Orthodox and Byzantine ingredients. A three and half hour epic full of obscure symbolism from different layers of time, the film has proven to be a difficult case for interpreters and analysts. According to Angelopoulos himself, Megalexandros was “structured like a Byzantine liturgy”. In spite of the plentiful academic research on his work, the idea has not been properly analysed, even though it provides a suitable key to the many oddities of the film. The structure of Byzantine liturgy functions in the film on three levels. Firstly, the visual settings of scenes contain explicit and obvious iconic settings of baptism, Eucharist and Saint George, in addition to more obscure ones such as entry to Jerusalem and some iconic posing in other scenes. Moreover, the visual sceneries contain cases of symbolic movement that appears ritualistic and creates a sense of sacredness. Secondly, the usage of soundscape has parallels with the Byzantine liturgical singing, albeit it consists mainly of religious folk songs rather than actual liturgical hymns. The effects and impressions created by music resemble those of liturgical singing, however, and in that sense, the movie constitutes a wider secular application of liturgical principles. The arrangement aptly shows how the ecclesiastical spirit was at the heart of traditional Greek village culture. Moreover, there is one liturgical hymn, Troparion of the Cross, which seems to function as a symbol of the collective will to power. Thirdly, and most importantly, the structural elements of the narrative function “liturgically” in a phenomenological sense: they create turns, shifts and moods that are parallel with the contents of mind when one is present in Byzantine liturgical settings. In particular, the central figure, Alexander, does not direct his community by decisions or conversations, or by showing his emotions, but rather leads it by his presence and authority – very much like a bishop leads liturgical worship in the Byzantine cult. In the film, this phenomenology of liturgy applies to explicit visual elements of the narrative on the one hand, and on their reception on the other. The result is something that may look mysterious or inexplicable but feels like Byzantine liturgy.
Copyright (c) 2020 Serafim Seppälä https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Make Ready, O Bethlehem: Orthodox Hymns of Christmas
Copyright (c) 2016 Richard Barrett https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Singing the Right Way: Orthodox Christians and Secular Enchantment in Estonia
Copyright (c) 2016 Maria Takala-Roszczenko https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A Common Book of Church Hymns: Divine Liturgy
Copyright (c) 2016 Ivan Moody https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Byzantine Chant for congregational singing
A paper presented at the Pan-Orthodox Music Symposium in Minneapolis (USA) on 22-26 June, 2016.
Copyright (c) 2016 John Michael Boyer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2016 Juliana Woodill https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The gift of tears: Some perspectives on "joyful sorrow" in Orthodox art and music
Copyright (c) 2016 Kurt Sander https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2016 John M. Black https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2016 Paul Barnes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A keynote address presented at the Pan-Orthodox Music Symposium in Minneapolis (USA) on 22-26 June, 2016.
The choir of the Kiev Theological Academy played, from the beginning of the 19th century, a very important role in the history of Ukrainian church music, in terms of both raising the level of choral singing within Ukraine and expanding the available repertoire. This article discusses the history of this institution and the historical difficulties with which it had to contend during the period of its existence until it was shut down in 1915.
Copyright (c) 2016 Nataliya Kostyuk https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The origins of bell-ringing in Kievan Rus
The use of an extensive number of sources opens a new view on the history of the beginning and practice of bell-ringing in Kievan Rus. With the Christianization of Eastern Europe, bell-ringing was introduced into various spheres of ecclesiastical and secular life, and the rapid spread of bells replaced the earlier widespread use of idiophones. The article discusses evidence of bells and their fragments from archaeological finds in Ukrainian lands.
Copyright (c) 2016 Bohdan Kindratiuk https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright (c) 2016 Maria Takala-Roszczenko; Ivan Moody https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Byzantine musical tradition in Cyprus and Crete after the Fall of Constantinople
This article discusses the survival of Byzantine musical culture in the Hellenic world after the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, specifically by examining the work of composers living and working in Crete and Cyprus, and providing an overview of the legacy of sacred music of these two islands as both a genuine continuation of Byzantine tradition and a manifestation of remarkable creative originality.
Copyright (c) 2016 Dimitrios K. Balageorgos https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Звук у етос. Вариации върху тема от Боеций
Copyright (c) 2014 Ivan Moody https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The post-Byzantine psaltic origin of the recent Serbian church chant
During the difficult years in an enslaved Serbia under Turkish rule, there were no favourable circumstances for the development of the psaltic art, and neither can one talk about any centre of psaltic art, something that might have been for the Serbs what the Great Church of Constantinople was for the Greeks. Church music was learnt only orally, and one can speak hardly at all about musical training during this period. On account of the lack of musical MSS, we cannot be sure which genre of ecclesiastical melody the Serbians brought with them to the cities of Sremski Karlovci, Szentendre, Komoran etc., or to the newly founded monasteries of Fruška Gora, which under the new circumstances would become centres for a renaissance of Serbian spirituality. The opinions of the first scholars of Serbian church music disagree when it comes to the origins of ecclesiastical melody before and just after the period of the great migrations. The majority of them, correctly, supported the idea that church music before the 18th century derived from the Byzantine tradition, with certain special characteristics deriving from the use of the Church Slavonic language. There existed also, nevertheless, the baseless opinion that before the uprooting there was a special Serbian melodic tradition, which one might have heard in Serbian churches and monasteries, since the so called Srbulje – liturgical books written in an older Serbian form of the Church Slavonic language – were used. However, later, and rather more analytical, studies of later Serbian church music proved its close relationship with the melodic tradition that was recorded using the New Method, something that confirms precisely the present author’s opinion that we are dealing with a unified Orthodox psaltic tradition. The indisputable contribution of Greek teachers to the formation of Serbian psaltic music is confirmed by the surviving information concerning the first organized schools of Byzantine music, as well as from the Greek musical codices preserved in several places in Serbia, which were, as I shall demonstrate, certainly also used on the analogia by Serbian psaltai.
Copyright (c) 2014 Vesna Sara Peno https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Four typological images of Mary in the hymnography for the Feast of the Entrance
Hymnographical texts often include references to biblical persons, places and events – references that are sometimes rather vague, at other times very clear. In the case of the feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the temple, the Εἰσόδια, these references are numerous since Mary is often seen as the fulfillment of the ancient prophesies presented in the Old Testament. This article consists of two parts: a more general overview of typology as an exegetical method applied in hymnography, and a more detailed description of some of the typological images of Mary in the hymns of the feast of the Entrance.
Copyright (c) 2014 Damaskinos Olkinuora https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
From out of the drawer: Faith, ritual and Russian Orthodoxy
The centerpiece of this study is a remarkable exemplar of sacred music composition literally extracted from the drawer: a complete setting of the Russian Orthodox Divine Liturgy by the late-twentieth-century Russian-Canadian composer, Nikolai Sergeevich Korndorf dated 1978.2 It has a two-fold purpose: (1) to explore some of the circumstances of its creation (how, why and when?) and, (2) to use it to frame a commentary on the impact of the Russian Orthodox Church on Russian music composition in general, looking to nineteenth-century precedents for lingering/prevailing attitudes towards it, posing the questions: Why has the Russian Orthodox Church been largely overlooked in Russian music production and why has it assumed a role in recent years?
Copyright (c) 2014 Gregory Myers https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0