Nachbyzantinischer liturgischer Gesang im Wandel

The subject of the present publication is the music of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine Greek Orthodox Church. Twenty liturgical music manuscripts of the Supplementum graecum at the Austrian National Library will be studied. The manuscripts of the Supplementum graecum are of great interest for the research of music in general as they date from the 12th to the 19th centuries; above all because until now the later manuscripts of the period between the 16th and 19th centuries have never been the central theme of a research project. These mansucripts are distinguished by a great variety of notational practices, musical traditions, genres and composers. With the help of the musical codices it will be possible to follow the evolution of the liturgical music books, as well as the different compositional styles and the phases of the development of the notation until the reform of 1814. The main stress of the research will be on the typological registration and classification of the manuscripts, the identification of their repertory and their melodic development. There will also be a description of the individual composers together with their personal and locally coloured style. Special topics will include the existence of "identical" manuscripts, the work of the copyists and their models, the melodic variants of individual chant books and the different performance practices involved. Analyses of special chant-genres, such as the Anastasimatarion, the eleven Heothina as well as the Cheroubika are at the centre of the book. One chapter deals exclusively with the so-called Papadike. During these investigations, the Vienna manuscripts will at first be compared with one another, and subsequently with codices from Athens, so as to be able to trace the development of the melodies throughout the centuries.