IMC 2012: Sessions

During the 18th century in Constantinople there was a very interesting phenomenon: a reception of the traditional Byzantine Chant but with some new modernising (partly rule-bound, partly rule-breaking) aspects; that time, the backstage of the ecclesiastic musical scene of the Patriarchate was the theatre of important upheavals. A series of musicians worked then (as chanters, chant-makers and teachers) following a new direction, a direction which was actually the one already formed during the Middle Ages and was transmitted in later years under the cloak of another more interpretative way of writing down (and composing) music. Lots of people worked according to that idea, but the most important of them is Jacob the Protopsaltes, a very well-known singer at the Great Church of Constantinople, who was in parallel: a great Byzantine Music's composer, a famous teacher, a musician specialized in secular music and an expert in Church Ritual.

With my Greek scientific team I would like to exlore, in a series of two sessions during your conference, this specific phenomenon; a phenomenon that cannot be easily assessed in a unilateral way, as, besides music itself, it also presents theological, historical, socio-political and even anthropological dimensions that have to be taken into consideration. So, the relevant activity of Jacob the Protopsaltes will motivate us to attempt a retrospective examination of the Medieval Musicological and Liturgical tradition, as it survived [through successive changes and transubstantiation] until the latest years.