Musical Interpretation of Direct Speech in Chants of the Two-Hundredth Feasts of the Mother of God: Greek-Slavonic Parallels on Manuscripts of the 10th–17th Centuries

Abstract

Direct speech in liturgical hymns is one of the essential features of Byzantine and Slavic hymnography, which interprets the subjects of the Old and New Testaments. The hymns in honor of the twelve feasts of the Mother of God contain the direct speech of the Archangel Gabriel, King David, the Apostle Peter, and the worshipers in the temple. A standard, but not the only, way of correlation between text and music in these fragments is melismatic formulas, so called fita. The main objective of the article is to identify ways of musical interpretation of direct speech in the Greek-Slavic traditions of Church singing and musical writing by analysing the location of the fitas in the composition. Copies of 9 stichera from Greek, Old Russian and Kiev manuscripts of the 10–17th centuries were compared. Neumatic shape and five-line deciphering were taken into account. As a result of the analysis, techniques of musical decoration of direct speech and Gospel / Psalter quotation are shown. In hymnographical composition, direct speech demonstrates a changing of the point of view. The beginning of direct speech and / or the previous line with the words “to say”, “to cry”, “to sing”, etc., have fita in the tune. Fita is a cantilena tune put into recitative musical line; therefore, it changes the point of view from a narrative to emotional type of music utterance. Fita accompanying direct speech is an adequate musical tool. Fitas are often used with additional techniques such as modal changing or mutation. The use of fitas underscores text structure; it is the oldest technique of Byzantine origin that was adopted by Slavs. In the 15–16th centuries, a new type of composition appeared musical formulas highlight the theological meaning of a hymnographic text. This new technique was combined with the ancient type, and sometimes replaced it.