International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Petar Kozakijević
University of Belgrade, Faculty of Orthodox Theology, Belgrade, Serbia; 
[e-mail]
Models of the Adaptation of Byzantine Musical Melodies 
in the Church Slavonic Language
In recent decades a noticeable tendency to return to the Byzantine musical tradition has led 
to challenges in specific orthodox communities. The article considers the corpus of printed books 
in Byzantine notation that exist in Church Slavonic and analyzes the two models that their authors 
have used while preparing those publications: the literary following of the musical original while 
adapting poetic text to the music on the one hand; andfreecompositionon the other - that is, the 
adaptation of music to the poetic text itself. The musical examples in the article demonstrate how this 
process led to the creation of unique musicalmotive, and also shows how the melodic accentuation 
of the text, which varied even in the works written in late-Byzantine notation, was adopted in just a 
single form by those authors. Conclusions show that usage of these two rhythmical approaches can 
easily resolve those issues, giving much more artistic freedom to future composers.
Constantin Gordon
University Babes-Bolyai, Faculty of Theology, Cluj-Napoca, Romania; 
[e-mail]
The Adaptation of Greek Byzantine Chants into Romanian by Macarie 
Ieromonahul. An Overview of the Second Soft Chromatic Mode Compositions
The adaptation of Greek Byzantine chants into Romanian by Macarie Ieromonahul. An 
overview of the Second Soft Chromatic mode compositions.
Macarie Ieromonahul (Macarie the Hieromonk) was the first church music composer who 
adapted into Romanian the Greek Byzantine chants of the New Method. He translated and published 
the 
Anastasimatarion
and the 
Heirmologion
argon 
(1823)
, 
the 
2
nd
 tome of Anthologion 
(1827) 
which contained chants for the Orthros, and the 
Epitaphios
(1836), while many of his translations 
and original compositions remained in manuscript. Macarie’s work is undoubtedly and widely 
acknowledged as esential to the development of the Romanian Byzantine chant.
In my research I compare and analyze the original Greek chants and their translation into 
Romanian, trying to shape the `hidden` mechanism of adaptation. Following Costin Moisil’s 
methodological approach applied to the 
Anastasimatarion’
s 
stichera 
of the first mode, I conduct 
my investigation on the following steps: a. the analysis of the structure of the chant (period, phrase, 
cadence); b. the uncovering of the connection between the cadence and the particular accentuation 
of the text which corresponds to the formula; c. the disclosure of Macarie’s adaptation possibilites. I 
restrain my inquiry to the soft chromatic genre of the second mode – syllabic, short melismatic and 
melismatic chants.

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