International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Stefka Venkova
Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Art Studies, Sofia, Bulgaria; 
[e-mail]
Polyphonic Chants and Religious Songs in Bulgarian Church Music 
in the Early 20th C.
Bulgarian composer’s Church polyphonic music in the first half of the XX century is reviewed 
in the paper.
The leading creative ideas, which form the basis of the active composition of new chants for the 
liturgical practice, are analyzed. Influenced by the Russian and Western European traditions, they 
are composed based on different types of melodic sources – examples from the monodic Orthodox 
music, originating in Byzantine music and also from “Bolgarskij rospev”, as well as author’s melodies.
The other focal point is the emergence and development of the religious songs genre, which 
gained wide popularity in the non-liturgical practice. Songs with religious content written in modern-
day Bulgarian language but with non-clerically sounding music, close to the city singing are written. 
Some of them have gained huge popularity as school songs and in the Christian brotherhoods and 
societies activities.
The new ideas in the Bulgarian music from the late 19
th
and the early 20
th
century reflected on 
the development of the Bulgarian Church music. They interacted with the specific characteristics 
of the millennium old Bulgarian Church tradition, based on the accepted in Bulgaria Byzantine 
Eastern model of Christian culture, as well as with the Western European and Russian influences.

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649
Maria Voutsa
Thessaloniki, Greece; 
[e-mail]
An Iconographical Approach of Post-Byzantine Musical Instruments
Our knowledge on the post-Byzantine secular music and instruments, unlike the liturgical 
chant tradition, is limited to information that comes from visual representations and lesser from 
references to textual sources. Iconographical material, from late 15
th
to early 19
th
centuries, contains 
an important number of elements of everyday life. A number of features appear to be directly derived 
from contemporary musical practice and seem to have been chosen in order to render the scenes more 
vivid and lifelike. The iconographical sources come from religious works – paintings in monasteries 
and churches. The geographical area of the source material is mainly North Greece (and the monastic 
center of Mount Athos), and in general, extends from Epirus to Thessaly. In spite of the considerable 
number of depicted musical instruments, because of the religious character of paintings, information 
about them relate to their shape, musical practice, the players and the ensembles. The type, construction 
evidence or function of instruments must be considered with reserve.
The structure of communication follows two intertwining parameters:
1) Thematic. In certain religious themes such as: 
The Transportation of the Ark of the Covenant, 
Psalms of Praise–Ainoi, Nativity of Christ, Mocking of Christ, Parables and Miracles etc.
, are 
included musical scenes and the depicted instruments showing in which occasions they were 
played and which other instruments they were used with.
2) Organological. Is attempted an organological classification studying the morphological aspects 
of contemporaneous representations of post-Byzantine musical instruments.

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