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Abstract

This doctoral thesis addresses a central epistemic problem in the study and performance of Byzantine chant: how to reason responsibly about intervallic structure in a musical tradition transmitted predominantly through oral practice, preserved in notational systems that do not encode pitch with quantitative precision, and described by theoretical sources that are historically layered, heterogeneous, and often prescriptive only in retrospect. At the core of the study lies the proposal that the diatonic intervallic system articulated in the nineteenth century—specifically that of Chrysanthos of Madytos—may function as a legitimate and historically grounded reference tuning for the performance of selected medieval Byzantine repertories, rather than as a direct reconstruction of medieval intonation.

The thesis argues that diatonicism must be understood not as a single fixed scale, but as a historically mobile family of intervallic structures shaped by perceptual constraints, arithmetic reasoning, and performance practice. We trace this family through time from Greek antiquity through Byzantine, Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman theoretical traditions, identifying Ptolemy’s ὁμαλὸν διάτονον as a fundamental tuning model integrating numerical proportionality with melodic smoothness. Preserved and developed within this Eastern Mediterranean inheritance as a form of diatonicism including three-quarter-tone step structures, it became in the nineteenth century the default diatonic configuration of the New Method of Byzantine chant theory articulated by Chrysanthos of Madytos.

Within this framework chromaticism may arise not only through the introduction of non-diatonic intervals, but also through rearrangement of the same diatonic intervallic values. A parallel logic appears in the medieval Latin West, where some theorists, increasingly committed to octave-based scalar systems and their associated hexachordal pedagogy, came to regard deviations from a purely diatonic octave framework as chromatic, even when the underlying intervallic sizes remained diatonic. This departure from ancient Greek genus-based definitions of chroma establishes a reconfigured concept of it, one implicit but not explicitly theorised in Byzantine sources of the nineteenth century, and here articulated as a central methodological contribution.

The study further argues that the ratio-based framework of the Chrysanthine intervallic system preserves structural, perceptual, and modal principles continuous with earlier Eastern Mediterranean traditions, including the persistent use of neutral interval regions. While not claimed as an authoritative witness to medieval practice, the system is advanced as a least-wrong, historical tuning suitable for controlled analytical and performative testing in the absence of definitive historical evidence.

This proposal is evaluated through performance-oriented staff transcriptions of selected thirteenth- and fourteenth-century heirmoi and stichera in the Second Modes, particularly from the Koukouzelian tradition. The analyses demonstrate a high degree of continuity in melodic contour, ambitus, cadential articulation, and modal syntax across medieval and neo-Byzantine sources.

Publication Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DE The Mediterranean Region. The Greco-Roman World M Music and Books on Music M Music and Books on Music > M Music M Music and Books on Music > MT Musical instruction and study
Departments:	School of Communication & Creativity > Department of Performing Arts School of Communication & Creativity > School of Communication & Creativity Doctoral Theses Doctoral Theses

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