With the exception of a few examples of ancient Greek music copied in manuscripts of music theory, no medieval Byzantine source transmits notated works that are unambiguously non-liturgical. This holds true for two musical genres found with notation only in manuscripts of liturgical chant: the acclamations of monarchs and bishops, which are usually presented within the context of a service; and, notwithstanding some recent recordings with allegedly Byzantine instrumental ensembles (critiqued in Martti and Pennanen 1997), kratemata. The only strictly non-liturgical works for which melodies can reliably be reconstructed (from chant collections!) are didactic and satirical poems employing the metres of well-known hymns (Mitsakis 1990). Reliance on oral means of transmission was not, however, an impediment to the practice of secular music in post-Iconoclast Byzantium, which literary sources and visual depictions show to have been both extensive and varied.
1. Ceremonial and Military Music
Manuals of imperial ceremonial and numerous eyewitnesses record how vocal and instrumental performance was a fundamental element of Byzantine court Hfe. Within the Great Palace singers joined in acclamations and para-liturgical renditions of hymns, while decorated organs were heard alongside such automata as a golden tree with whistling birds, instruments that were valued as much as symbols of imperial power as for their musical qualities (Maliaras 1991). There are no reports from any period of instruments accompanying liturgical chanting. The Palaiologan emperors appear to have abandoned the use of organs, adopting instead wind bands for such ceremonies as the Prokypsis (Maliaras 2002). Brass and percussion instruments had already been employed since Antiquity in the Roman military for signalling and ceremonial (Maliaras 2001), and echoes of late Byzantine ensembles may be discerned in the similar instrumentarium of Ottoman Janissary music (meterhane).
2. Secular Entertainment and Folk Song
Voices and instruments continued to be used (sometimes in combination with dance) by all social classes to entertain and mark major events of the human lifecycle, especially marriages and deaths (see, for example, the eyewitness report of a Cretan funeral from the year 1420 in Alexiou 2002: 34). As in Late Antiquity, literary references to instrumental performance ranged from their generally positive treatment in Byzantine hymnography (Plemmenos 2005), to extremely negative discussions of sexually loose theatrical performers {thymelikoi; see Maliaras 2002: 12). While the names of instruments also showed continuity with the past, their forms had in many cases changed as ‘aulos’ and ‘kithara’ became, respectively, generic labels for famiUes of wind and string instruments. By the eleventh century, ‘kithara’ was employed mainly to denote the plucked pandoura (a lute with three or four strings), although bowed instruments of Asian origin that are depicted
As resembling either the modern Cretan lyra or the Western medieval fiddle (of which it was an ancestor; see Maliaras 2002:14-15; Remnant 2007) were also in use. Polychordal zithers, flutes, and various forms of percussion also enjoyed widespread distribution in Byzantium (Maliaras 2002:15-16).
World History
