Oktōēchos or Octoechos (Greek: pronounced in koine: ;The female form exists as well, but means the book . from ὀκτώ 'eight' and ἦχος 'sound, mode' called ; Slavonic: , from о́смь 'eight' and гласъ 'voice, sound') is the name of the eight mode system used for the composition of religious chant in most Christian churches during the Middle Ages. In a modified form, the octoechos is still regarded as the foundation of the tradition of monodic Orthodox chant today (Neobyzantine Octoechos).
The octoechos as a liturgical concept which established an organization of the calendar into eight-week cycles, was the invention of monastic hymnographers at Mar Saba in Palestine, at the Patriarchates of Antiochia and of Constantinople. It was officially announced as the modal system of hymnography at the Quinisext Council in 692.
A similar eight-mode system was established in Western Europe during the Carolingian reform, and particularly at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 AD which decanonised the former iconoclastic council in 754 and confirmed earlier ones. Quite possibly this was an attempt to follow the example of the Eastern Church by an octoechos reform, even if it was rather a transfer of knowledge with an introduction of a new book called "tonary" which introduced into a Western octoechos of its own design.
It had a list of incipits of chants ordered according to the intonation formula of each tone in its psalmody. Later on, fully notated and theoretical tonaries were also written. The Byzantine book (9th century) was one of the first hymn books with musical notation and its earliest surviving copies date from the 10th century.
Origins Students of Orthodox chant today often study the history of Byzantine chant in three periods, identified by the names John of Damascus (675/676-749) as the "beginning", John Koukouzeles (c. 1280–1360) as the "flower" (Papadic Octoechos), and Chrysanthos of Madytos (c. 1770-c. 1840) as the master of the living tradition today (Neobyzantine Octoechos). The latter has the reputation that he once connected in his time the current tradition with the past of Byzantine chant, which was in fact the work of at least four generations of teachers at the New Music School of the Patriarchate.
This division of the history into three periods begins quite late with the 8th century, despite the fact that the octoechos reform was already accepted some decades earlier, before John and Cosmas entered the monastery Mar Saba in Palestine. The earliest sources which gave evidence of the octoechos' use in Byzantine chant, can be dated back to the 6th century.Papyrus studies proved, that there were already tropologia or tropariologia, as the earliest books of the hymn reform were called, since the 6th century, soon after the Constantinopolitan school of Romanos the Melodist, and not only in Jerusalem, but also in Alexandria and Constantinople (Troelsgård 2007).
Jerusalem, Alexandria, or Constantinople The common schedule and the focus on the circle around John of Damascus is confirmed by a ninth-century treatise called (from [], "Holy City", referring to Jerusalem) which only survived in a complete form as a late copy.The manuscript (F-Pn fonds grec, ms. 360) was edited by Jørgen Raasted (1983) who dated the manuscript back to the 14th century. In fact the compilation has parts compiled in one manuscript which can be dated back to the period between the 12th and 15th centuries, the part rather seems to be an earlier one. Another fragment also dates back to the 12th century and was edited by Johann Friedrich Bellermann (1972). The treatise served presumably as an introduction of a book called —a 9th-century chant book which had been replaced soon by the book , as part of the one of the first chant books fully provided with musical notation. The Hagiopolitan emphasis on John of Damascus was obviously the late result of a 9th-century redaction around the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, so it was part of the later ' reform between Jerusalem and Constantinople and it was motivated theologically, not only because of his contributions to the , but also because of the keyrole which John of Damascus' polemic against the iconoclasts had during this council.John's 3 "Apologetic treatises against those decrying the holy icons" () had been once used during an earlier council to condemn the author posthumously as a heretic in 754, while the following council did not only declare the former one with all its decisions as illegal. It relied on the same treatises in order to solve the crisis of iconoclasm.
Nevertheless, the theological and liturgical concept of an eight-week cycle can be traced back to the cathedral rite of Jerusalem during the 5th century, and originally it was the Christian justification of Sunday as the eighth day after Sabbat.Frøyshov (2007, pp. 144-153). Peter Jeffery assumed a first phase during which the concept existed independently in various places, and a second phase during which Palestine became the leading centre of a monastic hymn reform. It established reform models which were also used later by the generation of John of Damascus.Peter Jeffery (2001). Despite that the first paragraph of the ascribes the treatise to John of Damascus, it was probably written about 100 years after his death and went through several redactions during the following centuries.
There is no doubt that the octoechos reform itself had already taken place by 692, because certain passages of the paraphrase certain law texts (the canons of the synodal decree).Jørgen Raasted (1983, §8, p. 16) already pointed at certain expressions. Peter Jeffery (2001, pp. 186f) believes that certain paraphrases are polemics against certain modes which had been part of the 16 of the , the modal system of the Constantinopolitan cathedral rite as it was mentioned briefly (see below). Eric Werner assumed that the eight-mode system developed in Jerusalem since the late fifth century and that the reform by the hymnographers of Mar Saba were already a synthesis with the Ancient Greek names used for the tropes, applied to a model of Syrian origin already used in the Byzantine tradition of Jerusalem.See Powers (2001), also Jeffery (2001) and Werner (1948). During the eighth century, long before Ancient Greek treatises were translated into Arabic and Persian dialects between the ninth and the tenth centuries, there was already a great interest among theorists like Abū Yūsuf al-Kindī, whose Arabic terms were obviously translated from the Greek.Eckhard Neubauer (1998). He adored the universality of the Greek octoechos:
Al-Kindi demonstrated the intervals on the keyboard of a simple four-stringed oud, starting from the third string as well seven steps in ascending as in descending direction.
According to Eckhard Neubauer, there is another Persian system of seven ("cycles"), outside the Arabic reception of the Byzantine octoechos, which was possibly a cultural transfer from Sanskrit treatises. Persian and Ancient Greek sources had been the main reference for the transfer of knowledge in Arabian-Islamic science.
Monastic reform of Mar Saba According to the Hagiopolites the eight ("modes") were divided in four (authentic) and their four respective (enriched, developed) , which were all in the diatonic genus.
8 diatonic echoi of the Hagiopolitan Octoechos Despite the late copies of the Greek treatise, the earliest Latin description of the Greek system of eight is an eleventh-century treatise compilation called . was translated as by the anonymous compilator who commented with a comparison of the Byzantine octoechos:According to Charles Atkinson (2008, p. 177) the commentary was inserted by "author δ", the compilator of the fourth layer.
This Latin description about the octoechos used by Greek singers () is very precise, when it says that each and pair used the same octave, divided into a fifth (pentachord) and a fourth (tetrachord): D—a—d in , E—b—e in , F—c—f in , and C—G—c in .The octave can be transposed, but if the octave for example is G-g, it has f sharp. While the had the finalis (final, and usually also base note) on the top, the had the finalis on the bottom of the pentachord.
The intonation formulas, called enechema (gr. ), for the authentic modes or , usually descend within the pentachord and turn back to the finalis at the end, while the plagal modes or just move to the upper third. The later dialogue treatises (Gr. , ) refer to the Hagiopolitan diatonic eight modes, when they use the intonations to find those of the :
Phthorai of Hagios Sabbas and Hagia Sophia The as "earliest" theoretical treatise said, that two additional ("destroyers") were like proper modes which did not fit into the diatonic octoechos system, so the Hagiopolitan octoechos was in fact a system of 10 modes. But the chronology of definitions concerned about two regarded them first as modes of their own because of their proper and that their models had to be sung during the eight-week cycle. These ("medial echoi") of and , with a finalis and base between and , were obviously favoured by hymnographers like John of Damascus and his step-brother Kosmas, while the concept of a transition between was established later:
It seems that the concept of the eight diatonic was established by the generation of Theodore the Studite and his brother Joseph, but they had two integrate other passing through other genera than the diatonic one as they had been favoured by protagonists of the Sabbaite school:
The later mention that changes between the and the were bridged by the enharmonic , and changes between the and the by the chromatic .
Nevertheless, the terminology of the somehow suggested that and as "destroy" one or two diatonic degrees used within one tetrachord of a certain , so that the chromatic and enharmonic genera were somehow subordinated and excluded from the diatonic octoechos. This raises the question, when the music in the near eastern Middle Ages became entirely diatonic, since certain melodies were coloured by the other enharmonic and chromatic gene according to the school of Damascus. This is the question about the difference between the Hagiopolitan reform of 692 and in as much it was opposed to the Constantinopolitan tradition and its own modal system.
The author of the mentioned an alternative system of 16 "sung in the ," with 4 and 4 beyond the and of the diatonic octoechos:
These " of the " did probably point at the rite at the Patriarchal church or even at the cathedral rite of Constantinople which was also known as "choral" or "sung rite" (). The Constantinopolitan chant books were called asmatikon ("book of the choir"), psaltikon ("book of the soloist called ''"), and kontakarion (another name of the , since the huge collection of kontakia, sung during the morning service, was its largest part).
Unfortunately, no early Constantinopolitan chant manual survived, there is only this short paragraph of the which says, that the singers of the choir followed in their chant books an own modal system, which was distinct from the Hagiopolitan octoechos. A distinction from Constantinople is not the only possible explanation, because Jerusalem had also its own local cathedral rite. Since the 14th century at latest, the monastic rite was not opposed to the cathedral rite, even monks celebrated it on festival occasions, whenever they expected guests.