as its main sphere of musical creativity, the Eastern Orthodox church emphasized hymnody, newly
composed “songs with praise of God” in metrical verse. This repertory, known as Byzantine chant,
consists of hymns in many liturgical genres or categories ranging from the single-stanza troparion (for the
Vigil, or Night Office) and sticheron (for the day services), which attach themselves to psalms in a
manner matching that of the Gregorian antiphon—through the kontakion (from the Greek for “scroll”), an
elaborate metrical sermon in as many as 30 stanzas—to the kanon (from the Greek for “rule”), a
magnificent cycle of nine odes, each based on a different metrical prototype or model stanza called a
hiermos.
EX. 1-11B Fourth verse of a proto-Byzantine Hymn to the Trinity, transcribed by E. Pöhlmann and M. WestOne of the oldest melodies still in active liturgical use is the one called “Credo I” in modern chant
books (Ex. 1-12). It is a setting of the Nicene Creed: a recitation of articles of Christian faith that was
adopted in the fourth century, originally for use in the baptism ceremony. The Creed eventually joined the
Eucharistic liturgy, sung first in the Eastern churches, later (sixth century CE) in Spain and in Ireland. It
was adopted by the Franks in 798 and was formally incorporated into the “universal” (or “Catholic”)
Latin Mass by Pope Benedict VIII in 1014, positioned between the Gospel reading and the Offertory as
the divider between the synaxis and Eucharist services.
Despite its late adoption, the formulas to which this venerable text is most often sung are
demonstrably archaic and demonstrably Greek. Its formula-family, with its regular use of B-flat and E to
surround the reciting tone on G, and its final cadence on E, is a rather exotic specimen within the
Gregorian corpus. (But compare the Offertory on Justus ut palma in Ex. 1-5.) Yet although it seems to
emphasize the odd interval of a diminished fifth, the melody nevertheless fully conforms to the intervallic
structure of the diatonic pitch set. Transposed up a fifth or down a fourth it could be accommodated on the
staff without accidentals. (The reason why it is not notated at that pitch level in the Gregorian sources
will become clear in the next chapter.)
EX. 1-12 Beginning of “Credo I”