| ORTHODOX CHURCH HYMNODY RESOURCES AND INFORMATIVE ARTICLES FOR DOWNLOADING: WHAT TO SING ON SUNDAY (TYPIKON) This is an Excel spreadsheet showing what changeable hymns to sing in the Divine Liturgy on each day if it falls on a Sunday. It covers the fixed feasts of the Menaion and the moveable feasts of the Triodion and Pentecostarion. All you have to know is the date and if there is a moveable feast on that day. If there is a moveable feast, just look it up in the Triodion or Pentecostarion section and combine it with the date to determine the the hymns of the day. If there is no moveable feast then you only have to take note of the hymns for that day. It doesn't replace a full typikon, but it can be very useful in most cases. For those who do not have Excel or do not know how to use spreadsheets, you may use the SUNDAY TYPIKON - PDF VERSION This can be viewed on Adobe Reader or it could be printed out on 11x17 paper and would require 11 sheets. WHAT ORTHODOX CHOIRS SHOULD KNOW Practical information for members of Orthodox lay choirs about how to prepare themselves for service to the Church. WORSHIP SERVICES OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH A basic list of the services of the Church with descriptions of the more important services. HYMNOLOGY Q & A A brief article by Nancy Takis answering some basic questions about Orthodox Hymnology. Very useful information. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE CORRECT IN ORTHODOX CHURCH MUSIC? An article by Nancy Takis presented in the Byzantine Echo, the newsletter of the Mid-Eastern Federation of Greek Orthodox Church Musicians. SUGGESTIONS FOR TRANSLATING HYMNS TO ENGLISH This article gives insight on how we translate Greek hymns into English for this website. It is an essential guide for anyone who wishes to carry on this important work. THE NEED TO RETURN TO TRADITIONAL MUSIC An article from The Epistle, the newsletter of Assumption Greek Orthodox Church in St. Clair Shores, written by Father Anthony Cook, associate priest, on the occasion of Church Music Sunday 2007. It explains the importance of moving away from Western polyphonic choral music and into the direction of traditional chant. BYZANTINE MUSIC THEORY FOR WESTERN MUSICIANS A 7-page essay by Stan Takis giving rudimentary information about Byzantine music. This is intended for people who know something about music theory. ENGLISH TEXT AND BYZANTINE CHANT: SOME PROBLEMS AND ISSUES Nancy Takis' presentation at the Axion Estin Conference on Byzantine Chant, New Rochelle, NY, January 21, 2006 BYZANTINE MUSIC FOR AN ORTHODOX AMERICA A short article published in 1994 by The Burning Bush, news-letter of the Holy Dormition Monastery in Rives Junction, MI. ON CHANT AND POLYPHONY A brief article on the roles of chant and polyphony in the liturgical services of the Orthodox Church by Stan Takis. MUSIC AND ORTHODOXY By Father Michael Varlamos. A priest's perspective, explaining why he feels simple chant should replace complex, polyphonic music in the Greek Orthodox churches of America. THE ORTHROS BOOK OF NICHOLAS ROUBANIS This 300-page, handwritten manuscript has been out of print for years. We offer it here as an aid to chanters and their training. It contains all of the music for the Sunday Resurrectional Orthros service in Western staff notation, in Greek with English phonetics. HOLY WEEK BOOK OF J. SAKELLARIDES This 386-page book is out of print and copies are very rare. It contains all of the music for Holy Week in Greek and Western staff notation. READING PSALMODIA The late David Melling's booklet on Byzantine music theory and reading Byzantine notation. Provided as a service to those who are having difficulty finding the original website. A GUIDE TO THE MUSIC OF THE EASTERN ORTHODOX CHURCH This is a Romanian textbook translated and edited by Fr. Nicholas Apostola. It teaches Byzantine music and notation through comparative examples in Western staff notation. THE MNEMONIC VERSES - A QUICK AND EASY GUIDE TO THE BYZANTINE TONES By Jessica Suchy- Pilalis. A four-page primer on the music theory of the Byzantine Octoechos taught through the medium of some short and clever mnemonic melodies. This is a very easy way to be introduced to the Tones and their modes. ABOUT VESPERS An educational look at the order and music of the Orthodox Vespers service. TONE VS. MODE A discussion of the translation of echos and Octoechos. BYZANTINE OCTOECHOS CHART A one-page chart that explains the most common characteristics of the eight Byzantine tones for those who were trained in Western music and want to recognize or understand the Byzantine theore of music. BYZANTINE THEATER AND RITUAL A well-researched and documented doctoral thesis written by Andrew Walker White which contains a considerable amount of information and history concerning the music of the Orthodox Church. Well worth reading! THE HYMNOLOGICAL CONTEXT OF HOLY COMMUNION This interesting article by Gerasimos Koutsouras was taken from PHRONEMA, Vol. 21, 2006, the official annual review of St. Andrew's Theological Seminary, Sidney, Australia. Opinions are those of the author. It contains a very useful chart of the text of all the Communion hymns with their days and sources. VIDEO EXPLAINING BASICS OF BYZANTINE MUSIC Stan Takis' presentation for the 2005 National Forum Summer Church Music Institute in Brookline, Massachusetts. NOTES AND IMPORTANT INFORMATION Most music on this website is chant. Chant follows the rhythm of the text, and thus there are frequent meter changes. For more information read: METERING CHURCH MUSIC SPECIAL NOTE TO THOSE WHO DOWNLOAD MUSIC FROM THIS WEBSITE: I am constantly adding, updating, and correcting music files. SInce I am responsible for entering the music in a computer to create these files, and for maintaining this website, I occasionally make typographic and formulaic errors. We prefer that the latest versions with corrections should be used by Church chanters and choirs, so if you have downloaded music in the past, and something does not seem right, please check for updated versions and replace the old ones. Thank you. --STAN TAKIS, takistan@yahoo.com MESSAGE BOARD: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/greekorthodoxmusic TO DOWNLOAD MUSIC: Click on the title of the hymn using the RIGHT mouse button and select the option: Save Target as... Click on the hymn with the left mouse button if you want to see it displayed in Adobe Reader, from which you can print or save it.. Zipped files will have to be downloaded and unzipped before they can be read or printed out . Sometimes the online display is a little fuzzy and does not depict the actual high quality of resolution when printed on paper. USE POLICY: Visitors to this website are hereby given permission to download our copyrighted music and reproduce as many copies as they need, as long as they do not alter the English texts and their melodic lines. Furthermore, permission is given to make arrangements of this music as long as the English texts and their melodic lines remain intact, and that "N. Takis" is accredited for the English setting, and the copyright information for Nancy Chalker Takis is given on the first page of the arrangement alongside any other copyrights on the arrangement. If you wish to suggest changes or corrections in the text or melodic lines, please contact us at takistan@yahoo.com and we will respond. If you wish to donate to the perpetuation of this website, you can contribute at the address below on this page. Attention Users of Apple Computers: The Mac OS X Preview program will not read some PDF files made by Windows machines. If your downloads don't read correctly, get the Adobe Reader for Macintosh. You can download it at adobe.com. PRINTING FROM ADOBE READER - SPECIAL NOTE: When you print a hard copy from Adobe Reader, please be sure that the "Page Scaling" setting is "None." If not, your document may be reduced in size and the margins widened. It should not be necessary to shrink these files. FOR THOSE OUTSIDE OF NORTH AMERICA - INTERNATIONAL PAPER SIZES: The documents on this websited are formatted for standard American paper sizes, that is, 8.5 x 11 inches (letter-size) and 8.5 x 14 inches (legal-size). If you are printing a document letter-sized paper (most hymns), use the international A4 printer setting. For legal-sized documents, (most booklets) use B4. NOTE: Using A4 and B4 will cause a wider margin at the top and bottom of the pages. ABOUT NEW BYZANTINE CHANT Chant is a form of purely vocal music that serves a written text. The words are intoned using a limited scale, and melodic formulas are used to emphasize certain words and syllables. In chant, the music is shaped by the text, as opposed to song, in which the music takes a fixed melody and has equal or greater artistic importance than the text. The purest form of chant is monophonic, that is, there is a single melodic line. Byzantine chant is often duophonic, having a melodic line accompanied by a lower droned note which enforces the base tonality of the mode. A melodic line could be harmonized with chords and still be considered chant, provided that the text remains dominant and the harmonies are homophonic and do not distract from the flow of the words. This would preclude the use of contrapuntal polyphony and complicated chord structures. There is a certain style (or iphos) associated with Byzantine chant. This style has a unique vocal character and includes much ornamentation and precise microtunings of scales. The iphos is generally employed by chanters trained in the art of Byzantine music. The music of this web page is aimed primarily for the use of lay choirs and congregations. We call it "New Byzantine Chant" because, while it is based upon Byzantine music theory, it can be chanted in a Western vocal style in English by lay choirs and congregations using the modern even-tempered scale. Congregational chanting is becoming a more important part of Greek Orthodox worship, and represents a return to an ancient Christian practice. ABOUT US New Byzantium Publications provides music for use in Orthodox Christian churches, primarily churches that use both Greek and English in their services. The main goal is to offer ecclesiastical music in English put in common staff notation that is accurately translated, poetic, close to the rules of Byzantine Chant, and can alternate easily with the traditional Greek versions. The music in English available on this site is written primarily by Nancy Chalker Takis, a hierarchically-blessed chanter of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and holder of the Patriarch Athenagoras medal for notable service to her metropolis. She has been given approval to translate Church hymns from three consecutive hierarchs of the Metropolis (formerly Diocese) of Detroit. She currently chants regularly in the parishes of Assumption Church in Flint, Michigan and Annunciation Church in Muskegon, Michigan, and other parishes when called upon. Greek versions of these hymns are provided as a service for choirs which alternate Greek and English texts and are from various sources, some traditional, some original, and also some from composers of the past. The music here has melodic lines and ison parts written out. It follows the melodic rules and formulas of Byzantine chant, but does not include all of the traditional ornaments. It can be used by chanters, choirs, and congregations. Some of the music is from the hymnal of John Sakellarides, whose melodies remain popular in America today. A few pieces are in 3 or 4-part SAB/SATB choir arrangements. The English text has been treated in a way that respects the placement of the accented syllables of the language, as one finds in traditional Greek church music. There is no awkward English in these arrangements. Stan Takis, the owner and operator of this website and who is responsible for the typesetting of the music, has also set several hymns to English on this site, under the tutelage of his wife Nancy Takis. He is a life-long educator and an experienced choir director both in Greek Orthodox churches and in the public schools. He is currently the Minister of Music and choir director at Assumption Greek Orthodox Church in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. He also holds the Athenagoras medal for service to his metropolis. All files are in .pdf format. You must have Adobe Reader to read or print them. (This is a free download on the Internet. If you don't have it, go to Adobe.com and select downloads.) Call us or send e-mail any time you like. You can also send comments and donations to the following address: Stan and Nancy Takis 1900 Burkley Rd. Williamston, MI 48895-9755 Phone: (517) 980-3830 E-mail: takistan@yahoo.com |
| THE PURPOSE OF THIS WEBSITE The hymnody of the Greek Orthodox Church has been handed down through the ages in a complete form, consisting of thousands of texts that include Psalms, prayers, praises, poems, sermons, and histories. The language of these texts in their original Greek, is of a very high literary quality containing much poetic description, imagery, and power. These carefully constructed texts are accompanied by a specifically-formulated musical system for their oral expression by appointed chanters and choirs of the Church who lead the congregation in hymn singing and responses. Today, these chanters and choirs include both the formally trained and ordained, and musical volunteers from the laity who may be untrained in the rubrics of Orthodox hymnody. For these chanters and choirs with lesser training, this website offers resources, educational essays, and all of the hymns in the Sunday Divine Liturgy and other common hymns and services. The hymns are in Greek and English. There are many English translations elsewhere, but many fail to transmit the poetry and power of their Greek counterparts, nor are many metered properly to the model melodies of the Church, which makes it impossible to chant them in the prescribed manner. The English versions on this website try to correct these problems and make the English as understandable, poetic, and easy to convey as possible. |
Click Facebook
logo, then click
"Like" to receive
updates.
logo, then click
"Like" to receive
updates.
| Icon written by Arlene Tilghman arlenesicons.com |
HYMNS AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOADING
(Free Sheet Music)
Unless otherwise noted all music is offered in both Greek and modern English. In books and
booklets, the two languages are side-by-side. For individual hymns, the Greek is on the first page
and the English on the second page. Scroll down to the second page to see the English version.
When printing PDF files, page scaling should be set to "none," especially for booklets.
Scroll down on the left-hand column of this page for use policy and important technical information.
(Free Sheet Music)
Unless otherwise noted all music is offered in both Greek and modern English. In books and
booklets, the two languages are side-by-side. For individual hymns, the Greek is on the first page
and the English on the second page. Scroll down to the second page to see the English version.
When printing PDF files, page scaling should be set to "none," especially for booklets.
Scroll down on the left-hand column of this page for use policy and important technical information.
Search newbyz.org:
(e. g. date, name of saint,
feast, or hymn; for Greek,
use English phonetics)
(e. g. date, name of saint,
feast, or hymn; for Greek,
use English phonetics)