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Mt. Sinai: Frontier of Byzantium

Accompanied by a 20-page booklet with notes, texts and translations, this CD recording contains previously unrecorded medieval Byzantine chant taken primarily from manuscripts in the library of the Monastery of St Catherine on Mt Sinai. Research imperatives driving the selection of repertoire for this disc included: 1) illustration of the importance of the Monastery of St Catherine on Mt Sinai under Islamic rule as a repository not only for the visual culture of Byzantium, but also for its music (these were the primary goals of the curators of exhibitions at the Getty Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the institutions which, respectively, commissioned the programme and released it on CD); and 2) reconstruction of Byzantine cathedral and monastic worship as practised during the Palaeologan era (1261–1453), especially to examine in detail the liturgical context, form and function of the sophisticated kalophonic ('beautiful sounding') genres of chant composition promoted by the cantor/theorist/composer John Koukouzeles (fl. ca. 1300), his contemporaries and successors to ca. 1453. The research process encompassed: 1) the study of medieval manuscripts to select services suitable for demonstrating the research imperatives listed above – namely the Great Vespers of St Catherine and the Service of the Furnace, both of which feature eponymous kalophonic chants by Koukouzeles and others integrated with Late Antique forms of psalmody and Middle Byzantine hymnody; and 2) the application of current research findings on notation and performance practice to the tasks of a) transcribing medieval Byzantine neumes into musical scores in modern notations (accomplished by Dr I. Arvanitis) and b) realising these scores in vocal (Cappella Romana, directed by Dr A. Lingas, who also sings on the recording). For additional information including manuscript call numbers and a brief bibliography, please consult the CD booklet.