I need help understanding 8 tones; it is new to me

[Jacob]

Friends,
In my studies on Orthodoxy I keep seeing references to "the 8 tones," but is usually never explained. I typed "8 tones" in the search engine and found some interesting posts on chanting, which I need to reread, but nothing explaining the 8 tones (I could have missed it, though).

1. What are the 8 tones?
2. Why are they important
3. I am musically illiterate (that's actually putting it nicely; Protestants focus on "word and text" and liturgy usually suffers). What would each individual tone sound like?

Thank you.

[Michael Astley]

Friends,
In my studies on Orthodoxy I keep seeing references to "the 8 tones," but is usually never explained. I typed "8 tones" in the search engine and found some interesting posts on chanting, which I need to reread, but nothing explaining the 8 tones (I could have missed it, though).

1. What are the 8 tones?
2. Why are they important
3. I am musically illiterate (that's actually putting it nicely; Protestants focus on "word and text" and liturgy usually suffers). What would each individual tone sound like?

Thank you.

Hello, Jacob. I'll do what I can.

I'm not sure what your own background is as the word Protestant encapsulates very much. I know that many Anglicans and some Lutherans use Gregorian plainsong in their worship. If you are familiar with this, you will have already experienced a system of eight tones, perhaps without realising it. The eight tones exist in most traditional church music, and the west is no exception. Sadly, the western musical tradition is largely forgotten as the tones have been so widely replaced by modern (post-mediaeval) hymn tunes, and newly-composed music. However, in our Eastern forms of worship, the eight tones are much more prevalent and almost all of our hymnody is based on it. Here are my attempts at answering your questions.

1. Musically, the eight tones are eight sets of melodies which are assigned to different parts of the services. Each tone has a number of variant forms, each variation being assigned to a different element of the Church's liturgy. For instance, at Vespers, there are certain hymns in honour of whatever feast or Saint is being celebrated. These hymns are called stikhera, and they will tell you which tone they are to be sung in. So if you see a stikheron with "Tone 3" written above it you know that you are sing it in stikhera Tone 3. The dismissal hymns at the end of Vespers are called troparia. Tone 3 will have another variant form for this type of hymn, different from the stikhera tone 3. This will be troparion tone 3. Any troparion that says "tone 3" at the to will also be sung to troparion tone 4.

Textually, (and this in part answers your second question), also have significance. Each day of the week has specific texts that make up the services of Vespers, Compline, Matins, and the Divine Liturgy. There are eight sets of these texts for eight complete weeks because the texts of the services rotate on a cycle of eight weeks. Each week, the various hymns and other parts of the services are sung in one tone for the whole week, (there are exceptions to this but this is the standard pattern). So the week of Pascha (Easter) is in tone 1, the following week in tone 2, and so forth, doing the complete set right up to tone 8, and then starting again at tone 1.

2. I'm not too sure why it's important other than it is the tradition that we have received. The Anglican liturgical scholar, Dom Gregory Dix, wrote of the sanctification of time. The idea is that time is as much a part of creation as anything physical and tangible, and it too is fallen. Yet the observances of the church calendar imbue each day with something of the holiness of God and his Saints. The various fasts, feasts, and seasons establish a rhythm of sacred time by which Christ's saving work in creation is made manifest and in which we, constrained by time, can participate. I see the cycle of eight tones as fitting into this framework. The number seven, in the Old Testament, is a symbol of incomplete perfection. It is the nearest to completion that can be experienced before the coming of Christ. The siix + 1 days of creation are an example of this, and I am told that there is some numerical symbolism throughout that chapter.

By contrast, for those of us who are blessed to live under the conditions of the New Covenant, with Truth having been revealed in its fullness in Christ, the number eight is the symbol of all things brought to fruition in Christ. We speak of the eighth day of the new creation, and we celebrate this Sunday by Sunday in the Resurrection hymns of the Church. It's clearest reference, though, in the Church calendar, is that, from Pascha to Pentecost, there are seven weeks: seven sets of seven days. And on Pentecost - the day after this week of weeks - we see the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Mother of God and the disciples - the eighth day. I have not studied the development of this but I think that it is no accident that the week of Pascha is in tone one and Pentecost is in tone 8.

3. There are numerous versions of eight tones based on the different musical traditions of the places where Christian people live. There are the eight Gregorian tones, which are the ancient forms of Roman plainsong and there are the eight Sarum tones, which were the local variations on these as used in Britain.

There are the eight Byzantine tones which will be used in most Greek churches. For instance, here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwRyBJaBowY) is the Sunday Troparion in tone 1 according to the Byzantine music. Linking this to what I said above, it is the troparion text set for Sunday in the week of tone 1, and the melody is troparion tone 1, so you have the marriage of text and music. That troparion will never be sung to any other tone.

Then there are the Russian tones, which themselves have different traditions. The ancient Russian tones are called znamenny chant and bear many similarities to the Byzantine music. However, the more modern Russian tones are often said to be the easiest on the western ear because of the western influence on Russian music in the 17th and 18th centuries. You can hear some examples here (http://commons.orthodoxwiki.org/The_Eight_Tones). Even in that link, you can see that there are different traditions. I belong to a Russian church but the first stikhera tone 2 that is in that link bears no resemblance to the stikhera tone 2 that I use when doing Vespers, which is actually the Kievan one, listed later.

There are also the Kazan tones, which are Arabic and often used by Antiochian churches. I am largely unfamiliar with them.

What you will find in the west is that most Orthodox parishes will choose a musical style, whether Russian, Byzantine, or whatever, and stick with it, so that the people become accustomed to them and start to learn them, and how the words fit the music. In time, after going to an Orthodox church for a while, you will hear the words, "Let us, O faithful, praise and worship the Word...", and you will immediately know that you are at church on Sunday in the week of tone 5, you will recognise the music, and you will be able to join in the words without consulting a book.

I hope this has been of some help. There are others who are musical whizzes who will be able to tell you more, no doubt.

In Christ,
Michael

[Niko T.]

The "Eight Tones" (or "Octoechos") organization of the Church's hymnology dates back to St. John of Damascus, a great church father and hymnographer of the 8th Century:

"[St. John] is considered to be the turning point between our ancient and modern ecclesiastical music, having formalised and renewed the sacred music and its writing system, and setting an end to the increasing since the IVth century musical misuse. He cleansed the ecclesiastical chant from the improper elements of the secular music that had been introduced into the Church, without, however, dismissing the existing ecclesiastical songs, which were prescribed since antiquity. As, for instance, the ancient Greeks included into their music parts from other peoples, the Phrygians and the Lydians (cf. Phrygian and Lydian tones or modes), they took care to develop and advance it, and to give to this foreign music the same character making it into a indeed greek music. Thus, Christianity did not fulfil itself with what it received from the national music of the Greeks, but it took care to transform this music to fit the needs of its divine worship, to cultivate and gradually advance it to something that provoked awe. Thus, the so-called «Byzantine» music came into existance; a music which was shaped by the Fathers of the Church and especially by St John of Damascus to fit the needs of our holy faith and the character of our religious poetry and hymnody." (http://www.ec-patr.net/en/history/damascenos.htm)

And according to the same source, much of the hymns chanted at Saturday vespers and Sunday Orthros were written by St. John. Thus the Octoechos was created as both a rotating source of Resurrectional hymns for Sunday and the corresponding melodies that are inherent to each tone (i.e. hymns in Tone 1 sound different melodically from hymns written in the other tones, for example). However, while the texts of the Octoechos hymns are used worldwide in Orthodox churches, the actual melodies chanted are not necessarily all Byzantine, and varry according to tradition (e.g. Russian chant).

St. Anthony's Monastery has a lot of free Byzantine music sheet music and Finale files (which sound like MIDI with playback), and their site is a great resource: http://www.stanthonysmonastery.org/music/Index.html. There are also great resources from the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese: http://goarch.org/chapel/chant. Under Sunday Orthros, click the tone or mode and you can see the text and hear each hymn chanted from Fr. Seraphim.

Others might know more info on the Byzantine Octoechos or other chant traditions.

[Owen Jones]

It's all Greek to me! I have attended several workshops, listened to several presentations, been a member of several different parish Churches, actually learned much of the more basic Antiochian music there for a while, and am completely, utterly, totally lost and mystified! It might as well be sub-atomic physics...

[Herman Blaydoe]

Octoechos: The Octoechos—literally, the Eight Tones—follows an eight-week cycle, chanted at Vespers, Matins, the Divine Liturgy, Compline and (on Sundays) the Midnight Office. Each week begins a new mode or tone and within that mode texts are provided for each day of the week. The new mode begins with Saturday night Vespers, and the first Sunday after Pascha (St. Thomas Sunday) always begins the cycle anew for each year. Holy Week has no tone assigned to it (the natural order of things is interrupted), while Bright Week has all tones assigned to it (the Resurrection is the sum of all joy).

The Octoechos is not used at all from Lazarus Saturday (the day before Palm Sunday) through Thomas Sunday. It is not used on major feast days when they fall on weekdays. It is always used on Sunday, unless a Great Feast of the Lord occurs on that day.

In the Greek usage, the first four tones are referred to as the "authentic" (authentes or kyrioi) modes, and the last four are "plagal" variations on them. The latter term comes from the Medieval Greek plagios, "oblique" (from plagos, "side"). The plagal modes have a range from the fourth below to the fifth above their final tone. These modal structures do not carry over into the Slavic tones, which are melodic compositions. The seventh tone is referred to as the “Grave Tone” and in Greek tradition mirrors the sound of angelic worship.

St. John Damascene (c. 676–749) is generally considered the originator of the Octoechoes.

Resurrectional Tones – Sunday Tones

Vesperal Tones - In addition to the standard melodies provided by the eight modes, there are also several "special melodies" (Greek: Idiomelon, Slavonic: Samoslasen), and the "pattern melodies" (Greek: prosomoia, Slavonic: podobny) which are based upon them.

Troparion: The short hymn sung at Vespers, Matins and the Divine Liturgy commemorating the Feast or Saint. This is simply a short musical composition similar in length and style to the Kontakion. They are sung at the end of Vespers, after “God is the Lord..”. and the Apostikha at Matins, at the Liturgy and other services. The troparion normally precedes the kontakion.

Kontakion: Originally this was a long poem, intended to be sung in church. It consisted of a short preliminary stanza, followed by some 18-24 strophes, each known as an ikos; the preliminary stanza and every ikos. The word means pole, since the Kontakion was originally a long poetic composition rolled up on a pole. Now only the brief preliminary stanza remains and is sung before the Ikos after the Sixth Ode of the Canon, at the Liturgy, Hours, and various other services.

Stikheron (Stikhera): A Stikheron is a stanza sung between verses taken from the Psalms, primarily at Vespers (at Lord, I have called... and the Apostikha) and Matins (at the Apostikha).

Prokiemenon: These are verses from the Psalter sung immediately before Scripture Lessons, primarily at Liturgy, Vespers and Matins. [Except for Feasts and during Great Lent, the Scripture Lessons themselves have generally fallen out of use at Vespers.] The Prokeimenon sung immediately before the Gospel Lesson is called the Alleluia.

Herman the cantor Pooh

[Owen]

Further note: Octoechos is, properly, the name of the Eight Tones for Sunday. These have also come to govern the weekdays, and the entire collection, 56 days' worth, is called the Parakletike.

Evgenios, the unworth (former) cantor

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Dr Owen, you wrote:


Further note: Octoechos is, properly, the name of the Eight Tones for Sunday. These have also come to govern the weekdays, and the entire collection, 56 days' worth, is called the Parakletike.

To clarify, this is only the case in the Greek Orthodox Church (and its traditional derivatives), and here only partially. The octoechos (which amounts to the whole collection of hymns and settings organised around the 8-mode system) has been divided up in the Greek Orthodox tradition into the portions for Sundays (gathered into the Anastasimatarion), as opposed to the larger collection of all the days of the week (collated as the Paraklitike). Due to the fact that most parishes focus principally on weekend services, the Anastasimatarion has come colloquially to be referred to as 'the Ochtoechos' in Greek Orthodox parishes - though in technical terms, octoechos even in the Greek traditions still means the whole modal system of hymns.

The other Orthodox churches refer to the material for all days by the title 'octoechos'; and so, for example, if you pick up a Slavonic Ochtoich you will find the full set of materials, not just those for Sundays (some abridged versions do exist containing only Sunday materials, generally called 'the Resurrectional Ochtoechos').

INXC, Dcn Matthew