Greek and Cypriot Music History and Tradition
Greek and Cypriot Music History and Tradition
This domain covers Byzantine chant, Greek demotic and urban traditions, and Cypriot folk practice. It rewards precise terminology - echoi, martyriae, tsiatista, kartzilamas - and penalises generic answers such as 'traditional Greek music'.
Byzantine chant
- Monophonic, unaccompanied liturgical chant in Greek, organised in the octoechos: four authentic echoi and four plagal echoi, each with a characteristic final (base note), range and melodic behaviour.
- Notation uses neumes. The Chrysanthine reform of 1814 (Chrysanthos of Madytos, Gregorios the Protopsaltes, Chourmouzios the Archivist) replaced the old stenographic signs with the New Method - analytic signs plus the solfège syllables pa, bou, ga, di, ke, zo, ni.
- Performance practice: an ison (drone) sustains under the melody; martyriae mark the mode at each section; phthorai signal a temporary change of mode.
- Ioannes Koukouzelis (14th century) is the emblematic medieval composer-psaltes; Petros Peloponnesios is central to the eighteenth-century repertory.
Greek secular traditions
- Demotic song: klephtika, miroloyia (laments), wedding and harvest songs; dances include syrtos, kalamatianos, tsamiko, zeibekiko, hasapiko.
- Rebetiko: urban songs of Piraeus (Markos Vamvakaris, Yovan Tsaous) and later the polished style of Vassilis Tsitsanis; the Smyrna school (Toundas) is a distinct Asia Minor strand.
- Entechno song: Manos Hadjidakis and Mikis Theodorakis, setting poetry to composed melody.
Cypriot tradition
- Tsiatista: improvised rhyming couplets sung in alternation at weddings and festivals, often in dialogue, and not notated in origin.
- Dances: syrtos, zeibekikos, kartzilamas. Instruments include the pithkiavli (shepherd's flute), tsampouna (bagpipe), laouto, fiddle and tamboutsia.
- Solon Michaelides (1905–1979) worked as both composer and musicologist of ancient Greek music.
Worked example
A recording: solo male voice in Greek, a second voice sustaining a drone, the melody cadencing on a reciting note marked by a martyria, no instruments. The ison and modal signature rule out demotic song; the liturgical text and absence of metre identify Byzantine chant, and the final note identifies the echos. The same melody sung with laouto and tamboutsia in rhyming couplets would instead be tsiatista.
Traps that cost marks
- Equating the octoechos with the Western church modes: plagal echoi are not simple transpositions.
- Calling rebetiko 'folk music' - it is urban popular music with named composers.
- Describing tsiatista as a composed or fixed-text genre.