Osmoglasnik u muzičkoj tradiciji Južnih Slovena

Abstract

The subject of this study is the Octoechos, one of the most important collections of music and poetry in the Orthodox Byzantino-Slav musical tradition. The stichera from the Octoechos provided poetical and melodic models for other church books in the annual cycle of Orthodox services — the Triodion, the Pentecostarion, the Menaia. Because these songs are sung in a cycle which recurs several times during the church year, church singers knew them best of all. The Byzantine neumatic manuscripts of the Octoechos (which are extant as a part of the Sticherarion from the tenth century on) have been studied and transcribed by Henry J.W. Tillyard and Lorenzo Tardo. The Slavonic manuscripts of the Octoechos with musical notation have not up until now been collected and analysed as a group. Our information about the translation of the Octoechos from Greek into Old Church Slavonic (in the 9th century), and about its development in the manuscript tradition and in early printed books (in the 11th to 16th centuries), comes from historical sources, lives of Saints and manuscripts without musical notation. The central part of this study deals with the neumatic manuscripts written and preserved in the Serbian monastery of Chilandari on Mount Athos (from the second half of the 18th century).