NEW YORK — On a recent Tuesday night at Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church on the Upper West Side, six students gathered in a basement classroom to learn a skill integral to Orthodox liturgy: Byzantine chant.
The singers’ voices rose and fell in unison. They had no instruments, save their hands, which they lifted and dropped on their knees, creating a steady backdrop of a beat.
Byzantine chant is a type of religious music traditionally used by the Eastern Orthodox Church, characterized by singing with minimal or no background, and is typically sung in a religious context such as the Divine Liturgy, the main Sunday church service.
Christos, the teacher, is a cantor for the Sunday services. His students cover a wide demographic, from teenagers through elders, and all share the goal of engaging more meaningfully with the liturgy.
One student, a longtime church member named Margaret, said she knows what is happening in the liturgy based on the chanting. For her, the class is an opportunity to better understand the proceedings of the service, which are often obscured from view.
In class, Christos began by revisiting the prior week’s lesson on characters that add duration, signified by the number of dots under the symbol (. , .. , or …). Byzantine symbols are comparative — each signifies how many steps up or down, and in what way, the singer should adjust their tone compared with the prior note.
Christos then led the class in practicing hand motions and singing through samples of notation with increasing difficulty.
The students were all at different levels — some already understood Gregorian chant and others had just converted to the religion. Christos worked with each individually to construct attainable goals, giving a promising teenager, a young convert from Catholicism, the assignment of preparing a solo to be sung next month.
But for the most part, the students focused on learning the notes. They used “Ni Pa Vou Ga Di Ke Zo Ni,” which corresponds to the Western C major scale (Do Re Mi…). Only after extensive practice reading and singing along with the codification will they begin adding words.
Byzantine chant notation is a complex, arduous, aesthetically foreign form of music theory. Some students compared the symbols to Arabic, and all agreed that the skill was akin to reading a foreign language.
They began the course learning the basic symbols, which they reviewed at the beginning of class:
Afterward, they learned more complex multi-note symbols, the lesson of the day:
Each student seemed fully engaged with the teaching and asked questions throughout. Several students recorded the examples on their phones as they sang, to listen to at home. Their homework was to practice three of the examples on one of the pages daily.
At the end of the class, Christos opened the floor for questions. He explained the history and development of Byzantine chant and its use in modern churches.
Byzantine chant developed over centuries, likely originating from early Hebrew and Syrian music. During the Byzantine Empire, it was a method of sharing biblical texts and prayers during a time when many people were illiterate, especially in rural areas. Even for the literate, Byzantine chant was a helpful tool to memorize and engage with religious information.
In the early 19th century, the codification was refined and simplified to be more accessible to church leaders and participants.
Although the class focused on teaching technical skills, Christos described the chanting as “fully spiritual,” making sure not to undermine the tradition’s mystical significance.
The goal of Byzantine chant, he said, is to “match hymnography of text with the feeling.”