Byzantine Kalophonic Chants in Ukrainian and Belarusian Church Musical Manuscripts of the late 16th – 18th centuries

After the adoption of Christianity by the Kyiv prince Volodymyr the Great in 988, the Greek-Byzantine religious and cultural heritage became a significant source of further development of the Eastern Slavs. Attempts to incorporate Greek-Byzantine church chant into East Slavic liturgical services have been repeatedly traced. This is clearly evidenced, in particular, by the so-called ‘Greek’ chants in Ukrainian and Belarusian musical manuscripts (Heirmologia) of the 16th – 18th centuries. Representative manuscripts, which contain a dozen and more Greek chants were described. These are church chants’ collections of the monasteries in Supraśl, Kuteino, Lavriv, Maniava. As a result of our comparative study of the Ukrainian-Belarusian and Greek-Byzantine manuscripts significant number of Greek chants were attributed. Among them there are kalophonic works – mainly Cherubic songs and koinonika – of the Byzantine composers of the 13th – 15th centuries, such as Ioannes Glykys, Ioannes Kladas, Manuel Chrysaphes, Longin the Monk, Joakeim Harsianites, Manuel Gazis, Anthimos Lavriotes. Ukrainian historians say about the hesychasm revival in the Ukrainian and Belarusian lands of the late 16th – 17th centuries. Its most famous figures are Saint John Vyshenskyi, Saint Job Kniahynytskyi, Saint Job Pochaivskyi (Zhelizo). Comparative study of the attributed Greek chants notated with Middle Byzantine, New Method’s and Kyiv staff notations showed that the Middle Byzantine notation was decoded by the five-line Kyiv one. In the Ukrainian-Belarusian manuscripts the musical exegesis of the old Byzantine works was fixed almost 100 years earlier than in Byzantine sources.