«Great melodies» in the Divine Liturgy: the melismatic genres of the Sicilian-Albanian tradition

The objective of my paper is to offer an analysis of the chants of the Divine Liturgy – particularly of the so called «great melodies» – as transmitted in the Albanian-speaking communities of Sicily. Priests and faithful adhering to the Byzantine rite have cultivated the musical repertoire since the time of the diaspora in Italy, in the aftermath of the Fall of Constantinople. Piana degli Albanesi (founded in 1488) is today the main centre amongst the Albanian colonies and the See of the Byzantine Eparchy. The term “great” associated with ‘melodies’ appears for the first time in fr. Bartolomeo Di Salvo’s collection (2016), in which “ΜΕΓΑΛΑ ΚΕΚΡΑΓΑΡΙΑ” is suggested as the title of an appendix to the Κεκραγάριον. The melodies included in this final section of the first part of Di Salvo’s book are in fact more melismatic than the ones previously presented through the eight modes, and this is the reason why he named these as “great”. Also, I show some results of a comparison made with a few late- Byzantine sources representing generative repetitions of melodic and rhythmical cells. The kalophonic repertoire analysed in Conomos’s study on Byzantine liturgical sources (1974, 1985) has in fact shown a mechanism of melodic phrasing very much close to the one found in the Sicilian-Albanian “great melodies”, as represented in some of the “great” ones I intend to display in this paper (i.e. Trishagia, Alleluias, Cherubic Hymns, Megalynaria, Koinōnika, etc.). Finally, while speaking of such melodies, I indeed contemplate to extend the adjective “great” to some chants of the Divine Liturgy, showing a similar melismatic feature in their melodic development, as well as providing some remarks on the specific rhythmical and melodic phrasing employed in such regional ‘kalophonic’ idiom.