48. What did Byzantine music sound like? (The answer is more political than you’d expect), with Alexander Lingas

Byzantium & Friends

A conversation with Alexander Lingas (City University of London) on the debates surrounding the reconstruction of Byzantine music. We discuss the common origins of western and eastern Christian traditions, when they parted ways, and how both traditions passed through phases of reinvention. Why does the modern performance of Gregorian Chant sound so different from Byzantine chant? As the director of the vocal ensemble Capella Romana, Alexander comes at this question from both a performance and a research angle. His publications include 'Medieval Byzantine Chant and the Sound of Orthodoxy,' in the volume Byzantine Orthodoxies (Ashgate 2006) 131-150, and 'Performance Practice and the Politics of Transcribing Byzantine Chant,' Acta Musicae Byzantinae 6 (2003) 56-76. Stay tuned at the end for a recording of an imperial acclamation for John VIII Palaiologos.