Music of the Byzantine Tradition Between Diatonicity and Chromaticism

We have often wondered whether the new Chrysanthic music has brought about a particular simplification of the theoretical concept of byzantine chant in semiography and mostly in the modal system, as stated by certain theorists and their followers. It is a well-known fact that the old Byzantine music or that of the Byzantine tradition followed a basically diatonical structure, whereas the old Chrysanthic system consecrated the chromatic and enharmonic structures to such an extent that they began to be utilised in most cases, which consequently broke the existing balance between them and the former structures.

It is a matter of open interpretation of the new chromatic and enharmonic structures utilised by a system which had for centuries been using the genuine diatonical structure according to the ancient pattern, to what extent the new system contributed to the so-called simplification of the previous system. The transition from diatonical structures to basically chromatic ones, a change which has not been fully motivated so far from the point of view of its objective necessity, offers musicians a wide field of comparative research of great novelty.

Titus Moisescu