13th International Conference on Eastern Chant
22nd–25th May 2006, at Iaşi, Rumania

Accumulated Research Results from the General Perspective of the History of European Christian Ecclesiastical Culture – East and West

10 years after the Royaumont Congress, 35 years after the 14th AIEB Congress at Bucharest

Senate Rooms of Iaşi University
Gothic Hall of Three Hierarchs Monastery
Great Hall of Moldavian Metropolitanate at Iaşi

Under the high patronage of His Holiness Daniel Ciobotea, Archbishop of Iaşi and Metropolitan of Moldavia and Bucovina.

Under the spiritual guidance provided by Father Archimandrite Clement Haralam, abbot and protopsaltis of the Three Hierarchs Monastery at Iaşi and exarchos of Moldavia.

Provisional conference programme as at 18th May 2006

(still subject to change)

Saturday, 20^th May 2006

Arrivals, registration

Main arrivals and registration point is at the Căminul Teologic "Sf. Nicolae", Strada Agatha Bârsescu 9, 700074 Iaşi (across the street from the Metropolitan Cathedral). Telephones: 0232-276077, 235691, 235692. Mobile phones: Mr. Cătălin Dima, 0727-200125 or Fr. Iustinian Răduc, 0729-935888. Most participants from abroad will be accomodated here.

Sunday, 21^th May 2006

Arrivals, registration during the whole day

08:00 Holy Liturgy in the Three Hierarchs Monastery on the Feast of the Holy Emperors Constantine and Helena

11:00 Weather permitting, visit to the Iaşi Botanical Gardens

13:00 Festive lunch in the Three Hierarchs Monastery

Monday, 22^th May 2006

10:00 Gothic Hall of Three Hierarchs Monastery. Opening in the presence of His Holiness Daniel, Archbishop of Iaşi and Metropolitan of Moldavia and Bucovina

Morning session. Chair: Prof. Christian Hannick

10:30 Prof. Christian Hannick, Le kontakion et sa composition musicale

Prof. Bozhidar Karastoyanov, Die melodischen Formeln des späteren sticherarischen Gesanges in der rumänischen Gottesdienspraxis

11:30 Public lecture: Dr. Angelo Rusconi, Guido d’Arezzo and the New Music Theory in the 11th Century

Followed by discussions

13:00 Lunch break

Afternoon session. Chair: Prof. Rainer Stichel

15:00 Maria Takala-Roszczenko, Kievan Square Notation as a 16^th-17^th Century Innovation in East Slavic Orthodox Church Singing

Prof. Elena Chircev, title to be announced

16:00 Dr. Svetlana Poliakova, Chanting Books of the 11^th-14^th Centuries and their Links with Local Liturgical Practices

Mother Juditha Sibiriakova, Novotikhvinsk Monastery in Ekaterinburg, Russia, Experimental Revival of Early Ecclesiastical Chant Traditions

17:00 Fr. Teofil Stan, The "după rusie" ("Russian-like") Church Chant in the Rumanian Eparchies of Maramureş and Satu Mare

Fr. Prof. Vasile Grăjdian, Probleme actuale ale cântării de origine bizantină ân Biserica Ortodoxă Română

18:00 Discussions

13:00 Break for dinner

Tuesday, 23^th May 2006

08:00 Special Liturgical Service in the Three Hierarchs Monastery

Morning session. Chair: Traian Ocneanu

10:00 Prof. Rainer Stichel, Les chants liturgiques et la vénération des images à Byzance: Jérusalem, Constantinople

Dr. Angelo Rusconi, Between East and West. The Response "Vadis propitiator"

11:00 Prof. Gabriela Ocneanu, The Polyeleos by Koukoumas in Mode I in the Koukouzelian Notation. A Comparative Approach

Traian Ocneanu, New Data on the 14^th-15^th Century Byzantine Legacy and its Transmission Channels. The Joint Case of the Polyeleos by Koukoumas and of Philothei's "Pripjala"

12:00 Round-table discussion. The Place of the Polyeleos in 14^th, 15^th, and 16^th Century Christian Ecclesiastical Chant Traditions - East and West

13:30 Lunch break

Afternoon session. Chair: Dr. Angelo Rusconi

15:30 Dr. Panagiotes Panagiotides, An Approach to Poetic and Melodic Rhythm in Byzantine Church Music

Dr. Aristides Bazmadelis, The Development of the Byzantine Musical Collection and Archive at the Faculty of Fine Arts, School of Music of Aristotle University at Thessaloniki

Bogdan Grosu, An Introduction to the History of the Finnish Orthodox Church

17:00 Discussions

18:00 Festival of psaltic music in the Metropolitan Cathedral. Part I

Wednesday, 24^th May 2006

Morning session. Chair: Prof. Antoni Mironowicz

10:00 Prof. Antoni Mironowicz, Church Unions and their Consequences in Poland. The Union of Brest

Prof. Waldemar Deluga, Entre Kiev et Iassy. Les estampes de l'époque de Pierre Mohyla

11:00 Daniel Suceava, De nouveau sur l’oeuvre musicale de Dionysios Photeinos (1777-1821)

Dr. Maricica Ifrim, Les collections des Archives Nationales de Iaşi et leur importance pour la recherche contemporaine

12:00 Discussions

13:00 Lunch break. Lunch will be served in the Monte Carlo restaurant, near the State Archives.

14:00 Visit to the MSS and documents exhibition specially organized in the State Archives of Iaşi for the conference participants

Afternoon session. Chair: Daniel Suceava

Costin Moisil, Rolul lui Macarie Ieromonahul şi Anton Pann în cântarea bisericească naţională. O cercetare istoriografică

Ştefania Ştefan, Semiotic and Semantic Analysis of the Axion "Cuvine-se cu adevărat" in MS No. 207 (XIXth Century) from Văratec Monastery

16:00 Maria Takala-Roszczenko, The International Society of Orthodox Church Music (ISOCM), Based in Joensuu, Finland

Traian Ocneanu, Outlines of Some Internationally Desirable Research Projects. MSS Digitization, Resources Exchange

17:30 Discussions

18:00 Festival of psaltic music in the Metropolitan Cathedral. Part II

Thursday, 25^th May 2006

Morning session. Chair: Costin Moisil

10:00 Prof. Wojciech Walczak, Communication of Ecclesiastical Traditions between the Polish and the Greek Orhodox Churches. Connections and Common Tradition

Prof. Petre Ş. Năsturel, Des charades coumanes aux devinettes roumaines. Une hypothèse

11:00 Ion Bîrnea, Un ucenic de valoare al ieromonahului Ghelasie Basarabeanul: Stan Popescu

Cristian Cercel, La musique byzantine - prière transposée en vibrations sonores

Victor Şapcă, Rolul protopsalţilor din Oltenia în românirea cântărilor bizantine

Traian Ocneanu, The Centre for Byzantine Studies at Iaşi – a Conditioned Perspective

12:30 Topic-related and general final discussions

13:00 Farewell lunch. Afternoon visit to the Iaşi Botanical Gardens, and some Iaşi monasteries

19:00 Farewell dinner

Friday, 26^th and Saturday, 27^th May 2006

Excursion to a number of monasteries in Northern Moldavia. Staying overnight at Putna Monastery.

In the chronological order of their registrations, the following persons have so far placed an option for the excursion: Prof. Waldemar Deluga, Dr. Maricica Ifrim, Mother Juditha Sibiriakova, Mother Euphrosynia Makhova, Daniel Suceava, Fr. Clement Haralam, Prof. Gabriela Ocneanu, Traian Ocneanu

Organized by the Centre for Byzantine Studies at Iaşi in cooperation with the Metropolitanate of Moldavia and Bucovina of the Rumanian Orthodox Church.

CALL FOR PAPERS — first announcement

Papers are invited for an as yet unspecified number of 20-minute presentations and for three 1.5-hour public conferences, the latter to be held, one each, in Iaşi University, Iaşi Arts University (Faculty of Music), and Iaşi Faculty of Theology, respectively. With its large academic community Iaşi is a welcoming venue for conferences addressed to the public at large.

Should the number of initially registered participants exceed the participation capacity projected on the basis of the pre-established duration of the conference, efforts will be undertaken to organize parallel streams of communications before seriously considering the option of rejecting submitted papers.

The paper summaries will be reviewed by a panel of at least two scholars, who may ask for preliminary drafts of important papers to help in the translation work as part of the conference logistics.

Languages of communication will be English, French, German in that order of priority. Efforts will me made to help with translating from other languages with special attention given to Italian, Russian and Rumanian.

Major conference themes are:

STREAM A. Transmission and Reconstruction of Christian Musical Heritage with the themes:

1. Autochtonous Schools of Ecclesiastical Chant during the time period stretching from the 12th to the 19th century. Contributing Communities and Nations. The early contributions of Palestinian, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian traditions. Macedonia – the crucible for Greco-Slavonic transmission.

2. Mount Athos - Spiritual Republic and Cultural Centre of the Christian Orthodox World. Musical, Iconographic, Theological and Historical Heritage.

3. Inspiration and Improvisation, Imitation and Mixing. The Evolving Shapes of Received Cultural Traditions.

4. Reports on outstanding MSS and publications.

5. Conservatism and Innovation in Christian Europe's Eastern and Western Chant.

6. Methodologies, research tools: cataloguing, digitizing, editing, publishing, IT applications, information interchange.

7. National and international joint projects. Networking and funding.

STREAM B. General Issues Regarding the Christian Spiritual and Cultural Heritage

Associated events

a. A special liturgical service in the Three Hierarchs Monastery on the morning of the second day of the conference.

b. The festival of ecclesiastical chant traditionally associated with the conference will take place on two afternoons and will benefit this year from the first-time presence of individual chanters and chanting groups from outside Rumania.

c. A special performance of authentic Rumanian folk melodies sung by reputed individual singers and groups.

d. An exhibition of MSS and visits to some major repository institutions.

e. A 2-day cultural excursion after the conference, which could include this time, besides some of the traditionally important monastic centres, also an area of outstanding ethnographic and ethnological interest.

N.B. The number and the extent of the associated events described above will depend on the number of registered participants.

Deadlines:

– Issuing the 1st announcement: 1^st February 2006

– Early bird registration at discounted rates: 1^st March 2006

– Receipt of paper summaries: 15^th March 2006

– Issuing the preliminary conference programme: 15^th April 2006

– Last-minute registration: 1^st May 2006

– Issuing the final conference programme: 10^th May 2006

– Arrivals: Saturday 20^th-Sunday 21^st May 2006. Already arrived guests will be invited to attend Sunday's liturgical celebration of the feast of the Holy Emperors Constantine and Helen in the Three Hierarchs Monastery and join in the festive lunch later in the day.

– Conference and additional events: 22^nd-25^th May 2006

– Excursion 26^th - 27^th May 2006.

– Visit prolongation, including research stay and visits beyond Sat. 27^th May: possible by special agreement.

Conference background

We have chosen the motto of this conference to be 10 years after the Royaumont Congress, 35 years after the 14th AIEB Congress at Bucharest in order to indicate the importance of these two events, particularly for Rumania, and the existence of a strong continuation of scholarship despite the departure from this life of some of the people who made possible or contributed significantly to those two related events. A new organizational impetus was obtained when some of the participants in one or both of those two events announced their intention of joining this conference, and it is being hoped that by the beginning of May more such participants will be able to join.

New interest, results and research drives in the area of Christian ecclesiastical culture, especially in music and the fine arts have been accumulating of late from many parts of the world. From Greece and the Greek diaspora comes a steady flow of news regarding conferences, publications and music festivals, a great number of which concentrate on a theoretical and practical reevaluation of the Chrysanthine heritage and its meaning for the development of the Orthodox chant. The Slav traditions of ecclesiastical culture have become a major research area, whereby remarkable vitality is being demonstrated by Ukrainain, Polish and Russian scholars and practitioners to better understand and revive their outstanding past traditions, especially those regarding the practice of the 'Prostopenie' variety of plainchant.

In this country, based on the organization of annual international conferences and the publication of our annual journal, Acta Musicae Byzantinae, our own Centre for Byzantine Studies has endeavoured to make its contribution by establishing a Rumanian and international forum for debating and researching the earliest legacies, and stimulating chanting practices aiming at a revival of the best local and Byzantine traditions by probing into Rumania's remote past for identification of major contributions that came into neglect with the passage of time. Some of the most promising results achieved by Rumanian research will be comunicated at the conference, and recently developed IT research tools will be demonstrated on the use of the centre's growing database of digitized colour MS facsmiles. Some of the many monastic and lay chanting groups that have grown to a remarkable stature over the past five years will be able to demonstrate the practical side of Rumanian chanting traditions during the festival associated with the conference.

The overall picture is very encouraging: applied to results accumulated over the past 200 years or so, the new research tools made possible by digitization, the Internet, on-the-fly publications, and quick world-wide communication between scholars is gradually being brought to bear on the magnitude and quality of new research with possibly very remarkable results in the making.

Administrative matters

– Travelling expenses are to be covered by the participants.

– Conference participation fee: EUR 40,00. 50% discount for students, and young pre-PhD scholars. 100% discount for key-note presenters of public conferences. To be eligible for discount rates the applicants should kindly provide one letter of recommendation from hosting institution.

– Complete participation package, covering the participation fee, attendance of all associated events except the folk music performance and the excursion, and including accomodation, breakfast, lunch and refreshments during conference (calculated on a 4 days. attendance), and a farewell dinner: EUR 145,00.

– Accomodation will be provided at special rates in the University Gaudeamus Hotel (or an equivalent hotel) for early-bird registrants. Prices can vary after that, sometimes significantly, as May is traditionally a symposia and international meetings month in Iaşi. We shall be pre-paying for an initially unspecified number of places at the beginning of February.

– Meals will be served in the conference restaurant near the University on a free-menu basis offering an adequate but not unlimited choice of three courses and without alcoholic beverages.

Participants are free to make their own accomodation and catering arrangemens and the conference organization team will be happy to help with advice and addresses at any time. The average price of single accomodation in three-star hotels in Iaşi varies between EUR 35,00 and 60,00 per night, with luxury accomodation at much higher prices available in the new Europa Hotel.

– Pre-payment of the net registration fee is expected by 1st March 2006 and net payment of complete participation package is recommended by 1st May 2006 at the latest, although the balance can also be payable on arrival. Payment should be effected in EUR or USD by cheque, money order or credit card, marked Participation Conference 2006 into one of the the following bank accounts of Centrul de Studii Bizantine Iasi:

– Costs for attending the folk music performance and taking part in the excursion will be kept as low as possible but they depend directly on the number of registered participants, and as such cannot be established yet. Therefore participants are encouraged to place an option on these events as early as possible, thus making organization easier and contributiong to costs reduction.

– Conference participation diplomas will be issued on demand.

– Membership fees: participants and non-participants alike are warmly encouraged to become members of our Centre for Byzantine Studies at Iaşi. The annual fee, worth EUR 45,00 entitles to updated information on the centre's activities (reports, book reviews, other related events, and projects) sent automatically, a 30% discount on the price of the AMB journal issued during the subscribed year, and discounts on certain conference costs and purchase of back issues of AMB.

Registration: on line at www.csbi.ro (using the following form) or by normal post. The information regarding the conference will be updated regularly and posted on our website, and will include the names of the registered participants as at the time of the last registration update.