Sunday Matins in the Byzantine Cathedral Rite: Music and Liturgy

This is an interdisciplinary examination of the office of Sunday Matins as celebrated in the Byzantine cathedral Rite of the Great Church from its origins in the popular psalmodic assemblies of the fourth century to its comprehensive reform by Archbishop Symeon of Thessalonica ( 1429), Byzantium’s last and most prolific liturgical commentator. Specifically, it studies the influence of developments in liturgical music and piety-notable among which were the advent of monastic hymnody and virtuosic styles of chanting-on the order of service at the Constantinopolitan and Thessalonian cathedrals of Hagia Sophia. This is accomplished through reconstructions of the service of Sunday matins as celebrated in the two churches from musical manuscripts, books of rubrics (’typika’), and liturgical commentaries. The act of giving musical flesh to these ceremonies allows the author to address questions of interest not only to musicologists, but also to students of Byzantine liturgy, art and intellectual history.