The historical trajectory of Byzantine religious music in the Romanian space: volutes and milestones

Abstract

The trajectory of the Romanian cult music is intertwined with the trajectory of the Byzantine cult music, the mega-phenomenon and its zonal manifestation conditioning and enhancing each other. Respectively, any attempt to stage the evolution of sacred singing in the reference area refers to the transformations supported by Byzantine music as a whole. In the historiography of the field, we found several variants of systematization of the Byzantine ecclesiastical music on the Romanian territories: according to historical epochs, according to the stages of consolidation of the national Church, according to the linguistic factor (succession of sacred languages), according to stylistic manifestations. Based on the way in which the studies are structured, it is observed that historians do not consistently follow one way or another, but opt for summing them up. Thus, a milestone with generalizing value is outlined, in which the first Christian centuries mark the penetration and spread of Proto-Byzantine and Byzantine song in the Romanian space, the IX-X centuries – the enrollment of Romanianism in the Byzantine-Slavic religious front, the XIV century – the inauguration of the period of cultural effervescence related to the constitution of the Romanian medieval states, the end of the XVI century – the XVIII century – the Romanianization of the liturgical melody, the beginning of the XIX century – the XXI century – the passage of the Byzantine chant through the avatars of modernity and contemporaneity.