Romanian Ochtoechoi and Similarities to Middle Eastern Modes and Practices. A Case Study (part I)

Abstract

This two-part article will try to capture, trace, and analyze the Byzantine musical modes, as they appeared at a brief moment, some nineteen hundred years later, in a specific geographical place, a former part of the Byzantium Empire. We will try to compare the Church modes, as they appear in two Romanian Seminary textbooks, published one in 1900 and the other in 1939 to other modal structures developed in the heartland of Eastern Christianity, the Middle East.