ABSTRACT
The sound of human voices raised in song – in other words, that of people performing what most modern listeners grounded in Western culture would recognise as forms of unaccompanied (a cappella) music 2 – was integral to public worship in Byzantium. Celebrations in cathedrals, parochial churches and coenobitic monasteries of the eucharistic Divine Liturgy and the major daily offices of morning and evening prayer – that is, Orthros and Vespers – featured, at least in theory, nearly continuous singing. 3 This was performed in alternation between groups of singers arranged into ecclesiastical and musical hierarchies, whose precise configuration in a particular place and time was governed by such variables as the liturgical occasion, the rite being served – for example, monastic or cathedral, of Constantinople or Jerusalem – and the financial and human resources that were locally available.
