ABSTRACT
Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Byzantium was a golden era for musical composition This chapter studies how Late Byzantine compositions of the Cheroubikon hymn use melodic fragments from the Trisagion and the Sanctus in order to articulate mystagogy through music. It proposes that the liturgical content is one key feature that determines what Chrysaphes calls the "manner and practice" of setting the Cheroubikon, and that melodic formulas, like words, represent concepts in the lyrics and the ritual. Musical symbolism also appears in linguistic cues intercalated in the lyrics that invite divine participation in the vocalization of the chant; like teretism, nonsemantic intonation syllables and aspirated syllables mirroring the divine through the limited material means of the human voice. The chapter discusses three such motifs—a processional, a singing, and a descending formula— that shape through music a symbolic form, reminiscent of "text-painting". Envelopment emerges as a multimodal aesthetics structuring the Byzantine ecclesiastical space.
