Hearing the Scriptures in Byzantine Hymnody

Since at least Susan Ashbrook Harvey's 2006 book Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olafactory Imagination, books about not just the body, but the senses, have been increasing. 

Later this year we will have another one, devoted not to scent but to hearing and written by the Greek Orthodox biblical scholar Eugen Pentiuc, Hearing the Scriptures:Liturgical Exegesis of the Old Testament in Byzantine Orthodox Hymnography (Oxford University Press, Sept. 2021), 456pp. 

About this book the publisher tells us this:

Throughout the ages, interpreters of the Christian scriptures have been wonderfully creative in seeking to understand and bring out the wonders of these ancient writings. That creativity has often been overlooked by recent scholarship, concentrated as it is in the so-called critical period. In this study, Eugen J. Pentiuc illuminates the remarkable way in which the Byzantine hymnographers (liturgists) expressed their understanding of the Old Testament in their compositions, an interpretive process that he terms "liturgical exegesis."

In authorship and methodology, patristic exegesis and liturgical exegesis are closely related. Patristic exegesis, however, is primarily linear and sequential, proceeding verse by verse, while liturgical exegesis offers a more imaginative and eclectic mode of interpretation, ranging over various parts of the Bible. In this respect, says Pentiuc, liturgical exegesis resembles cubist art. To illuminate the multi-faceted creativity of liturgical exegesis, Pentiuc has chosen the vast and rich hymnography of Byzantine Orthodox Holy Week as a case study, offering a detailed lexical, biblical, and theological analysis of selected hymns. His analysis reveals the many different and imaginative ways in which creative liturgists incorporated and interpreted scriptural material in these hymns.

By drawing attention to the way in which the bible is used by Byzantine hymnographers in the living Orthodox tradition, Hearing the Scriptures makes a ground-breaking contribution to the history of the reception of the scriptures.

Byzantine Liturgical Emotions

It seems to me that it may have been Susan Ashbrook Harvey's 2006 book Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination that started this century's ongoing interest in the role of the senses, the corporeal, and the emotional within Eastern Christian studies. Along comes a new book expanding this ever-growing picture for us of embodied life in the Christian, especially Byzantine, East: Andrew Mellas, Liturgy and the Emotions in Byzantium: Compunction and Hymnody (Cambridge University Press, Aug. 2020), 222pp.

About this book the publisher tells us this:

This book explores the liturgical experience of emotions in Byzantium through the hymns of Romanos the Melodist, Andrew of Crete and Kassia. It reimagines the performance of their hymns during Great Lent and Holy Week in Constantinople. In doing so, it understands compunction as a liturgical emotion, intertwined with paradisal nostalgia, a desire for repentance and a wellspring of tears. For the faithful, liturgical emotions were embodied experiences that were enacted through sacred song and mystagogy. The three hymnographers chosen for this study span a period of nearly four centuries and had an important connection to Constantinople, which forms the topographical and liturgical nexus of the study. Their work also covers three distinct genres of hymnography: kontakion, kanon and sticheron idiomelon. Through these lenses of period, place and genre this study examines the affective performativity hymns and the Byzantine experience of compunction.

Georgian Church Music

I don't know about you, but my library is rather thin on works devoted to Georgian and related musical traditions. Those interested in such histories will be sure to snatch up copies of Svetlana Kujumdzieva's new book, The Hymnographic Book of Tropologion: Sources, Liturgy and Chant Repertory (Routledge, 2017), 194pp.

About this book we are told:

The Tropologion is considered the earliest known extant chant book from the early Christian world which was in use until the twelfth century. The study of this book is still in its infancy. It has generally been believed that the book has survived in Georgian translation under the name ‘ladgari’ but similar books have been discovered in Greek, Syriac and Armenian. All the copies clearly show that the spread and the use of the book were much greater than we had previously assumed and the Georgian ladgari is only one of its many versions.

The study of these issues unquestionably confirms the earliest stage of the compilation of the book, in Jerusalem or its environs, and shows its uninterrupted development from Jerusalem to the Stoudios monastery, the most important monastery of Constantinople. Over time many new pieces and new authors were added to the Tropologion. It is almost certain that it was the Stoudios school of poet-composers that divided the content of the Tropologion and compiled separate collections of books, each one containing a major liturgical cycle. In the beginning all of the volumes kept the old title but in the tenth century the copies of the book were renamed, probably according to the liturgical repertory included, and by the thirteenth century the title ‘Tropologion’ is no longer found in the Greek sources as it became superfluous, and fell out of use.