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DEVELOPMENT AND DECLINE 55
them the setting of the various parts of the services. He says in his
preface:
I have heard . . . about the old masters . . . Feodor the pope named
Christian, who was famous here in the town of Moscow . , . and greatly
skilled in the chanting of the znamenny chant . . . and he, Christian, was
wont to tell them (his pupils) that in Novgorod the old masters were
Sawa Rogov and his brother Vassili, Karelians by descent . . * and Sawa
had for his pupil the above-named pope Christian, and Ivan Noss, and
Stephen called the Pauper. And Ivan Noss and Christian lived in the reign
of the righteous Tsar Ivan Vassilievich (the Fourth) . . .
These were the 'classic* masters who inserted their fioriture into a
given fixed pattern with measure and wisdom, never allowing the
balance and proportions of the canticle to be disturbed by excess of
virtuosity. But by the beginning of the seventeenth century a period
of decline had set in, and the contours of the chant were marrred by
the insertion of long vocalises (thetai)* What form did their com
positions take?
Outwardly the Russian canticles are identical with the Byzantine.
There is the traditional system of eight modes the Oktoechos (Rus
sian Osmoglassiye)> based in this case entirely on the oriental maqam
(pattern) principle. 2 Russian scholars have for long been on the wrong
track in trying to derive the Russian modes from the medieval scales
or even from the ancient Greek modes. They were unaware of the
oriental pattern-principle which St. John Damascene the Eastern
St. Gregory obviously followed when he systematized Eastern
church singing in the eighth century. It was only about 1900 that the
pattern-principle was pointed out by Metallov. Medieval Russian
singers were, of course, quite ignorant of any such concepts as Dorian
or Mixolydian, and moulded the chant entirely in conformity with
their popular practices. They knew every one of the patterns (popevki)
and gave them picturesque names, such as '
little valley', 'rocking',
*
break* (dolinka, kachka, lomkd) and so on. Each of the eight modes
of the znamenny chant, as it sounds to us from the early transcriptions
on to the staff, possesses a very definite musical physiognomy,
derived from the sum-total of the patterns constituting each mode.
Some modes are richer in such patterns (the first mode has as many
as ninety-three), some are poorer (the seventh has only thirty-seven),
but in nearly every case the mode can be detected from the actual
1
Melodies that departed too much from the original were designated as 'wanton*.
One such *
wanton' singer was the precentor of the Troitsk-Sergievsky monastery,
Loggin, nicknamed 'the Cow' (d. 1635), about whom the Archimandrite Dionysos once
said: 'Is there any good in Loggin's singing? He treats the melody as he pleases.*
2
Cf. H. Besseler, Die Musik desMittelalters und der Renaissance (Potsdam, 1931), p. 53.