Already some time ago I announced the new book by Nicolae Gheorghiţă (published in 2010):
https://gregorian-chant.ning.com/profiles/blogs/new-book-about
Who is interested to order the book, might join the announcement of the publisher:
With respect to Gheorghiţă's contribution to a conference 2008 (held at Hernen Castle), dedicated to Greek treatises in the Boyar Principalities, Neil Moran wrote (the eighth chapter in his book, pp. 135-162):
(The Origins of Russian Music: Introduction to the Kondakarian Notation, p. 1): “In addition it is an indisputable fact that the Russians acquired the Byzantine sacred chant repertoire when they accepted Christianity and the cradle of Russian Church is to be sought in Byzantium. Nevertheless the musical development of scared music within the two traditions took place along two very different pathways. … The heterogeneous influences to which these two antipoles of Orthodoxy were exposed played a pivotal role in determining the style and character of each repertoire. The music development of the Russian and Greek branches of Orthodoxy could be taken as a prime example of how quintessential relationships can be affected over the course of time by changes in taste and fashion.”
(N. Gheorghita, Byzantine Chant between Constantinople and the Danubian Principalities, p. 202): "Generally, the Postbyzantine period is perceived either as an epoch powerfully influenced by the Orient, or quite the contrary, as a loyal continuation of the past in a different semeiographic disguise".
After the defeat of a Moldavian revolt in 1711, only Greeks from the Phanar district of Constantinople were selected for the much-coveted position of Christian pasha in Moldavia and Wallachia. Almost all the Pharariot princes and boyars maintained Turkish bands as an expression of loyalty to the Sublime Porte . According to Gheorghita, “during 1711-1832, thirty-one Phanariot Princes, from eleven families, were to be on the two countries’ thrones on seventy-five occasions.”
As for oriental influences on ecclesiastical chant one is referred to the chapter in codex Bucharest, Romanian Academy Library, Gr. MS 923 with the title Αφημια εκ ποιων, και ποσων…= Comparison between echoi and makams (ff. 304-41v) with 68 music examples. The codex Drobeta Turnu-Severin, State Archives Gr. MS 9 has a theoretical text on the three melodic genera: diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic (=Ποσα ειδη τηχ μελωδιας; Τρια: απμονικον, διατονικον και χρωματικον ). The Byzantine musician Dionysios Photeios wrote a treatise with the title Theoretical and practical didaskalia on the written church music, especially composed for tambour and keman.
You are welcome to join the discussion.
Replies
Dionysios Photeios wrote ἁρμονικόν (you wrote erroneously απμονικον), not ἐναρμονικὸν or ἐναρμονιὸν!
What do you make of it?
As you are not so enthusiastic here than in the group dedicated to Old Roman chant, please allow me this answer:
All the Greek treatises about Byzantine chant, be it a papadike, the earlier dialogue treatises, or those dedicated to makamlar and usulümler, if it is called "mousike exoterike" or not (Tardo's typology is not very useful here), have a very strong auto-referentiality which can be traced back to passages of the Hagiopolites (see my doctoral thesis, especially the section about "phthora and genos").
The Hagiopolites pretends to be the work by John of Damascus. At least the 9th-century author seemed to be of Syrian Greek origin like John, which was not that odd for a monk at Mar Saba. In §. 2 he pointed out that the two phthorai ("destroyers") "nana" and "nenano" are not according to the music (ἀπὸ τῆς μουσικῆς), which was a typical Arabic expression (also the Latin "musica" derives from it) to make a difference between the ancient Greek harmonikai which Arab theorists knew quite well, and the autochtonuous music theory concerned about the system of melodies (naġme) and rhythm (īqā'at) in classical Arab music. According to Eckhard Neubauer some treatises of early Arab music theory excluded two non-diatonic naġme, while certain musicians are mentioned who liked to use them. In a very similar way Ioannes Plousiadinos (in a treatise attached to a papadike) interpretes §. 2 of the Hagiopolites, because he regarded the models of John of Damascus and his friends Andrew of Crete and Cosmas of Maiouma as "according to the music", while the Sicilian monk Joseph the Hymnographer, who joined Mar Saba during the 9th century and could as well have been the real author of the Hagiopolites, did compose in these phthorai.
Though we cannot be sure that Ioannes Plousiadinos was right with his interpretation, it certainly offers some light to see that Dionysios Photeios replaced the Hagiopolitan expression "mousike" by the Ancient Greek "harmonikai", when he was writing about "harmonikon" instead of "enharmonion". According to his use of Greek language the later adjective "enharmonic" means nothing less than "being within the system of harmonikai".
There is also a German systematic musicologist Martin Vogel who argued that the enharmonic genus is the oldest concept of Ancient Greek music theory, and the diatonic and chromatic genus derived from it. But a similar argument was often used by several authors of manuals for Orthodox chant. The enharmonic genus is defined by the use of the smallest interval, if it is smaller than a semitonium (the old concept of microtone, if you like). Because of the melodic attraction (melodikes elxeis) you can find it in every genus and several theorists did also described the use of them in certain meloi.