Talk:Kontakion

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British funerals of the Windsor family

I am not convinced that this topic is relevant for the article. Thank you anyway for the interest in the topic kontakion. It is not easy to reconstruct the kondakarian notation and I doubt that Benjamin Britten could have known this old tune.

What he quoted in his third cello suite is a much later polyphonic setting which is indeed well-known (time mark 20'15". p. 51 in the partition showed here):

https://youtube.com/watch?v=J2qIT8Q-j_k?t=1215

If the tune is Kievan is hard to say, but here is a Russian-Orthodox celebration in Budapest, where they are singing it with the text of the kontakion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-8aX8S34ss

The celebration clearly refers to a highly patriotic celebration addressed to the memory of Dmitry Donskoy (a kind of medieval war hero who is mentioned in the Novgorod chronicle).

I doubt it was also meant by Queen Victoria who obviously pointed at a monodic tune. But the question is allowed: does a reader like to know all this, if they try to learn something about the poetic genre kontakia? Platonykiss (talk) 12:17, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your input Platonykiss. It seemed appropriate to add it here because it's the only kontakion to have entered Western liturgy. Millions of people would have heard it at Queen Elizabeth's funeral in 2022 and some might have been curious about it. On your specific points:

• The linked source does not say that it is Kievan, only that it is known in English as "Kievan". I realise that the relationship between Kiev and Russian Orthodoxy is a somewhat delicate issue at the present time.
• The linked source only says that Victoria may have heard the melody; nevertheless a few years on, her children were reporting that it was a favourite of hers. The author, Matthias Range is a respected musicoligist:

Matthias Range has published widely in both history and music, with the focus of his interdisciplinary research being sacred music and religious culture since the sixteenth century. An area of particular interest is the history of the British monarchy, which is the topic of his major book publications. He currently works as a post-doctoral researcher for the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music at the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford. [1]

I hope this addresses your concerns. Alansplodge (talk) 12:45, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

No, it is not! Western war mongering does not count very much among religious people in Russia and Central Europe (there are so many different groups in present Ukraine, and a majority might be Russian), definitely nothing whatsoever among Old Believers, maybe the situation is delicate between Orthodox and Old Believers. I just tried to refer here to the very old sources which still were connected to the Byzantine tradition.

The tradition quoted by Britten is a simple one which relies on the oral Obihod tradition, but there are many different traditions and also more academic settings which are nevertheless more or less popular (see the article cherubikon). "Kievan" nowadays refers usually to the Cave Monastery (Kievsky Pečersky) and has always been highly regarded by the communities, whether they were born in Ukraine or in Russia.

That is what I meant, they do not care what millions do watch on TV, because they have nothing else to do. Concerning the old sources, the provenance of most kondakaria is unknown, a few might come from Novgorod, none is known which can be located truly to Kiev. We must be happy about which has survived (but a kondakar' from Kiev was likely not so different, apart from some local customs).

But I would not object, if someone integrates in this article this modern way to sing the funeral kontakion and then it makes sense to say, it was quoted by Benjamin Britten. Therefore I did some research here. Platonykiss (talk) 13:17, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. Note that inclusion in Wikipedia rests on notability, so "significant coverage" is definitely pertinent. Alansplodge (talk) 14:32, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, and they always get it wrong, whatever it is! I am more used here that they get it wrong the American way than the British way. But since you are so much in the detail and quoted the right motive in the Angelican hymnal as transcribed by Walter Parratt, that is the accurate motive we are talking here. You can also change the English translation according to his edition, if you like. I see, you already did it last year. Platonykiss (talk) 14:48, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

By the way, This version seems to much closer to the Parratt arrangement. Alansplodge (talk) 15:31, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

More or less the same, but in my opinion it is always nicer to listen to some voices than to a whole choir. But here you have an extremely English version (I am not talking just about the language), although the recording is from Edinburgh:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg_28ni954w Platonykiss (talk) 16:01, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

But you can have a look at Floros' edition (2015, ii:125 & 127) that not even the mode is the same, although we have two rather different versions (Grottaferrata and Rossano) an echos plagios tetartos (πλδ') and an enaphonon version (one step higher) which begins a third lower. The liturgical custom is that you commemorise the deceased during the first week of Lent (the Tipografsky Ustav agrees with the Greek kontakaria-psaltika, Glas 8, but no notation, Sinodalny kondakar' has it with notation, but very hard to read). Whether Russian or Ukrainian, they all sing Glas 1 (the old plagios protos a fifth lower) and the ceremony is on 1 November. I am also an ethnomusicologist and I fear these modern customs (although they show the rich diversity of the living tradition) leads us very far from the original subject. Platonykiss (talk) 17:48, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

You may be right. I'm sure Parratt knew that he couldn't teach an Anglican choir to sing like Russians! Alansplodge (talk) 18:12, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Oh, they did a wonderful job, but you will be surprised!

This is almost the same aesthetic and these are the seminarists of the Nikolo-Perervinskiy Monastyr' in Moscow. It is just the Russian way to sing that style (male choir with high-pitched eunoch-like voices):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBi0sqq5R5U

Another music, but still Glas 1 (the kondak begins about 3').

The same in a very official celebration (same music, but very different in style):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hgbqOBdNTc Platonykiss (talk) 18:31, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

And here one last example, by a famous singer of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, the English translation of the prooimion is pretty good and the kontakion is composed in echos plagios tetartos (Glas 8):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1FUgYs4LgU

It is absolutely nothing, he just uses standard formulas, it is almost like free improvisation of someone who knows the melos very well... Platonykiss (talk) 19:04, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Talking about the current war and the Kyiv Pečersk Lavra, this article by AFP (here quoted by a French TV channel) might tell who the real enemies of Orthodoxy are, the situation has become almost like in Turkey (but Turkey has its constitution as an excuse according to which religious ceremonies were not allowed in a historical monument, it concerns also Mevlevi dervishes in Konya who are not allowed to celebrate in their main tekke, except for Mevlana's birthday, it is often misunderstood, also many Sufi tekkes fight against Kemalism since the foundation of the Republic by Atatürk). The ministry of culture in Ukraine has not this excuse (it is a civil war against an occupation of the country which is the Ukraine government imposed since 2014):

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230314-eviction-looms-in-kyiv-for-orthodox-monks-from-russian-linked-church

I know, many believe the Western propaganda, but it is not that simple that this monastery is pro-Russian or pro-Putin! The Patriarchate of Moscow is a big problem for Old Believers and it was a problem in Georgia for the Georgian people and their cultural heritage and also for ethnomusicologists in Russia who did not tolerate the mean arrogance and ignorance of the Russian Patriarch which preceded the period of communism, when it became totally suppressed. It explains, why the Patriarchate of Kiev was founded in 1992 and there has been a schism, because there is one part (UOC-KP) which insists on the historical role of Kiev which had influence over whole Central Europe, not just over Ukraine or Galicia, also Poland, Slovakia, Moldavia and Lithuania and some peripheral dioceses in Russia (now under the UOC-MP), while there is also UAOC, the A stands for avtokephalia from the Patriarchate of Moscow (which means a kind of national religion following the Ottoman model that this declaration means in itself the foundation of an independent state Ukraine, whatever the response of Moscow might be, but its first establishment was caused by the synod in 1921). But this time the Ukraine was hijacked and this brings even Old Believers and Orthodox together, and the Patriarchate in Kiev is not dependent on Moscow, even if Putin abuses Kiev like Macron abuses Lourdes (and he was not welcome there). Platonykiss (talk) 18:35, 3 August 2023 (UTC)