Summary
The preparation of a critical edition of the elementary musical educational material (‘Protheoria’) of the Akolouthiai-manuscripts (‘Papadikai’) for the Corpus Scriptorum de Re Musica of the Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae has brought to light information relevant to the notion of mode and modality; more specifically, it offers valuable insights on the Byzantine and post-Byzantine system of eight modes (oktôêchos-oktaêhia).
This paper presents the theoretical elements, lists of intonation formulas, diagrams and didactic poems concerning modality, which were devised as didactic material by various anonymous and eponymous teachers from the end of the 12th up to the beginning of the 19th century.
The heart of this discussion does not only involve the key concept êchos (mode), but also adjacent notions such as parallagê (solmisation system), phthora (modulation signs), kanonia (diagrams showing the relations between the modes), thesis (melodic formula, as defining element of a mode), êthos (specific character of a mode) a.o. Furthermore, a great part of the so-called methods (didactic poems) display an octomodal structure.
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