We looked forward to seeing the oldest music chant ever scored, from the 2nd century BC. After lunch we would see it in the monastery.
OK, music students, do you remember your modes? Ionian, Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian.
The names of the modes correspond to places of the area where we were driving through. Some were on the other side of the Aegean Sea and all are related with places and tribes of Ancient Greece.
Ionian, the Ionic Tribe. Ionia was the coast of Asia Minor. The capital of Ionia was the city of Ephesus and on the Balkan part of Greece the only Ionians were the Athenians.
Dorian. Dorian was the tribe from which Sparta comes from. They had their own music, their own style.
Locrian. Locris was at the area on the left side of the plain where we were riding in the bus, (now because of the clouds we could not see the mountains), but there used to be Locris.
And Phrygian and Lydian are both in Asia Minor – regions and people who had their own style of music.
The first international community composed the different modes in the ancient Greek music, which was mostly the music of the temple and the theater. Costas told us he hoped we would have the opportunity to see the theater of Philippi and speak a little bit about the classical theater which is close to what we call. today, opera and scored by music.
Among the manuscripts we were going to see music books and the depiction of the Byzantine music (which is still the official church music of the Eastern Church) driven directly from the ancient Greek chant. Music in the 7th century was reformed by Pope Gregory the Great and we call it Gregorian Chant. The notes were simplified. We were going to see the notes first used, the Byzantine notes. Pope Gregory made them a little bit simpler, and they are the predecessors of the notes we use today in the modern art.
Music from Hydraulis – we knew about the Hydraulis, a type of organ with the pipes from written sources and the depictions. Now we go 14 centuries back. We know from the written sources that the Byzantine emperor had sent such an instrument as a personal gift to the King Pepin Sultan, 9th century in Europe, and this is how this instrument was introduced in the west and was developed into what we call church organum today. The Hydraulis is in the Delphi museum.
In a villa of this city they discovered, relatively well preserved, the actual instrument, a Hydraulis, from the second century before Christ. They were able to make a total reconstruction and so today we have one that produces music. It is on display in Delphi (the copy that produces music) and today we are sure that this is the actual predecessor of what we call church organum, which we thought, up to this discovery that it appeared in Europe at 12th century.
We continued our drive to Meteora, talking about music together. We passed an area with the reconstruction of separate scats (Sarakatsani huts) of nomadic shepherds, who had to build and unbuild their own houses to move further according to weather conditions so now they have made a style of museum or something so somebody can see how they made their tents and their huts, this is what we saw on the left side of the road.
Gregory, he was given the job of collecting all the orally transmitted tunes. At that time there was not a Catholic church nor Orthodox church. The western church was a part of the united, state church. The traditions of that time from east to west and the opposite were moving when the Catholic church was formed the transmission of traditions was cut off. There was not a relationship with the east any more, for more than 10 centuries. So, Gregory went everywhere and collected the chants from the various areas because oral tradition is not written down and it changes over time. There was not only oral translation, there was written music and you will see that written music. Since at least the 5th century BC music was written, not just oral tradition. It was Gregory who simplified the notes we would see today in the monastery that are still the notes of the Byzantine church.
“This is where we will climb,” Costas teased.
“Extreme ‘sporters’ like you can climb up there.”
.
We went to a restaurant for lunch which was self-service where we could see what they had and how much it cost.
We had the opportunity to see a lot of dishes and to try the local cuisine.
Now in a minute we are going to have this rock in front of us and so you will have a better view of this little wide spot on the side of the cave mouth…hmmm…you see that? Just in front of us in the brown area of the rock just in the middle. Do you see it?
In many of these caves are still traces of inhabitation. A lot of extreme sport athletes come here from all over the world to climb to these rocks but they have firstly to get permission from the monastic community obviously because in some of these caves are some people and so they like to protect them from being disturbed. The life of these people is called with the special term, the term ascetic, ascetic life. This term comes from the word for exercise in Greek which is askētēs, which means exercise. So, these people they have their exercise, spiritual exercise there, living their ascetic life.
So, the first monastery is The Monastery of St. George – with the scarves. I don’t know how many young men today would dare to do what men did here. Young men climbed to the monastery of St. George, without using ropes and other lanyards or any other means of help to them and they hung a scarf on the wall of the church so everybody in the village knew that a young man was no longer a boy but a real man and therefore they could have a family.
I don’t know if a lot of the area ladies had to marry people from other places – because the risk was very high for these young men. But the habit is active today for young men before they join the army. They prove that they are able to go to the army. So on the right hand side, on the face of the rock, you see the Monastery of St. George with the Scarves.
You can see it is not very easy for somebody to climb up there without any help. So, look at the scarves. Most of them indicate family relationships.
In front of us at the end of the road we saw a monastery, one of the smaller, of St. Nicholas and further, one o’clock we see Santa Barbara. On the right at the top of the big rock used to be the Monastery of the Holy Spirit. Since the Ottoman time it has been in ruins. At the lower part of the Rock of the Holy Spirit you see a big cave and on the upper part you see the wooden structures of the hermitages and above you see Santa Barbara.
Communication with a monastery used to be, for centuries and centuries, through a pulley, a rock and a net. People, regardless of who they were, if they were bishops, princes or kings, to visit these monasteries they had to be placed in a net to be pulled up 300 meters to the monastery. Even the building equipment, material and the goods, all had to go up there with a pulley. Are you ready for that faith test? Many times, this pulley help people to be glorified very quickly: yes, after the pulley went down, the soul went up, at once.
The oldest and largest monastery, the Monastery of the Great Meteron, was founded by the Serbian King Ioasaph and his master Athanasios, when the king decided to reach it’s top. The Monastery of the Calligraphers, a rock without anything on its top today, was destroyed in the 17th century. Many precious manuscripts were produced there, but today those manuscripts belong to many different special libraries of the world.