Abstract
Chants of the Byzantine Rite: The Italo-Albanian Tradition in Sicily offers for the first time transcriptions of the full repertory of orally transmitted hymns for the celebration of the Byzantine Rite in Sicily. This little-known chant tradition has without interruption been cultivated by the Albanian-speaking minority in Sicily since their ancestors arrived as refugees from the Balkans in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
The actual transcriber, Bartolomeo Di Salvo (1916–1986), was a Basilian monk and music researcher at Grottaferrata. His transcriptions in staff notation and related documents were found by the editors in archives in Copenhagen, Grottaferrata, and Rome. Di Salvo was born in Piana degli Albanesi, the biggest of the villages where the tradition is still practiced.
Girolamo Garofalo delivers an introduction to the repertory and the actual state of research, including an account of the few written documents that have been identified (the oldest dating from 1899); while Christian Troelsgård offers an essay on the importance of this ‘Arbëresh’ chant repertory in the broader perspective of Byzantine chant studies.
This collection testifies to the continuation and development of Byzantine chant on the fringe of the historical Byzantine Empire, and invites further studies into orality and musical identities.
The actual transcriber, Bartolomeo Di Salvo (1916–1986), was a Basilian monk and music researcher at Grottaferrata. His transcriptions in staff notation and related documents were found by the editors in archives in Copenhagen, Grottaferrata, and Rome. Di Salvo was born in Piana degli Albanesi, the biggest of the villages where the tradition is still practiced.
Girolamo Garofalo delivers an introduction to the repertory and the actual state of research, including an account of the few written documents that have been identified (the oldest dating from 1899); while Christian Troelsgård offers an essay on the importance of this ‘Arbëresh’ chant repertory in the broader perspective of Byzantine chant studies.
This collection testifies to the continuation and development of Byzantine chant on the fringe of the historical Byzantine Empire, and invites further studies into orality and musical identities.
| Original language | English |
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| Place of Publication | Copenhagen |
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| Publisher | Museum Tusculanum |
| Volume | Subsidia V.1 |
| Edition | Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae |
| Number of pages | 323 |
| ISBN (Print) | 978 87 635 4266 1 |
| Publication status | Published - Jul 2016 |
Keywords
- Faculty of Humanities
- Byzantine music
- Ethnomusicology
- Sicilian-Albanian tradition
- Arbëreshe culture
- Oral liturgical chant
