A New Class-an OLD tradition

This week, I started a new beginners’ class at our church. We had a decent turn-out and at the end of the class, I had the students hold ison (the moveable “drone” of chant) to a few hymns (Doxolgy in tone 1 and Agios o Theos in mode 2) and it got me thinking. Most parishioners, and even some clergy (and dare I say chanters!?) do not understand the immense importance or role of the ison (isokratema). I thought I would tell you, the EC reader, briefly about its importance to us as Orthodox Christians. It may be more interesting than you think.

The basic idea/theory of Ison is simple, although its further intricacies can become more complex. Yet, the general idea is that you hold the note the tone starts on, and only change it when the melody moves a specifc way (this is tetrachordal movement, but for the sake of the novice, I’m going to gloss over all of this). So why is this held note so important?

Historically, it is because the very first type of Christian services, which came from the Jewish tradition, consisted of reciting psalms, which became increasingly complex, however the idea of singing one or only a few notes close to each other is extremely old.

Theologically, the isokratema is said to represent the unwavering nature (“one in two persons”) of Christ. It is also appropriate that Byzantine chant has two voices, one melody (melos), and one bass (ison) to show the 100% importance of both unwavering natures of Christ.

Modernly in America, the ison is the key to sounding Byzantine. Sure, there are microtonal demands in true Byzantine scales, but having perfect Byzantine intervals is not the key to sounding Byzantine in my opinion. It’s the ison! True intervals of certain Byzantine modes are extremely difficult to train on and can take an American even longer since our music is so freakishly equal temperament that we can’t get by one day without hearing something auto-tuned.

So, use isokratema. It’s important. Your icons are Byzantine right? So how about your music? Saint Anthony’s music in WESTERN NOTATION writes in these ison notes. They understand just how valuable they are.

Thank you for reading! As always, you can find me on facebook (please message me and let me know you found me here), twitter, or by email at david@ecclesiasticalconsulting.com