(Gk., from stichos: ‘verse’, ‘psalm-verse’).
A liturgical book in the Byzantine rite containing the stichēra, the hymns inserted between the verses of psalms at Hesperinos and Orthros.
Stichēraria include both stichēra idiomela and stichēra automela: stichēra idiomela have their own melodies and are usually sung only once during the Church year; stichēra automela do not in themselves constitute a sung repertory but function as melodic and metrical models for the generation of stichēra prosomoia (see Stichēron).
A complete stichērarion contains some 1400 hymns for the fixed cycle of the 12 mēnaia, the cycle of the movable feasts of the triōdion and pentēkostarion, and the cycle of the oktōēchos. The 12 mēnaia (one mēnaion for each month) contain all the stichēra for Hesperinos and Orthros for the liturgical year, beginning on 1 September and ending on 31 August, and forms the Byzantine equivalent of the Western Proper of the Saints. The triōdion contains the Offices for the ten weeks preceding Easter, beginning with the four Sundays before Lent – the Publican and the Pharisee, the Prodigal Son, the Last Judgment, and the Sunday of Forgiveness, which ends the pre-Lenten fast of Cheese Fare week. The six-week fast of Lent itself begins with the stichēra for Hesperinos on the Sunday of Orthodoxy and concludes with the stichēra of Holy Week. The triōdion is so named because many of the kanōnes sung during Lent contain only three odes (ōdai).
The pentēkostarion is the continuation of the triōdion after Easter; it begins with Easter Sunday and ends on the Sunday after Pentecost, the Sunday of All Saints; it was originally known as the ‘charmosynon’ (‘joyful’, or ‘flowery’) triōdion, a term still current in the Slavonic Church. The stichēra idiomela of this cycle are mostly contained in the Palaeo-Byzantine stichēraria of the 11th and 12th centuries. The Easter hymns are not found in later manuscripts; the daily repetition of these chants during Easter Week meant that their melodies were transmitted orally. (Those earlier stichēraria containing the Easter hymns mostly reflect local tradition.)
The oktōēchos cycle begins after the feast of All Saints and ends on the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee. The stichēra of the oktōēchos are organized according to an eight-week cycle, with a different mode for each week. A complete oktōēchos comprises: (1) stichēra anastasima (resurrection stichēra), sung at Saturday Hesperinos and Sunday Orthros; (2) stichēra anatolika, likewise sung at Saturday Hesperinos and Sunday Orthros; (3) 24 stichēra alphabētika, sung at Saturday Hesperinos; (4) anabathmoi or antiphona (paraphrases of the gradual psalms, cxix–cxxxi), chanted at Sunday Orthros; (5) stichēra heōthina anastasima (‘morning resurrection’ stichēra), for the end of Sunday Orthros; (6) stichēra dogmatika in honour of the Theotokos (the Mother of God), sung at Saturday Hesperinos; and (7) staurotheotokia (Stabat mater hymns), sung at Orthros on Wednesdays and Fridays. The prosomoia for Hesperinos during Lent follow the resurrection hymns.
The
oldest extant stichēraria date from the 10th and 11th centuries and are
notated in Palaeo-Byzantine, non-diastematic Chartres and Coislin neumes (see
Byzantine chant, §3(i)). Although the earliest codices cannot
be dated precisely, a chronological ordering of sources is made possible on the
basis of the degree of neumation of the chant texts. The following are regarded
as the oldest surviving stichēraria:GR-ATSgreat lavra
γ.12 (10th or 11th century; facs. in Strunk, 1966, pl.5b),
containing stichēra idiomela of the triōdion and
pentēkostarion. According to Raasted (1962) the triōdion section was
originally provided with Theta notation which was later replaced by Chartres
neumes.
GR-ATSgreat lavra γ.67 (10th or 11th century;
facs. in Strunk, 1966, pls.6–12), containing stichēra of the
triōdion, pentēkostarion and oktōēchos. The manuscript also
includes a table of Chartres notation (f.159r).
GR-ATSgreat lavra γ.72 (early 11th century; facs.
in Strunk, 1966, pl.13), containing stichēra of the triōdion
and pentēkostarion.
GR-ATSgreat lavra γ.74 (early 11th century; facs.
in Strunk, 1966, pls.14–22), containing stichēra of the
mēnaion from 25 November to 31 August.
GR-ATSvatopedi 1488 (c1050; ed. Follieri and
Strunk, 1975), containing stichēra of the triōdion,
pentēkostarion and oktōēchos. The manuscript is written in both
Chartres and Coislin notations.
GR-ATSchilandari 307 (12th century; ed. Jakobson,
1957), a Russian slavonic stichērarion. Its non-diastematic neumatic
notation (‘sematic’, according to the terminology of Floros and Haas) developed
from Coislin notation. The syllabic structure and accentuation of the texts
often varies from the original Greek models, but this collection rests firmly
within the tradition of the Greek stichērarion.
The stichēraria of the 10th to the 12th centuries contain a less unified repertory of hymns than the later manuscripts employing Middle Byzantine diastematic notation. The compiler of GR-ATSvatopedi 1488, for example, drew his material from a variety of manuscripts of different origin. When the codices were rewritten in Middle Byzantine notation, a process that began in the last quarter of the 12th century, many hymns that had passed out of general use (the so-called apokrypha) were omitted, as were prosomoia and theotokia, and there was a reduction in the number of works dating from the 9th and 10th centuries (i.e. the later stratum of the repertory). These changes resulted in a ‘standard abridged version’ of the stichēraria (Strunk, 1955, 1965).
The late stichērarion tradition is exemplified by I-MIL Ambrosianus A 139 copied in 1341, by which date the traditional stichēra melodies had for over a century been reworked in the kalophonic style (see Kalophonic chant) and richly ornamented. Such stichēra were collected in a ‘kalophonic stichērarion’ containing melodies by the most important composers of the period. After the mid-16th century the kalophonic stichērarion was termed the ‘mathēmatarion’.
C. Høeg and others, eds.: Codex vindobonensis theol. graec. 181, MMB, Principale, i (1935)
E. Wellesz, ed.: Die Hymnen des Sticherarium für September, MMB, Transcripta, i (1936)
H.J.W. Tillyard, ed.: The Hymns of the Sticherarium for November, MMB, Transcripta, ii (1938)
H.J.W. Tillyard, ed.: The Hymns of the Octoechus, MMB, Transcripta, iii, v (1940–9)
R. Jakobson, ed.: Fragmenta chiliandarica palaeoslavica, MMB, Principale, v (1957) [reproduction of GR-ATSchilandari 307, with stichēra of the triōdion and of the pentēkostarion, both inc.]
E. Wellesz, ed.: Die Musik der byzantinischen Kirche, Mw, xiii (1959; Eng. trans., 1959), 28ff
H.J.W. Tillyard, ed.: The Hymns of the Pentecostarium, MMB, Transcripta, vii (1960)
O. Strunk, ed.: Specimina notationum antiquiorum, MMB, Principale, vii (1966) [187 selected pls. from 45 mid-10th–13th-century MSS]
E. Follieri and O. Strunk, eds.: Triodium athoum, MMB, Principale, ix (1975)
G. Wolfram, ed.: Sticherarium antiquum vindobonense, MMB, Principale, suppl., x (1987)
L. Perria and J. Raasted, eds.: Sticherarium ambrosianum, MMB, Principale, suppl., xi (1992)
O. Strunk: ‘The Notation of the Chartres Fragment’, AnnM, iii (1955), 7–37
O. Strunk: ‘The Antiphons of the Oktoechos’, JAMS, xiii (1960), 50–67
E. Wellesz: A History of Byzantine Music and Hymnography (Oxford, 2/1961), 142–3, 243–5, 385–400
J. Raasted: ‘A Primitive Palaeobyzantine Musical Notation’, Classica et mediaevalia, xxiii (1962), 302–10, esp. n.2
D. Stefanović: ‘Codex peribleptos’, Recueil des travaux de l’Institut d’études byzantines, viii (1964), 393–8
S.V. Lazarević: ‘Stichērarion: an early Byzantine Hymn Collection with Music’, Byzantinoslavica, xxix (1968), 290–318
C. Floros: Universale Neumenkunde, i, iii (Kassel, 1970)
M. Haas: Byzantinische und slavische Notationen, Palaeographie der Musik, i/2, ed. W. Arlt (Cologne, 1973)
G. Stathēs: Hoi anagrammatismoi kai ta mathēmata tēs byzantinēs melopoiïas [Anagrammatismoi and exercises in Byzantine chant] (Athens, 1979), 118–21 [with Fr. summary]
S. Kotzabassi and P. Speck: Varia IV: das Berliner Sticherarion: der Codex Berol. graec. fol. 49 (Bonn, 1993)
GERDA WOLFRAM