(Gk.: ‘chanted service’).
The urban or ‘cathedral’ Office of the Byzantine rite, performed at the Great Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. In its complete form it is preserved in liturgical manuscripts copied between the 8th and the 12th centuries. The asmatikē akolouthia originally differed from the monastic Office celebrated in Palestine: the cathedral rite used music in the performance of its fixed psalms (psalms appropriate to the hour of the day) as well as responsorial chants and sung refrains; in monasteries, however, there was little or no singing, merely the verse by verse recitation of the complete Psalter throughout each week. (See Psalm, §III, 1.)
By the 11th century, the two traditions had gradually merged into a new, hybrid rite, although a strong element of the monastic ordo of Constantinople remained. Monasteries absorbed the fixed psalmody, ceremonial and the melodious chanting of the urban Office, while the presence of urban monks affected the shape of the cathedral rite. By 1200 the asmatikē akolouthia had been displaced by the new rite in almost all the main Byzantine cities. However, it remained in occasional use at the cathedral of Thessaloniki, under the conservative Archbishop Symeon (1416–29).
The best musical sources for the asmatikē akolouthia are GR-An 2062 (late 14th century) and 2061 (early 15th century), which, despite their late date, preserve the service unadulterated by monastic elements.
O. Strunk: ‘The Byzantine Office at Hagia Sophia’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, ix–x (1956), 175–202
R. Taft: The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West (Collegeville, MN, 1986)
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