Album Notes

Byzantine Music of the Greek Orthodox Church

Hear the Byzantine Music.

Hear the Ancient Greek Music of the Orthodox Church.

Hear the kind of music that was the pioneer of today' s music and used to be heard by the ancient Greek Philosophers Socrates, Plato and Aristotelis, 3.000 years ago.

Now there is your chance to hear the Byzantine music from 16 CDs on chanted by the multi-member Byzantine Choir under the direction of Costas Zorbas, Head Chorister of Saint Panteleimon of Acharnon Street (Athens), Greece.


What is the Byzantine music ?

It is the continuation of the Ancient Greek music (3.000 BC)

The music of Apollo and Orpheus, the music heard at the ancient Greek theatre during the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles and during the Olympic Games are the of Byzantine music.

The domination of Christianism helped the Greek music to spread outside of the Greek territory. At the beginning it went to the Holly Places (Israel, Palestine) and later to all the Byzantine empire (330-1453 AD) where it was heard and developed especially at the Cathedral of Constantinople (the capital of Byzantine empire), the Saint Sophia' s Temple.

In the course of time Byzantine music was influenced by the culture of Byzantine empire and it became strictly ecclesiastical music, free from secular elements and it took its todays form and name.

The religious passion, the multi-member choirs and the absence of musical instruments, account for a great, unique kind of music that has one and sole objective : to praise the Creator, the God.

Description of the CDs

In these 16 CDs you will hear some of the masterpieces of Byzantine Music of the Greek Orthodox Church.

Inside of each box-set there is an explanatory booklet of 36 pages that includes the lyrics of all the hymns as well as notes and information about the hymns in Greek, English, French and German with Latin transliteration.