Metropolitan Cantor Institute

This is one of the most florid and complicated prokeimenon melodies in the prostopinije tradition. But for reasons you’ll see, this will probably be one of the shortest and simplest entries in the Chant Works series on the Eight Tones melodies for the Divine Liturgy.

The prostopinije melody in Tone 7 for troparia and kontakia is a lovely tune, with a few new features – but somehow it seems to throw some cantors a curve ball. To find out why, we are going to look first at its English settings, and then at the Slavonic.

Each prokeimenon melody in the prostopinije (Carpathian plain chant) tradition is different, but Tone 6 is a little more different than the others.

We’ve seen that Tones 3 and 4 have their own special kontakion melodies in the prostopinije tradition (the other tones just use the troparion melodies). This week’s Tone, Tone 6, is another – and the Tone 6 kontakion melody is one of the easiest to sing in the prostopinije Eight Tones stable.

With Tone 6, we return to the exciting world of separate prostopinije melodies for troparia and kontakia – but in this case the two are rather similar. Let’s look first at the troparion melody in Tone 6.

With Tone 5, we return to 3-part prokeimenon and Alleluia melodies – AND we can (even if only briefly) emulate the late, great Nat King Cole.

Five weeks into the cycle of Eight Tones! In this installment of Chant Words, we will look at the melody used for singing troparia and kontakia in Tone 5 in the prostopinije tradition and, just perhaps, engage in a little creative simplification.

I mentioned early that prokeimenon melodies generally have three musical phrases or “parts”, since they are based on how we sing the triple Alleluia.

Tone 4 is the exception, and in this installment of Chant Works we’ll look at why that makes a difference.

In the prostopinije tradition, just as Tone 3 has its own kontakion melody (based on the melody of the Christmas kontakion), Tone 4 has one based on the kontakion of Theophany.

(Our study here will be based on the concepts and terminology developed in the article on the Tone 4 troparion melody. Please read that article first if you haven’t already!)