Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Re: [tuning] Antiphony

Call and response forms are elemental and are found near-universally among music cultures. The particular forms identified by the term _Antiphon(e/y) have a long and interesting history. It's a Greek term, originating in classical rhetoric and then later used to describe ritual performance practices of unknown antiquity observed or originating in the Jewish and Christian near east. Curiously, the application of this term to musical practice was initially as a kind of ethnomusicological term -- structures that we would identify as antiphonal were central to the choral songs of the classical Greek theatre but were not identified as such (I suspect that for a Greek audience, the structure of the choral performance was more immediately parseable as a dance form than as a rhetorical form -- speculation on my part).

In classical Greek, _'antiphonein_ means to answer, to contradict, or to argue loudly. The meaning "contradiction" remains current as late as Eusebius (d. 339 c.e.).

Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Jesus, described a practice of the (Jewish) sect of the Therapeuts, wherein men and women came together and sang "antiphonically". It is not clear whether this indicates simultaneous or alternating singing (both of which could fit with the classical usage) or if this indicates the interval between the voices.

In the pseudo-Aristotelian _Problems_ (1st or 2nd century C.E.) and through to the Byzantine theorist Bryennios (ca. 1320!), _antiphonos_ is used to identify the interval of the octave. Women and men singing together or in alternation would have presumably sung at the interval of an octave.

In 5th century c.e. literature associated with the Patriarch of Constantinople, the term is used for the singing hymns and psalms with recurrent verses (refrain), apparently arriving ca. 350 c.e. from Syrian/Antiochian Christian sources.

Latin imported the term as _antiphona_ ca. 5th century c.e., and Isidor of Seville (d. 636) uses it as (a) the performance by two choirs in alternation, (b) the refrain of a choral song, and (c) the performance by two choirs (i.e. simultaneously). (In the Roman liturgy, _antiphona_ is distinct from _responsorium_: in the later, the alternation is between a soloist and a choir, or the refrain to a song performed in that manner.) The use of this tern to descibe the vocal and instrumental antiphonic compositions of the Renaissance (and more -- from Bach to Berlioz to Verdi, Ives, and ...) seems natural.

Daniel Wolf

Re: [tuning] Antiphony

🔗Daniel Wolf <djwolf@snafu.de>

🔗Ozan Yarman <ozanyarman@superonline.com>