TY - GEN

T1 - Walking the Sacred Path Along the Solea in Byzantium and the West

T2 - An Essay in Christian Anthropology, Sacred Space, and Sacred Music

AU - Isar, Nicoletta

PY - 2024/9

Y1 - 2024/9

N2 - This paper aims at portraying an emblematic moment in the history of the Byzantine rite: the introduction of the Cherubic hymn in the sixth century when the Great Entrance became the axis of the Divine Liturgy. Along the solea and the ambo, new architectural spaces emerged to suit a more elaborate ritual. Symbolgestalt (Schultz) seems appropriate to seize the magnitude of this rite. The ideal image of the earthly ritual designed to mirror the heavenly ritual and connect the divinity and humankind. On high, the angelic choirs filled with wonder and fear; below, men synchronically forming an iconic choir (eikonízontes) of the cherubic doxology. The hymn is ‘fleshed out’ as a ‘corporeal gloss’ of a transfigured reality: an awesome vision – ‘worship as icon’. Slowly moving towards the altar, escorted by candles and spears along the solea – ‘a river of fire’ – the Holy Gifts are about to be transfigured, and sound changed into iconic silence. The silence is just one perception of the earthly. This ultimate sound at the end of time is beyond silence, but not soundless. As the invisible enters the shape of the visible, turned inside out, sound of the mystical experience permeates the earthly silence and transfigures it. This is sacred music at its deepest. The paper concludes with a review of the Western rite at its early liturgical elaboration when latent forms resonate within the Byzantine world.

AB - This paper aims at portraying an emblematic moment in the history of the Byzantine rite: the introduction of the Cherubic hymn in the sixth century when the Great Entrance became the axis of the Divine Liturgy. Along the solea and the ambo, new architectural spaces emerged to suit a more elaborate ritual. Symbolgestalt (Schultz) seems appropriate to seize the magnitude of this rite. The ideal image of the earthly ritual designed to mirror the heavenly ritual and connect the divinity and humankind. On high, the angelic choirs filled with wonder and fear; below, men synchronically forming an iconic choir (eikonízontes) of the cherubic doxology. The hymn is ‘fleshed out’ as a ‘corporeal gloss’ of a transfigured reality: an awesome vision – ‘worship as icon’. Slowly moving towards the altar, escorted by candles and spears along the solea – ‘a river of fire’ – the Holy Gifts are about to be transfigured, and sound changed into iconic silence. The silence is just one perception of the earthly. This ultimate sound at the end of time is beyond silence, but not soundless. As the invisible enters the shape of the visible, turned inside out, sound of the mystical experience permeates the earthly silence and transfigures it. This is sacred music at its deepest. The paper concludes with a review of the Western rite at its early liturgical elaboration when latent forms resonate within the Byzantine world.

M3 - Article in proceedings

BT - Sacred Architecture, Rite and Music between Byzantium and the West (6th to 15th Centuries)

A2 - Weißmann, Tobias C.

ER -