Terirem - Epic Byzantine Music

Music & vocals by Farya Faraji, kanonaki and lyra by ‪@Dimitrios_Dallas‬, be sure to check out his awesome channel. The melody is closely modeled on typical melodic progressions in Byzantine chant.

I wanted to write a piece of music inspired by the practice of Terirem, the practice of singing nonsense syllables. This has both a practical usage, allowing cantors to extend service when the priests aren't finished with the service and cantors have run out of texts to sing, but it also has a deep theological meaning behind it. The nonsensical nature of Terirem and syllables like "a-ne-ne" represent the incomprehensible nature of the divine with Orthodox Christian theology.

As with my other Epic Byzantine pieces of music, this one mixes elements of liturgical Byzantine Chant with secular Greek music. In contrast with most of my other songs, this one isn't strictly modern Greek music but could conceivably echo the general soundscape of medieval Eastern Roman music. The instruments used are the kanonaki and lyra, both having been attested from the 900's onwards in Greece, and the melody follows basic patterns found in medieval Greek compositions, namely evolving over what in Western terms would be called a minor scale with chromatic alterations between the semitones and whole tones that alter a mode between Dorian, Phrygian and Aeolian. The arrangement is entirely monophonic.

The only aspect that may be entirely anachronistic is the usage of the Ison: a moving drone that accentuates and maintains the melody's fundamental notes, and occasionally performs cadential movements like switching to the subtonic at moments. The issue of the Ison is, to my understanding, still debated, with many, if not most music historians confident that it's a much later addition to Byzantine chant, possible even post 1453, and from a Western root, whilst others believe it could be native to the tradition and date back to the medieval era.