Anyone who has been to a Greek or Russian Orthodox Church service will remember the mystical, monophonic chanting of the unaccompanied male choirs, a low, droning chant with an occasional free-form voice soaring in religious ecstasy.
Traditionally, these choirs were hidden, often in curtained galleries high in the church, so that when they started singing at various key points in the liturgy the effect would be of the angels of heaven bursting into song. This chanting is a direct continuation of the medieval church music of the first Christian empire, the Byzantine empire of 330-1453.
W.B. Yeat's great poem Byzantium begins with the haunting lines, 'That is no country for old men, the young in one another's arms, birds in the trees, those dying generations at their song,' and this month Londoners have been able to revisit magical Byzantium through its music, a major focus of the Byzantine Festival. With the Olympics just months away, this festival is part of a wave of Greek musical and other cultural events sweeping the metropolis in anticipation of the games.
Last week, soprano Patricia Rozario, accompanied by the English Chamber Choir, performed in a programme that paralleled Christian medieval traditions of both Byzantium and western Europe.
Cappella Romana, an American Byzantine vocal ensemble under the musical direction of distinguished Byzantine scholar Alexander Lingas, sang Byzantine chants and recent Orthodox-inspired compositions, including the world premiere of Ivan Moody's The Passion of Saint Katherine.
The western part of the concert was music by the great 12th-century mystic poet and composer Hildegrad of Bingen, also known as 'Sybil of Rhine'. Rozario sang one of Hildegard's hymns and then a contemporary work by Canadian Greek composer Christos Hatzis, De Angelis, based on Hildegard's Gloriosissimi.