{"id":23045,"date":"2022-09-21T09:00:44","date_gmt":"2022-09-21T16:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=23045"},"modified":"2022-09-15T15:42:57","modified_gmt":"2022-09-15T22:42:57","slug":"treasures-from-byzantine-manuscripts-showcases-live-ancient-greek-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2022\/09\/21\/treasures-from-byzantine-manuscripts-showcases-live-ancient-greek-music\/","title":{"rendered":"Treasures From Byzantine Manuscripts<\/em> showcases live ancient Greek music"},"content":{"rendered":"

While most Westerners are at least tangentially familiar with classical music, few are likely to have even heard of ancient Greek music, and this is precisely what Early Music Vancouver (EMV) hopes to rectify through the performance of Treasures from Byzantine Manuscripts<\/i>, a component of the Pacific Baroque series.<\/p>\n

EMV artistic director Suzie LeBlanc says that these pieces of music are highly intricate and complex, and that they were typically learned and disseminated only orally, from generations long past.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of this music was passed down orally, and the manuscripts are kind of the written-down form, and it\u2019s not at all like a notation that we\u2019re used to. According to the leader of [ensemble] En Chordais [who are performing at the concert], Kyriakos Kalaitzidis, for one page of these Byzantine Manuscripts, it takes about 50 to 80 hours to transcribe it into modern notation for modern musicians,\u201d says LeBlanc. \u201cIt\u2019s a huge amount of work; this manuscript is enormous\u2014there\u2019s something like 400,000 pieces\u2014and so they\u2019ve been working on it for years, and I think are not finished.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Kiya Tabassian and Kyriakos Kalaitzidis of En Chordais (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

LeBlanc loves that ancient Greek music is so different it\u2019s incomparable to anything else she\u2019s heard, and she\u2019s utterly charmed by it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve ever heard Greek chanting like you do in an orthodox church. This is different; it\u2019s got some similarities,\u201d says LeBlanc. \u201cEvery pore of your body, when you\u2019re in the midst of it… When I hear it, my body is transfixed and I can\u2019t think of anything else, I\u2019m just really transported by the fact that you can\u2019t relate it to Western music, so you\u2019re just bathing in something that is not only organic, but that comes from the antiquity.\u201d<\/p>\n

LeBlanc points out that well-composed music is like a stunning vista for her ears, enveloping her inside this magical sound.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s just as exciting as if you go to the Acropolis,\u201d she says. \u201cJust bathing in this music is like a trip to the past, it\u2019s really exciting, and then you have all the instruments, so they\u2019ve got the chants and the dance music that they really bring to life, it\u2019s really exhilarating, kind of the best of something really deep, poetic, and something very exciting and physical.\u201d<\/p>\n

Music is a form of history and art, says LeBlanc, and should be preserved with just as much care and intensity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am a believer in heritage, so as much as a building or a painting has value from the past, I think the music does as well, and we have to take care of it in the same way,\u201d she says. \u201cThere are musical geniuses all throughout history, and if the music survives and is still played today, I think it\u2019s because it still pleases, and it still has a message for us. I think it\u2019s really interesting to listen to music before the time of the Industrial Revolution, because I feel like people\u2019s brains were connected in a slightly different way than ours, and I just want to be connected to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

LeBlanc says that archaic music is a great way to lose yourself, to transcend time and space for a few short minutes while listening to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cHuman emotions haven\u2019t changed that much in the last 12 centuries,\u201d she says. \u201cI think it\u2019s really interesting because there\u2019s something intrinsically human that we connect to that\u2019s in music from a long time ago, and that fascinates me, that we still can respond to it, and it is that language, it shouldn\u2019t be lost. But even more wonderful is that it still can really speak to us, because we have emotions, and we\u2019ve always had them, and the music speaks directly to the emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Treasures from Byzantine Manuscripts
\n<\/i>7:30 pm Friday, September 23
\n$43, Christ Church Cathedral
\npacbaroque.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While most Westerners are at least tangentially familiar with classical music, few are likely to have even heard of ancient Greek music, and this is precisely what Early Music Vancouver (EMV) hopes to rectify through the performance of Treasures from Byzantine Manuscripts, a component of the Pacific Baroque series. EMV artistic director Suzie LeBlanc says […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23046,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,273],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-september-21-2022"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23045"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23047,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23045\/revisions\/23047"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}