ROMSO Cyprus Knowledge Base

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Among the churches that adopted the Byzantine cult and music is the Romanian Orthodox Church, where Christianity entered as early as centuries after Christ.

The importance of church music in Romania
Romanians as both people and the Church are the oldest in these eastern lands of Europe. This fact, as well as the geographical location in the immediate vicinity of Byzantium, as well as the multiple economic, cultural and religious ties with Byzantium, made Byzantine music not only to be taken over in the Church of the Stromanians and then of the Romanians, but also to record a course and development of its own.

What makes today talk of Romanian church music and show an interest in its research and knowledge as full as possible is, first of all, its seniority, which, despite the destructive forces to which it has been subjected, has managed to withstand centuries in a row, preserving and unaltercating the essence and robustness.

Another very important aspect of Romanian Byzantine music is the existence of an impressive number of Byzantine musical manuscripts preserved to this day.

There is a background abroad of Byzantine musical manuscripts written in Romania, whether donated or alienated, such as those at the Mahera Monastery in Cyprus, the monasteries in Ianina in Greece, in Moscow and Leningrad, in Leipzig, the Leimokos Monastery in Lesbos Island, Vienna, Sofia and Manchester, in Copenhagen, at Mount Athos.

Unitary character
A special feature of Byzantine music on our country's land is its unity. Like popular music, Byzantine music had a unitary character in all Romanians, even in those united with Rome, of course with some stylistic differentiation due, in large part, to the influence of popular creation and especially to orality, as in Banat, Transylvania and Bucovina.

Along with the folk song, the church song was the second spring of the musical sound phenomenon on Romanian soil and a reliable lever in defending ethnic consciousness. And what's even more important is that he remained faithful to this musical philon until today.

Origins
Since the most distant centuries, music has occupied an important place in the spiritual structure of the Romanian people. This wonderful art of sound, as time passed, has also gained an informative historical function, often offering arguments between the most important for the research and knowledge of the past of the art and culture of our people, living witness to the existence on our lands of an ancient, unitary and ever-growing culture. With their help, as with that of the dates, stories, music and popular poetry, which constitute as Alecu Russo said, true folk archives, can reconstitute the distant, less known past.

The beginnings of Byzantine music in us are closely related to the emergence and spread of Eastern Christianity on these lands, I remember