The irmos (or heirmos from grc-x-koine, εἱρμός) in the

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

liturgical tradition is the initial

troparion A troparion (Greek , plural: , ; Georgian: , ; Church Slavonic: , ) in Byzantine music and in the religious music of Eastern Orthodox Christianity is a short hymn of one stanza, or organised in more complex forms as series of stanzas. The wi ...

of an

ode An ode (from grc, ᾠδή, ōdḗ) is a type of lyric poetry. Odes are elaborately structured poems praising or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally. A classic ode is structured in three majo ...

of a

canon Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western ca ...

. The meter and melody of an irmos is followed by the remaining troparia of the ode; when more than one canon is used (as is typical at matins), only the first canon's irmos is sung, but the irmoi of the subsequent canons must be known in order to determine an ode's melody and so, even in canons where it is known that the irmos is never sung, the irmos is nonetheless specified. Note that in the Russian tradition, often only the irmos is sung, the rest of the ode simply being read; in Greek parishes, often the remaining troparia are simply eliminated, but in non-Russian traditions, all troparia of a canon are sung The term comes from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

verb "to tie, link" meaning that it poetically connects the Biblical ode to the subject of the canon.Irmos
article on Orthodox Wiki. Because the irmos presents a rhythmic and melodic pattern for the troparia which follow, "irmos" gives its name to the irmologic forms of

Byzantine chant Byzantine music (Greek: Βυζαντινή μουσική) is the music of the Byzantine Empire. Originally it consisted of songs and hymns composed to Greek texts used for courtly ceremonials, during festivals, or as paraliturgical and liturgical ...

. At the end of an ode, the irmos may be repeated, or another irmos may be prescribed to be sung to return to the original biblical theme this is called the katavasia.

References

Genres of Byzantine music Eastern Orthodox liturgical music Liturgy of the Hours Byzantine Rite Eastern Christian hymns {{music-theory-stub

See also

References