Kievan chant, or chant in Kyivan style (; ), is one of the

liturgical Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and participation in the sacred through activities reflecting praise, thanksgiving, remembra ...

chants common to the

Russian Orthodox Church The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC; ;), also officially known as the Moscow Patriarchate (), is an autocephaly, autocephalous Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox Christian church. It has 194 dioceses inside Russia. The Primate (bishop), p ...

, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and those churches that have their roots in the Moscow Patriarchate, such as the

Orthodox Church in America The Orthodox Church in America (OCA) is an Eastern Orthodox Christian church based in North America. The OCA consists of more than 700 parishes, missions, communities, monasteries and institutions in the United States, Canada and Mexico. In ...

History

During the course of the 17th century, three new types of Orthodox liturgical chant appeared in the

Rus' Rus or RUS may refer to: People * East Slavic historical peoples (). See Names of Rus', Russia and Ruthenia ** Rus' people, the people of Rus' ** Rus, a legendary eponymous ancestor, see Lech, Czech and Rus * Rus (surname), a surname found in Ro ...

region. The first of them was the Kievan chant, followed by the so-called "Bulgarian" or Bulgarski chant, and finally the "Greek" or Grecheski chant. They were collectively known by the term Obikhod.Unmercenary Sacred Music
Russian and Kievan Chant
/ref> The Kievan chant first developed in the southwestern region of

(currently Eastern

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

) and then spread to

Muscovite Russia The Grand Principality of Moscow, or Muscovy, known as the Principality of Moscow until 1389, was a late medieval Russian monarchy. Its capital was the city of Moscow. Originally established as a minor principality in the 13th century, the gra ...

. It was, in essence, a drastically simplified form of

znamenny chant Znamenny Chant () is a singing tradition used by some in the Russian Eastern Orthodox Church. Znamenny Chant is a unison, melismatic liturgical singing that has its own specific notation, called the notation. The symbols used in the notation ...

.All Saints of Alaska Orthodox Church
Orthodox Music: Chant

Characteristics

Kievan chant melodies tend to be shorter and simpler rhythmically than znamenny melodies; there are more pronounced distinctions between

recitative Recitative (, also known by its Italian name recitativo () is a style of delivery (much used in operas, oratorios, and cantatas) in which a singer is allowed to adopt the rhythms and delivery of ordinary speech. Recitative does not repeat lines ...

-like and

melisma Melisma (, , ; from , plural: ''melismata''), informally known as a vocal run and sometimes interchanged with the term roulade, is the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession. Music sung in ...

tic passages; and certain phrases of text are repeated, something that generally does not occur in the

. The melodies of Kievan chant, for the most part, served as the basis for the so-called "Common" chant.Church "Mother of God"
Kievan chant
/ref>

References

External links

* {{Chant Christian chants Russian liturgical music Music of Ukraine Musicology