{"id":1632,"date":"2026-06-13T21:50:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T01:50:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mci.archpitt.org\/blog\/?p=1632"},"modified":"2026-06-13T22:02:02","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T02:02:02","slug":"chant-works-tone-2-prokeimenon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mci.archpitt.org\/blog\/chant-works-tone-2-prokeimenon\/","title":{"rendered":"Chant Works: Tone 2 Prokeimenon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tomorrow, the third Sunday after Pentecost, we begin the second week of the cycle of eight tones<\/a>.  Today we’re going to take a quick look at the Tone 2 prokeimenon and Alleluia melody. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

And if you’re not sure what prokeimena and Alleluia are, check out last week’s post<\/a>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tone 1 prokeimenon melody in the 1906 Prostopinije<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Last time, we mentioned that our basic collection of Carpathian chant or prostopinije <\/em>in Church Slavonic, the Tserkovnoje Prostopinije <\/em> of Bok\u0161ai and Malini\u010d, provides FOUR examples of the prokeimenon melody in each tone. Here is the Tone 2 prokeimenon melody when it is used for singing “Holy is the Lord our God” after the canon at Sunday Matins:<\/p>\n\n\n

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Here the tonic note or do <\/em>is on the middle line, as it is in most of the music in the 1906 Prostopinije<\/em>; this made it easier to check against the earlier collections of Slavic chant in Kievan or square notation, which always had the tonic on the middle line of a 5-line staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the melody begins ti… do… re.. <\/em>and then drops down by a HALF step – not all the way back to do, <\/em>but to the unstable pitch we call di <\/em>in solfege singing. Then it goes back up to re <\/em>and hangs there for a second, before concluding the first phrase on do. <\/em>This particular pattern – re di re do <\/em>– is not uncommon in prostopinije, and is a way of putting off a conclusion by adding a brief moment of tension, then immediately resolving it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(The sequence of notes re di re<\/em> also appeared in the Tone 1 prokeimenon melody, but we had too much going on to address it there. Go back and take a look!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second phrase begins like the first, then goes a step higher<\/em> and holds, mixing scalewise steps and jumps to end on la<\/em>; and the third phrase is similar, but with a more solid concluding cadence. Remember from last time that prokeimenon melodies in prostopinije almost always have three phrases, corresponding to the three parts of the Alleluia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are the Sunday prokeimenon and Alleluia from the 1906 Prostopinije:<\/p>\n\n\n

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You can listen to the prokeimenon here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tone 2 prokeimenon in English<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

You may recall from last time that the first official settings in English of the Sunday prokeimena and Alleluia in the 1970 collection Byzantine Liturgical Chant<\/a> were somewhat abbreviated compared to the Slavonic. Here they are in Tone 2:<\/p>\n\n\n

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As with Tone 1, not only do these two settings leave out a good bit of the Slavonic, but after the first phrase, the two are noticeably different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around 2001, the Inter-Eparchial Music Commission prepared a set of music that was VERY faithful to the Slavonic, but approval for them ran into problems due to some repeated notes which just didn’t seem to work well in English (since English texts are generally so much shorter):<\/p>\n\n\n

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Here is the final version that was included in the 2006 Divine Liturgies book:<\/p>\n\n\n

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