The Journal of Byelorussian Studies
Vol. II, No. 2

THE PODOBNY TEXTS AND CHANTS
OF THE SUPRASL IRMOLOGION OF 1601 
by G. Pichura

Considerable research has been carried out during the last hundred years in the field of East Slavonic music. Most authors, however, have limited their activities to the study of the chants of the Russian Orthodox Church. Relatively little attention has been paid so far to the Byelorussian and Ukrainian liturgical heritage...

...the culture of the Western borderlands of the Russian Empire had, from relatively early times, displayed many elements which were alien to the Russian traditions, and which rendered it unattractive, or even suspect, to the Byzantine purists of the Panslavist movement..

 ...Compared to the...chants of the Russian Synodal cycle...the melodies of ... <zapadno-russkij> Irmologia seemed overdecorative and baroque. Moreover, their liturgical purity was questionable, since they evolved in lands subject to the Catholic Grand Dukes of Lithuania, and had been used in the Greek-Catholic or Uniate Church, an institution viewed with utmost suspicion and resentment by the Russian Orthodox establishment...

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