Byzantine Musical Symbols

Byzantine Musical Symbols is a Unicode block containing characters for representing Byzantine-era musical notation.

Byzantine music refers to the liturgical music used in the Orthodox Church within the Byzantine Empire and the Churches regarded as continuing that tradition.

The main features of this music is that it's

monophonic (with drone notes),
exclusively vocal,
and almost entirely sacred.

Very little secular music of this kind has been preserved. The length of the period between Ancient Greek and Byzantine music is unclear.

There are two kinds of Byzantine musical notation. The earlier recitative style was used to notate the recitation of lessons (readings from the Bible). Such symbols are represented here 𝃚 . It probably was introduced in the late 4th century and was increasingly confused until the 15th century, when it passed out of use. Lessons are no longer musically notated, though they are still chanted. The notation consisted of marking the overall musical rendering of phrases in the reading (prosodic signs 𝀀 ), rather than individual notes.

The second kind of notation is neumatic, i.e. it uses neumes (musical notes). Various subdivisions of the notation have been proposed; the standard subdivisions are Early Byzantine, Middle Byzantine, Late Byzantine, and Modern Byzantine. Middle, Late, and Modern notation use the same basic signs, with similar if not the same meanings, and so may be unified as the one notation system.

If you're interested in other types of notation, more conventional, explore the block called Musical Symbols.

Eigenschaften

Bereich	1D000–1D0FF
Zeichen	256

Zeichenliste

Zeichentabelle

1CF00–1CFCF Znamenny Musical Notation 1D100–1D1FF Musical Symbols

0: Einfache mehrsprachige Ebene

1: Zusätzliche mehrsprachige Ebene

2: Zusätzliche ideografische Ebene

3: Tertiäre ideographische Ebene

4-13: Nicht verwendet

14: Spezialisierte Zusatzebene

15: Zusätzlicher Bereich für den privaten Gebrauch – A

16: Zusätzliche Fläche zur privaten Nutzung – B

Byzantine Musical Symbols

Eigenschaften

Zeichenliste

Prosodien (Prosodics)

Ekfonetika

Melodimata (Melodics)

Fonitika (Gesang)

Afona oder Ypostaseis (Stummschaltungen oder Hypostasen)

Argies (Retards)

Leimmata oder Siopes (Leimmas oder Schalldämpfer)

Synagmata oder Gorgotite (Synagmen oder Beschleuniger)

Agogika (Leitungen)

Ichimata und Martyrika (Ichimas und Evidentials)

Fthores (Zerstörer)

Alloioseis (Unterscheidungsmerkmale)

Rythmika (Rhythmik)

Grammata (Buchstaben)

Specials