Dina Marinakos
@dinaspianostudiogmail-com
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Dear students of ByzB 101,
As far as I can tell, I have graded all submitted capstone projects. If you submitted recordings and did *not* receive a rubric with your grade via email from me, please email at dinamarinakos@trisagionschool.org . Thank you all so very much for your patience and your prayers! Hope to see you all next term.
Dina
Plagal first mode is the one that can sometimes go either way. BUT what you really need to look out for is: Is there a “pa-cicle”? If so, go from PA. In the accompanying video, around time stamp 7:50, Amy calls this the “FUNCTIONAL SCALE”. When she loops back around and sings it from KE, it ends up sounding the same because ni-pa-vou-ga are the same intervals as thi-ke-zo-ni.
To make it a little more complicated: If that melody line had used one more note lower (zo in the functional scale, or ga in the scale based on ke), it would matter much much more. Looking at the diatonic scale chart, you can see that the interval of zo-ni is not the same as ga-thi.
This is a little difficult to explain in text, so I’ll be happy to demonstrate on Zoom later today!
Thanks so much for following up on this! I’ve edited the Capstone Instructions in the course. Here they are again, for everyone’s convenience:
At the end of each Trisagion School course, you are expected to submit a Capstone Project that demonstrates your facility with the material covered in the course. For your Octoëchos 204 Capstone Project, please:
-Record the 4th Matinal (Eothinon) Doxasticon, “It was very early,” on parallagi
-Record the same, in a separate file, on melos
-Include the preceding “Glory to the Father” for both
Make sure files are in mp3 or m4A format. (Do not send other file types; there are plenty of free audio file converters online. If you send me files in anything other than .mp3 or .m4A format, I will return them to you.)-Email both files to dinamarinakos@trisagionschool.org by 11:59 pm (Eastern Time) on Monday, June 22nd, 2026.
Just to be clear, for this particular term, there is no required memorization piece of the capstone project. Students are encouraged to work on memorizing a short fourth mode resurrectional hymn that they will use at their parish, but will not be required to perform it for the instructor.
Hi! Apparently, the video doesn’t exist. 🙂 So, no need to worry about it! Thanks for letting us know!
Sophia,
Take a snap shot of your week one homework ( https://trisagion-school.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/2020/10/Symbols_1_Practice.pdf )
and choose two lines to say and record the parallagi for week 2 homework ( https://trisagion-school.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/2025/03/Week-2-Guided-Readingpng.pdf )
email to me
dinamarinakos@trisagionschool.orgHi, Joanna! For texts, we use Holy Transfiguration and DCS.
I believe Papa Ephraim (St Anthony’s Monastery) used Holy Transfiguration translations for most of his work.
Although I don’t particularly like the melodies that Holy Transfiguration released in their prosomia book, I think they would be valid to use for this course if you are having a hard time with any particular melody.
Fr Seraphim’s melodies (DCS) are also legit.
Byzantine melodies– especially automela and prosomia– are a living, oral tradition.
Sorry, it appears I can’t get the screenshot to work. The setting I tried to screenshot is a Greek one, similar to Papa E’s.
Glory to God for the contemplation that took place while listening to chant like this. I love this question! This is indeed legetos!
In this lesson, Gabriel says, “In certain pieces in Legetos, it is also possible to have cadences on natural Zo’ – a fifth above our base of Vou.”. To elaborate, when this happens, the diatonic scale’s tendency is to attract (sharpen) the ke up to that zo. I am guessing this is what you hear that makes it sound less like the legetos you are used to! This style is used in settings of psalms.
Samuel Herron has a very similar English composition of the second stasis of the typika in his Divine Liturgy book, which is not available online as a PDF. You can, however, order the book here.
Something very interesting about settings like this is that many times they are labelled as grave diatonic! Compare it, for example, to Papa Ephraim’s setting (in English!) here.
They end up sounding very similar because of ga’s shifty nature in grave diatonic. (We can’t elaborate on that point here, but we do touch on it in Oct 207.)
Thanks for letting us know! Our email addresses are:
Amy.Hogg@trisagionschool.org
dinamarinakos@trisagionschool.org
