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The University High School Band
The History and Theory of Music

The Byzantine Empire

Artist's reconstruction of the Hagia Sophia as it originally appeared. Tall minarets were added after Constantinople was conquered by the Turks in the fifteenth century.

Despite the "Fall of the Roman Empire" and the dawn of the "Dark Ages," the Roman Empire remained the European superpower, and experienced a significant comeback in the fifth and sixth centuries under emperors like Theodosius and Justinian. Although historians call this the "Byzantine Empire" for reasons already noted, its citizens would have viewed their own history with perfect continuity from the time of Julius Caesar.

In the eastern capital city of Constantinople, Emperor Justinian oversaw the construction of an enormous church called the Hagia Sophia, Greek for "Holy Wisdom." A masterpiece of engineering, it was the largest indoor space in the world when completed and remained the world's tallest cathedral for a thousand years. The interior acoustics of the building allowed for the propogation of sound waves in a way never before heard and forced development in the field of harmony.

The music that developed for liturgical rites in the Hagia Sophia, and soon spread throughout Europe, is known as Byzantine Chant. This music laid some important foundations for later harmonic practices. Byzantine Chant features a long drone called an ison, which is a tone sustained beneath a melody that moves around above it. As the pitches of the melody change, each produces a different harmony against the ison.