HYMNS

 

 

A NOTE ON

THE TRANSLATIONS

 

 

 

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The Greek language has 5 basic vowel sounds, but the English language has 20 basic vowel sounds. This causes a great problem when writing a hymn in English with Byzantine musical characters.  In Greek it is not absolutely necessary to know every word you are singing because the vowel sounds are pronounced as they are written e.g.

000000   000       0

 Κυ   ρι    ε     ε     κε   κρα  α    ξα  προς  σε

 

Someone singing this might not know what it means, he might for example think that the two ε belong to the word Κύριε and that he sang Κύριε    κέκραξα προς σε, but it makes little difference because to the congregation it sounded correct. In English,  when a word ends with a vowel and the next word begin with the same vowel, more often than not, the phonetic sound of the two vowels are different e.g.  O Life everlasting.

 

When this is written with Byzantine musical characters the chanter would find it confusing as to when the one word ends and the other begins.

0000     0   0  0  000000

  O    Li    i        i     fe     e      e     e    ver   la     a    ast  ing  

 

To help the chanter to recognize the beginning and end of each word I have used dots to join each word together.

00000 0000      0   0   0       0

O      Li….i….i….fe      e….e….e….ver….la….a….ast….ing

 

The chanter can in this way separate each word, but to pronounce the words correctly he must familiarize himself with the hymn he is to sing by first reading the text in normal written form. 

 

With Hymns that are common to many saints I have added the name of a saint in red, but can be replaced with the name of the saint that shares the same hymn.

 

 

NOTE:  The Byzantine musical notations will not display unless your computer has the relevant fonts installed. The fonts needed are:

 

Ψαλτικά Font - bem13.ttf

ED Fthora - fthora.ttf

ED Psaltica - psaltica.ttf

ED Isson -  isson.ttf

 

If you don't already have these fonts, you can free download them from the Links  page.

 

How do I download fonts? (for all fonts)

To start the download you press on the name of the font. After that a new window pops up and ask you if you want to save the file or open it. Choose to save the file on disc, and then you have to choose where to save the font. You can save it where you want, but remember where you have saved it, it's important to know during installation. It your forgetful like me then save file to to your hard drive C. or to My documents Then press OK and the download starts.

How can I install the fonts in my computer? (PC)


 

For Self Extracting files

 

The font files will be where you specified to have them downloaded.

Click on the 'Start' button: go to 'Settings', then 'Control Panel' and double click on 'Fonts'. Now, choose 'File' and 'Install New Font'. Finally, remember where you downloaded the font and go to that directory. Select the font and choose 'OK'.

 

For Zip files


After downloading the zip file use a zip utility such as WinZip to unzip the file. Extract the file to to your hard drive C. or to My documents Then, click on the 'Start' button: go to 'Settings', then 'Control Panel' and double click on 'Fonts'. Now, choose 'File' and 'Install New Font'. Finally, remember where you unzipped the font and go to that directory. Select the font and choose 'OK'.