The music of the East sounds strange to Western ears. I enjoy listening to the music of the Eastern church because it is, of course, closer to what the original music of the early church sounded like. Our Western scale is very different than the ancient Byzantine scale.

In keeping with my Thanksgiving music theme here at the Hope Blog, here is a portion of Psalm 136 (the Orthodox Church uses a different translation of the Old Testament – from the Septuagint -than Protestants and Catholics – the number I gave it for our reference is 136, they have it numbered as 135) chanted in Greek,  as it is still done today in the Orthodox Church. It is sung without instrumentation. This is only a portion of the Psalm as it would take nearly an hour to chant the entire passage. Little wonder that Eastern Orthodox worship services can be three hours long. In the ancient church, there were no pews to sit in either.

“O give thanks to the LORD, Alleluia. For His mercy endureth forever, Alleluia.”