Based on a decade of extreme fieldwork and wide interviews with individuals of Athos' monastic neighborhood, Lind covers an unlimited array of subject matters. From musical notation and the Greek oral culture to CD covers and tune construction, the strain among culture and modernity within the musical job of the Athonite group increases a transparent problem to the hunt to collect Orthodox spirituality and quietude with musical construction. The previous is usually Present addresses all of those concerns by way of targeting the importance and that means of the neighborhood chanting type. As Lind argues, Byzantine chant can't be absolutely grasped in musicological phrases by myself, outdoor the context of prayer. but simply because chant is essentially a manner of speaking with God, the sound generated has to be precisely correct, pushing problems with tune notation, idea, and function perform to the forefront.

Byzantine chant, Lind finally argues, is a contemporary phenomenon because the monastic groups of Mount Athos negotiate with the realities of contemporary Orthodox identification in Greece. by way of reporting at the musical revival actions of this impressive neighborhood in the course of the subject matters of notation, musical thought, drone-singing, and religious silence, Lind appears on the ways that Athonite background is formed, touching upon the Byzantine chant's modern dating with perform of pilgrimage and the phenomenon of spiritual tourism.

Offering distinctive insights into the monastic tradition at Mount Athos, The previous is often Present is for these specially drawn to sacred tune, earlier and current Greek tradition, monastic lifestyles, non secular tourism, and the fields of ethnomusicology and anthropology.