Biography
I studied in the city of Sofia - in the 93. Primary School, in the National High School for Ancient Languages and Cultures "St. Constantine-Cyril the Philosopher” and in the State (now National) Academy of Music “Prof. Pancho Vladigerov". Along with the world which we lived in, the ancient worlds as well as worlds other than Europe were placed before me from a very early age. Maybe because of this, the paths which defined me educationally always lead to one of these different worlds and defined my scientific activities.
I graduated from the Academy of Music with an investigation into Augustine's aesthetics and at the same time began to explore the Middle Eastern musical heritage. This simultaneous work turned out to be decisive for my long-term studies in the singing and musical practices of the Christian and Muslim East, which remain unknown to the music education in Bulgaria and the classical music education in Europe.
My further activities turned out to be in the sonar space West-East and East-West. My doctoral dissertation is on the musical thinking of the antiquity and the patristic period, and my habilitation is on the comparison of the musical worldviews of three treatises from the 13th century: Latin, Greek and Arabic.
My extensive listening into and study of the centuries-old monophonic traditions in Bulgaria, Greece and in classical Ottoman music, as well as the auditory-performing power of young children (with the exceptional help of my wife and our three children) proved to be paramount to my theoretical research work. As a doctoral student, full-time assistant and associate professor at the National Academy of Music, I have published on the aesthetic, musical-philosophical and pedagogical aspects of this very diverse, multi-world, ancient-present, dual and intercontinental sound reality.
Research
the musical interaction East-West; non-tempered vocal and instrumental traditions; fundamental pedagogical paradigms and ideas; pedagogical aspects of the "well-arranged sounds" and the science about them.
Publications
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The Upbringing of the Creative Person as a Goal of Education and the Forms of Compulsion in Normative Educational Communication
In: Стратегии на образователната и научната политика 4
Abstract
The present text proceeds from the concept of creative personality, which is defined by the creative talent intrinsic to every child. It is not related to a particular (artistic) activity, but to the primal capacity of every person to re-create themselves. From a pedagogical standpoint, such an assumption accepts that the upbringing of a person as a goal of instruction is conditioned by the nurturing of the creative gifts of the child. In school, group work requiers a group-appropriate approach, as well as the appropriation of regulative mechanisms by the system. The article describes some of them as functioning forms of compulsion, which disable the child to unfold its creative potential and contradict basic assumptions about education, which have remained unchanged from Antiquity to this day
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The Pedagogical Character of Music
In: Музикалната философия
Abstract
The text examines pedagogicity as a principle (στοιχεῖον) inherent to musical activity and as the bearer of the secret of musical devotion. For musical pedagogicity, music is a mode of being and dwelling that reveals our continual capacity to alter ourselves, to be transformed. This pedagogicity naturally precedes any pedagogical abstract metaphysics—that is, the originally objectified and structurally presupposed pedagogy of traditional education.
The thesis of the article is that in the musical act we constantly and unfailingly choose one among all the possibilities of being. Often this choice has already been made and prefigures the kind of music we wish to hear. Music attracts and astonishes us to such an extent that it confronts us with a question implicit in the very act of making music: “How can I be in this way?” The encounter with music is an “encounter-question,” since it inevitably touches our existential, life-defining choice.
Insofar as, simply stated, we “cannot do without music,” answering this question is one of our human responsibilities. My conscious “What do I play?” and accordingly “What do I listen to?” is not so much an expression of whim or even taste, but an articulated, responsible reception of a world and a position within that world. In music we continuously bear witness to ourselves—to how and who we are (or choose to be).
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The Eastern Orthodox Singing “Ψαλτική” and its Epistemological Approach: Possibilities and Limits
In: Banev, J. The Eastern Orthodox Singing “Ψαλτική” and its Epistemological Approach: Possibilities and Limits – in: “The Psaltic Art as an Autonomous Science”, Volos 2015, pp. 135-141
Abstract
The paper has two parts. The first examines critically the assumption that the Christian singing known as ψαλτική (hereafter psaltiki) is or can be an autonomous science. The second is about the same singing, but as a subject of teaching and learning. In the first part, the focus is on the fundamental modern understanding of what is science as crucial for the general methodological question facing vocal musical phenomena. The second is focused on psaltiki as an oral tradition which has to be approached systematically by means of a proper method. Thus, the two parts are organized from the general to the particular. This following of the "objective approach" is an attempt to recognize the individual and characteristic place of psaltiki in musicology without, at the same time, excluding it from the general field of any science and, consequently, from the field of (musical) hermeneutics.
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Disciplina musica и музикално мислене през втората половина на XIII и началото на XIV вв. – три трактата: латински, гръцки и арабски
Abstract
The study seeks to uncover the musical thinking that produced three texts by different musical communities within a single historical period. Starting from the premise that in musical treatises such thinking may be revealed or concealed—that is, explicitly present, implicitly present, or excluded from consideration altogether—it aims to determine to what extent the musical dimension is preserved in scholarly texts. The three music treatises presented are: (1) a Latin Anonymous, (2) Book II (“Harmonics”) of the Treatise on the Four Sciences, or Quadrivium, by George Pachymeres, and (3) the Book of Circles by Safi al-Din al-Urmawi. Historically, the relationship between disciplina musica and musical thought is examined with reference to a period that was exceptionally formative for the entire Mediterranean and, in particular, for the interpretation of musical experience and for musical thought. The central question to which I seek an answer—philosophically, theoretically, and pedagogically—is why the Latin, Greek, and Arabic texts, all of which begin with the division of the string and thus appear to profess fidelity to ancient Greek musical science, are in their outcomes so different—indeed, different to the point of estrangement.
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The Musical Thought of Antiquity and the Church Fathers
Abstract
Dissertation of Yordan Banev for the award of the educational and scientific degree “Doctor”.
Turning to “musical thought” requires methodological clarity. We need an approach capable of revealing essential sonic dispositions that encompass the forms of diverse spiritual domains, united under common names such as ancient music and patristic chant. The need for a correct methodology arises from the speculative tendency to identify the thinking of music with the thinking about music.
With this in mind, the approach in the dissertation is phenomenological, but situated within the sphere of the musical itself, which makes it specifically different from philosophical phenomenological methods. Through this approach, the conceptual examination of musical thought refers to the thought of a life disclosed in music — a musically lived wholeness that can be seen only from within itself.
Consequently, the term “musical thought” will conceptually refer to the thinking of (within) musical phenomena themselves. It will be understood as the thinking of music (cogitatio musicae) in the same way that “vocal thought” does not mean the thinking about singing and singers, but the thinking that occurs within singing itself.
To download the dissertation abstract, click “Download” below.
Download the first part of the dissertation here.
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The Musical Unity Between Philosophy, Rite (Mystery), and Death
In: Алманах
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The Therapeutic Use of Music in Islamic Culture: Parallels to Ancient Greek Thought
Abstract
The care to establishing good disposition of soul and body through the therapeutic use of music was central to the great masters of Ancient Greek and Islamic thought, who analysed in detail how the different types of music correspond to the different conditions of the soul. Music performance was constantly adjusted to the ‘inner instrument of the soul’ - in the person playing and in the listeners -in accordance with the theory of makam (the Ancient Greek tropos, or the Byzantine ihos). The aim was to bring all persons involved in the music event to inner spiritual harmony. Among the most illustrious representatives of the venerable music therapy tradition are: Pythagoras (580-500 BC), Saint Romanos Melodos (died c. AD 556), Al-Faraby (AD 870-950), Avicena (Ibn Sina, AD 980-1037) and Mevlana Rumi (AD 1207-1273). This article focuses on the Islam tradition which developed the earliest most systematic exposition of the therapeutic use of music.
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Οι χρόες στα σλαφόφωνα μουσικά βιβλία από τη Βουλγαρία
Abstract
Paper presented at “Theory and Practice of the Psaltic Art” – Third International Musicological and Psaltic Conference on the theme “The Octoechos,” Athens, 17–21 September 2006.
The paper reflects part of a personal study on genera and intervals in the psaltic art in Bulgaria. First, the discussion of the “colors” can be traced in Bulgarian theoretical books from the 19th–20th centuries, where we often see opinions that do not coincide. Second, among today’s Eastern chanters we find that some follow the “Bulgarian” practice, others the “Greek,” and still others the “Ottoman.” The disagreements and differences—which sometimes spark friction and disputes—are here regarded as valuable for a comparative study of the teaching and practice of psaltic art in Bulgaria. Many questions arise: “How did so many interpretations come about, each considered correct by the respective psaltai?”, “Are we dealing with differences between teachers regarding tradition, or with different perceptions and theories?”, “What do the sources tell us?”, “Is there anything indisputably correct?”—questions that are also the focus of the present paper.