Byzantine music, a synthesis of various elements arising out of synagogal practice, Greek
culture and musical manifestations of baptized populations, encompasses a multitude of archetypal
symbols. The present paper focuses on some of these – numbers (three, four, eight, nine),
geometrical figures (the circle), „the tree of life” – while relating them to elements of Byzantine
music theory („the wheel of the echoi” and „the changes of the eight echoi into the form of the
tree”, the scale construction systems), specific aspects (the ison), poetic-musical genres (trisagion,
kontakion, canon), liturgical books (Octoechos), neumatic semiography. Preserved in and conveyed
by the church music, along with the Byzantine music tradition, they also occur in contemporary
liturgical practice, as well as in important opuses of the 20th century Romanian musical creation.
From this perspective, two Byzantine archetypal genres are considered – the kontakion and the
canon – with special reference to Paul Constantinescu’s creation.

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