As far as I can remember, Byzantine music has been part of my life.
One of my earliest memories is of waking up to the smell of incense and listening to my grandmother chanting troparia as she censed the house. There was something mysterious about those sounds, the arcane words hinting at truths that needed to be unlocked, the lilting and eliding cadences, primordial and eternal, wrapping themselves around my ears like a protective comforting cocoon. This was more than the music of Heaven. It was the melodic narrative of the historical progression of an entire people.
I was fifteen when I first encountered Byzantine notation. Visiting a monastery outside Chania, in Crete, I noticed some ancient tomes, displayed open in a glass cabinet. Strange inscriptions in a language I could not decipher ran across the pages.