Troparion

A troparion (Greek τροπάριον, plural: troparia, τροπάρια; Church Slavonic: тропа́рь, tropar) in Byzantine music and in the religious music of Eastern Orthodox Christianity is a short hymn of one stanza, or organised in more complex forms as series of stanzas.

The word probably derived from a diminutive of the Greek tropos (“something repeated”, “manner”, “fashion”), since the earliest function of the troparion was a refrain during the recitation of the cantica (biblical odes) and the psalms, as such the term was used as a synonym of hypakoe. The early meaning of troparion was related to the monastic hymn book Tropologion or Troparologion. Hence its forms were manifold, they could be simple stanzas like apolytikia, theotokia, but also more elaborated homiletic poems like stichera composed in psalmodic hexameters (probably from stichos, “verse”), or in a more complex meter like the odes composed in cycles called canon. Since these Tropologia in their earliest form were organised according to the Octoechos, troparia were always chanted according to a melos of one of the eight tones used in the Eastern liturgical tradition (Gr. echos, Sl. glas). Today, since the redefinition of the Octoechos according to the hyphos of Constantinople, the monodic form of Orthodox chant distincts the troparic (apolytikia, theotokia, kontakia etc.), the heirmologic (related to the hymns of the Heirmologion), and the sticheraric melos (related to the hymns of the Sticherarion) according to its modal formulas and its tempo.

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