Cypriot

The Cesnola Collection of antiquities from Cyprus was one of the earliest acquisitions by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1872—two years after its founding—275 crates of objects were purchased and brought to the Museum by Luigi Palma di Cesnola, who soon became its first director. …

The fourth catalogue in a series that documents the renowned Cesnola Collection of Cypriot Art, this book focuses on the collection’s 453 terracotta oil lamps dating from the Classical, Hellenistic, Roman, and Early Byzantine periods. The rich iconography on many of these common, everyday objects provides a rare look into daily life on Cyprus in antiquity and highlights the island’s participation in Roman artistic and cultural production. …

This cycle of "O" Antiphons is part of the Christmas Vespers ceremony, centered around the Magnificat. In the present case, they are heavily troped, and end with a liturgical motet in a more triumphant mood.
The music itself it thoroughly isorhythmic, and heavily syncopated. The pieces form a true cycle, linked by both a sequence of modality and motivic figures. This is the most elaborate sacred section of the huge Turin manuscript (Torino, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS J. II 9), the one source for the Cypriot repertory.