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→Medieval Period: Lent links to Great Lent
The nine heirmoi, however, are metrically dissimilar; consequently, an entire kanon comprises nine independent melodies (eight, when the second ode is omitted), which are united musically by the same mode and textually by references to the general theme of the liturgical occasion, and sometimes by an acrostic. Heirmoi in syllabic style are gathered in the Heirmologion, a bulky volume which first appeared in the middle of the tenth century and contains over a thousand model troparia arranged into an [[oktoechos]] (the eight-mode musical system).
Another kind of hymn, important both for its number and for the variety of its liturgical use, is the [[sticheron]]. Festal stichera, accompanying both the fixed psalms at the beginning and end of [[Vespers]] and the psalmody of the Lauds (the [[Ainoi]]) in the Morning Office, exist for all special days of the year, the Sundays and weekdays of [[Great Lent|Lent]], and for the recurrent cycle of eight weeks in the order of the modes beginning with [[Pascha]]. Their melodies preserved in the [[Sticherarion]], are considerably more elaborate and varied than in the tradition of the [[Heirmologion]].
==Later Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Periods==