There are three categories of hymns which are sung according to the practice of Automela/Prosomoia (Samopodobny/Podobny):
The Three Types of Chant Melodies provides a detailed description of the princials behind this style of hymnography.
Sources of Podobny provides information and links to find notated music.
Contemporary liturgical service books without musical notation contain numerous designations for prosomoia/podobny. This author has identified fourty-two automela for stichera in the Slavonic books (Gardner found sixty-one), seventy-three for troparia, sessional hymns and kontakia (Gardner found forty-six), and eighteen for exaposteilaria (Gardner identified five); however, the corresponding singing books contain only a small number of these melodies.
Here is a preliminary Catalog of Original Melodies (PDF) (XLS).
One of the modern Russian collections, found in the Sputnik Psalomshchika, is currently under investigation to identify the sources of its melodies (which unfortunately were not identified when the book was compiled).
RECENT NEWS: A new collection of Podobny was published in 2004 by the Holy Trinity-St. Jonah Monastery in Kiev. This amazing collection of melodies is a fine addition to any musicologist's library. However, the editors of the book did not identify the melodic line in the choral arrangements. A group of volunteers has identified the melodic lines and listed the information on THIS PAGE.
Fixed numbers of phrases - These melodies have a stable structure, although there are a few melodies which have some variation (for instance, the Tone 6 Podoben "All of our hope" may have 12 or 14 phrases in the Znamenny Chant tradition).
Unlimited numbers of phrases - these are called "bezstrochen" in Russian, and these melodies will accomodate any number of phrases.
Generally the Fixed melodies have a straight sequence of phrases. For example, a Podoben with 9 phrases will have 9 unique musical phrases which do not repeat (1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9). (Some of the later Russian melodies composed in the last couple of centuries depart from this principle.)
The Unlimited melodies have two types of sequences: simple repetition, such as: [1-2-3] (repeated as necessary, always ending on 3), and complex repetition, such as A-[1-2-3]-B, where A is an introductory phrases, 1-2-3 repeat as necessary, and B is the final phrase. (This is only one example of possible patterns).
Prosomoion Singing in the Greek Church
(Information to come)
Prosomoion Singing in the Russian Church
Sadly, the actual practice of singing to the automelon has declined considerably since the introduction of harmonized singing in Russia in the mid-1600s, and in some places has been abandoned altogether. In some New Rite parishes only a few melodies are known today, and only in monastic and cathedral singing can one find podoben singing partially preserved. Fortunately, in recent years there has been considerable interest in reviving the art of Podoben singing in many Russian parishes. Among the Russian Old Believers (or Old Ritualists), however, the tradition of podoben singing has generally been well preserved.
There are a number of different "families" of podobny melodies in the modern Russian Church: the Znamenny family, the Kievan family, and various local monastery melodies (such as the Optina Hermitage and Seven Lakes repertoires). More research needs to be done to further refine our understanding of these various familes.
Prosomoion Singing in the Churches of Southwestern Rus
(Most of this information was contributed by Stephen Reynolds.)
Among the Slavs of Southwestern Rus (the Carpatho-Rusyns and the Galicians) Podoben singing has been fairly well preserved because the introduction of harmonized choral singing came at a much later time than in Russia. The chant books and manuscripts document a considerable body of available podoben melodies from that region.
In earlier centuries, both Southwestern Rus and Muscovite Russia appear to have shared a common lineage of church music using neumatic notation, now known as "Znamenny Chant". While the northern variety of Znamenny Chant flourished and was expanded in the singing schools of Novgorod, Moscow and other places, the western and southwestern Russian lands, politically dominated by the kingdoms of Poland and Lithuania and forced to take a more defensive stance in a Catholic and Uniate environment, refined and often simplified its repertoire to make it easier for congregational and cantor-led singing.
With the lack of educational facilities in southwestern and western Russia, and due to the exposure to western European music, the Suprasl' monastery (now in Belorus) attempted to transcribe the neumatic chants into staff notation around 1596-1601. This has preserved for history the melodies of the neumatic notation as interpreted by this region. Within a generation, the entire region of southwestern Rus had discarded the neumatic notation in favour of the staff notation.
Manuscript Irmologia (collections of chants) in Kievan notation were produced throughout the 17th century. Meanwhile printing became common for liturgical books, so it was to be expected that it should be applied also to books with musical notation. The first such printed Irmologion was published in L'viv in 1700; another, more extensive edition appeared in 1709. These are similar to the manuscripts in respect of repertory. Further editions continued to appear through the 18th and 19th centuries, published either in L'viv or at the Pochaiv monastery. The last edition was published in L'viv in 1904, and is still available in a photo reprint (the Ukrainian Bookstore in Edmonton has them). (A PDF file of only the Podobny of the Lvov Irmologion of 1709 can be downloaded from this site.)
Books supplementary to the Irmologion were published in the 19th and early 20th centuries (Dol'nyts'kyi and Polotniuk are the most complete and important of these), and similar books have also appeared even in the second half of the 20th century (Fedoriv's collections of the chant of the Basilian order are comparable in extent to Dol'nyts'kyi and Polotniuk). Khoma's Prostopinije of 1930 is similar to these and was also intended to be a supplement to the printed Irmologion. Bokshai's Prostopinije, on the other hand, appears to be an independent collection that could supply most of the cantor's needs even in the absence of an irmologion.
Manuscript irmologia continued to be written well into the 19th century, despite the availability of printed editions. So they were written over a period of two and a half centuries. About a thousand of these survive, and now the L,viv project on "Ukrainian Sacred Monody" is undertaking the enormous task of cataloguing and investigating these.
The podobnik of the Irmologion of 1709 is typical of what may be found in them (see the link above). The collections of the 19th and 20th centuries take their podoben melodies from oral tradition, and often show a degree of simplification compared with the versions in the irmologia. As the corpus of irmologia comes under study, we should be able to discover regional variants of one sort or another. The manuscript Irmologion of Suprasl (c. 1600) has distinctive variants, representing the way the melodies were sung at the Suprasl Monastery, and in all probability showing Bielarusian traits. A number of irmologia were written at the Kiev Caves Lavra in the 19th century, and these should give us a picture of the chant there before the introduction of the Nikonian text and of formal polyphony. The L'viv project is one of the most exciting developments in Eastern chant of the post-Soviet period.
Prosomoion Singing in other regional Orthodox Churches
(Information to come)