The Catholic-Byzantine church of Piana degli Albanesi has a vast musical heritage that entirely accompanies the complex articulation of the liturgical year.
The weekly and festive celebrations and the various Officials always appear richly adorned with an incessant counterpoint of melodies. According to the Byzantine rituals, the acting it suits the secret prayers whispered by the Celebrant, the Our Father and the Creed which arise from the assembly. Everything else is singing: from short declamatory modulations (ekfonesis) of the deacons to the psalms intoned by the priests, from the schematic cantillation formulas of the Readings and Gospels, to the sumptuous hymns performed by the faithful. Through the pure flow of melosWithout any use of musical instruments, the word escapes the use of daily communication and becomes an expression of prayer.

The transmission of the songs still takes place almost entirely through oral tradition. Due to their significant documentary value, many handwritten testimonies on staves have been handed down since the early 900s, written by priests or monks with the aim of safeguarding the integrity of the sacred tradition.

Until a few decades ago the songs were performed exclusively in Greek, but today several translations have been adopted in Italian and especially in Albanian (papás Gjergji Schirò).

The poetic-musical forms in use today are those of Byzantine hnography: from the simple lines oftroparium to the complexity of the contact me and canon. "Minor" forms are the katavasia, theotokíon, thestikiron. A fundamental element, even in the most composite forms, is the troparion, a sort of monostrophic hymn with a free scheme and meter that takes on different names depending on its characteristics or on the subject.

The musical grammar of the liturgical repertoire arbëresh, similarly to ancient Mediterranean music, Gregorian chant or cultures of ethnomusicological interest, it is not based on the tonal sensitivity and on the opposition between major and minor modes that characterizes Eurocult music. His music system is in fact of type modal and refers to the Byzantine theory ofoktoíchos.

The repertoire is used by the faithful for oral transmission of the songs, in the terms illustrated, allowing the faithful in lack of technical musical knowledge, to appropriate a patrimony which, according to the occasion, provokes atmospheres of great psychological suggestion and profound spiritual adherence. The liturgical musical tradition is, therefore, also an expression of self-identification processes that reinforce the sense of belonging to the community. Byzantine music, together with the language, the rite, the costume, the icons, therefore constitutes an essential piece for the reconstruction of that mosaic of peculiarities that gives Arbëreshë of Sicily a solid and vital cultural identity.