Chant manuscripts of the Gennadios Library (Athens) - some coloured facsimilia

[Oliver Gerlach]

Konstantinos Terzopoulos informed in a publication of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens about the chant manuscripts of its library:

Terzopoulos, K., 2011. "Hidden in Plain Sight: Musical Treasures in the Gennadius Library — Byzantine Repertories and a Snippet of Modern Greek History". In Hidden Treasures at the Gennadius Library. Vol. 12 of the 'The New Gryffon'. Athens: American School of Classical Studies, S. 35–43, Figure 7–19. Available at: http://issuu.com/kterzopoulos/docs/gennadiuschant.

 

His detailed description explains their value for studies concerning Byzantine chant, the music of the Ottoman Empire, and the history of Greece. An appendix with coloured reproductions of the manuscripts is added.

Konstantinos also mentions four manuscripts of the Anastasimatarion of Chrysaphes the New. About this edition he wrote that the compositions for the Anastasimatarion by Manuel Chrysaphes (ca. 1410-1475) in the last years of the Byzantine empire were transcribed by Panagiotes Protopsaltes during the 17th century, so that he was called "Chrysaphes the New" (analyzed also by Nicolae Gheorghiţă in Romanian manuscripts of his works). He also explains the relation to the New Anastasimatarion which is in use today.

Some papadikai contains the "protheoria" as mentioned by Nicolae Gheorghiţă. Some reproductions shows wheels and trees used in this treatise type.

The oldest manuscript is a 14th-century sticherarion fragment which contains parts of the menaion and the pentekostarion. The collection also contains manuscripts in modern notation (transcribed according to the "New Method"), among them the Heirmologion katavaseion composed by Petros Peleponnesios in a manuscript of the time of the transcribers—the fourth generation of the New Music school of the Patriarchate called "the three great teachers" (1 April 1817), before the first print editions were published.