Are there any editions of transcribed works by St Ioannis Koukouzelis available to order anywhere?
You need to be a member of Musicologie Médiévale to add comments!
This reply was deleted.
Are there any editions of transcribed works by St Ioannis Koukouzelis available to order anywhere?
You need to be a member of Musicologie Médiévale to add comments!
Replies
Thank you, Luca, for this very interesting home production.
A critical edition of Mega Ison was made by Maria Alexandru:
But as far as I understood Piotr, he would like to have the transcriptions of Ioannes Koukouzeles' works according to the New Method. There is a Bulgarian anthology with Old Slavonic Text of some works (complete is not possible, because he is a kind of Shakespeare of music history, and not every ascription is really meant as an authorship, but just describes a certain method to the kalophonic thesis of the melos according to Mega Ison):
You can download the book, if you follow my link for Bulgarian chant books. It is the largest printed anthology of Ioannis Koukouzeles with a very interesting version of the Polyeleos dedicated to a song of his Slavic mother. Lykourgos Angelopoulos believed, that the Teretisma of this Polyeleos was a composition of Ioannes Glykys, indeed it seems a little bit misplaced, because it ends a fifth higher.
The problem of Sarafov's Mega Ison edition is that it lacks the text with the name of the signs which should be memorised with the transcribed melos, and it has plenty of mistakes. Therefore I advise the edition of Mega Ison in the Anthology published by Kyriazides (though also this has a few mistakes), which has also the Koinonikon and the Palatinon Cherouvikon ascribed to Ioannes Koukouzeles:
Kyriazides, Agathangelos. Ἐν ἄνθος τῆς καθ' ἡμάς ἐκκλησιαστικῆς μουσικῆς περιέχον τὴν ἀκολουθίαν τοῦ Ἐσπερίνου, του Ὅρθρου καὶ τῆς Λειτουργίας μετὰ καλλοφωνικῶν Εἴρμων μελοποιηθέν παρὰ διάφορων ἀρχαιῶν καὶ νεωτερῶν Μουσικόδιδασκαλων. Istanbul: Alexandros Nomismatides, 1896.
There are also manuscripts with New Method notation, for example the "Matimatar" Ms. 53 of the Stavropoleos Monastery (which is in fact an incomplete Anthology for Hesperinos, Orthros and the Liturgies), with some compositions of Ioannes Koukouzeles (at least Anothen oi profitai in echos varys). You should also have a look at the page dedicated to this composer at Analogion. There you can download there the Mega Ison of "En anthos" as pdf.
Oliver Gerlach a dit :
Exactly. Thank you for clarification and information about Sarafov's book. My mistake was that I was searching for such an anthology only in greek/english sources. I guess it's time to get a good bulgarian dictionary now :)
The Bulgarian tradition is fascinating, but with Polish language you are actually closer in grammar and pronounciation to Old Church Slavonic, while modern Bulgarian has abandoned the former declination of nouns. What you have to learn in order to sing out of Sarafov's edition, is the so-called "Kyrillic" for Old Church Slavonic. But his manual is quite interesting and the book is rare today. So this pdf is really important to save the few books left.
Dear Luca
Would you mind, if we move this discussion of Mega Ison to a separate one, so that we keep this discussion to announce links of manuscripts and printed chant editions of Koukouzeles' compositions?
Sono preso dai Turchi adesso, come si dice nel Sud, che non posso continuare prima del prossimo anno. Ma La lascio una copia alla mano dell'inizio secondo due manoscritti che si trovano oggi alla Vaticana (forse più come una risposta vera). Infatti, Maria Alexandru non aveva offerto una soluzione come finire la prima sezione del protos, perché le versioni nei manoscritti offrono le varie soluzioni. Questa diversita (anche nelle segnature mediali) è molto caratteristico per l'arte del canto (psaltiche tecne). Quindi parliamo delle due versioni possibili.
The reason, why there are so few Byzantine compositions present in the papadike today, is that nearly all editions are based on Chourmouzios the Archivist, and his exegeseis are so long, that the Orthodox Patriarchates had no practical use for it. He is usually underestimated because of this addition "Chartophylax," but like Gregorios the Protopsaltes he was a very fine singer and of a very fine school, Iakovos the Protopsaltes and his Domestikos Gregorios of Crete. It is only due to the early death of Gregorios that he is the only one who transcribed the whole repertory of "Byzantine chant" in 33-34 volumes and the only one who had really a systematic overview over the whole tradition (actually both were not only familiar with all different interpretations of the Byzantine heritage, but also open-minded to exchanges with Armenian and dervish composers, but this does not mean that their exegeseis was the only possible or even only correct way, this is simply "dwarf talk"). Hence, only a small part has been published in printed editions.
For Koukouzeles' compositions these volumes of the National Library of Greece (collection Metochion of Panagios Taphos. "Cell of the Holy Sepulcher": ΕΒΕ ΜΠΤ) are relevant:
- Anthologies of the Old Papadike (703-705) contain three volumes for Hesperinos, Orthros and the Liturgies. At the very beginning is his transcription of the exercise (mathema) Mega Ison.
- The mathemataria of the sticherarion (727-734) or simply sticherarion kalophonikon, because Ioannes Koukouzelis is regarded as the creator of the whole genre, which are the sticheron kalophonikon (a section of a sticheron with a kratema using abstract syllables at the end, very like the form of the koinonikon or cherouvikon) and the anagrammatismos (the last section, but with the reworked text, very similar to the Latin tropus). Usually the kratema section is ascribed to Koukouzeles, but it can also simply mean "according to his kalophonic method."
- The kratemataria (710-711), separate collection of the kratemata.
- The mathemataria of the Papadike (706 & 722).
By the way, a paper by Angelopoulos was published on Chourmouzios' exegeseis of compositions ascribed to Ioannes Koukouzeles: