The Musical Tradition at Mount Athos

We know specifically that three Athonite scriptoria - at the Great Lavra, at Vatopedi, and at Iviron - produced manuscripts with musical signs well before the first quarter of the 11th century and these manuscripts constitute some of mankind’s very earliest specimens of musical notation at all - whether in the East or in the West. Today there are altogether c. 12,000 manuscripts in Athonite monasteries of which c. 25% are musical manuscripts. Only c. 10% of the latter are from the Byzantine epoch proper, the 10th to 15th cents, and it is these that constitute an important source of documentation not only for the evolution of the Byzantine musical style, but also for the evolution of Byzantine musical notation and for the evolution of Byzantine liturgy.

Monastic music actually has its origins in the primitive psalmody of the early Egyptian and Palestinian desert communities that arose in the 4th to 6th centuries. The monasteries of Athos inherited later on the mixed musical tradition developing in urban monastic establishments, into which some of the features of cathedral liturgy were subsequently absorbed.

From the monastery of the Great Lavra came the central figure of John Koukouzeles (born c. 1280; died c. 1370) who was to lead a movement that changed the course and ethos of Byzantine chant, and whose legacy survives to this day. During the Ottoman period the old Byzantine musical practices were subjected to artistic improvisations and even the notation needed to be re-worked to handle the refinements of the new melodic tendencies. As such, sacred chant, following the other arts, particularly after the 17th century, participates in the establishment of a recognisable modern Greek aesthetic.

The invention of Byzantine music type in 1820 marks the end of a long and fascinating tradition of the Byzantine music manuscript. Of particular interest to folklorists and ethnomusicologists was the discovery by Spyridon Lambros in 1880 of 13 medieval Greek secular folk songs with Byzantine notation that were recorded on seven folios and hidden in the binding of Iviron MS 1203 sometime during the 17th century. The fact that chant notation could be used to record secular tunes in the 17th century points clearly to a degree of musical interdependence between these two genres.

Dimitri Conomos