Reference address : https://www.elpenor.org/athos/en/e218eu01.asp

Music Manuscripts

By a stroke of good fortune, Byzantine musical notation made its appearance at the same time as monastic life first became organised on Athos - with the foundation of the first monasteries from A.D. 963 onwards - and so both share a parallel history stretching back continuously over more than a thousand years. Faith, which was the main driving force behind the organisation of Athos as a monastic state, inspired art, and art, in turn, gave resplendent and monumental expression to faith. More than any other of the fine arts, the Art of Chant, as a raiment of speech, is and always shall be on Athos the most sublime, musical expression of the monks' communication with God and His saints, and above all the Virgin, since this is the purpose for which they went to the Holy Mountain.
In the libraries of the twenty monasteries, six or seven (of the twelve) sketae and the many kellia on Athos, well over 2,500, indeed nearly 3,000, manuscripts of Byzantine and post-Byzantine/modern Greek music have been preserved. This number is slightly more than one third of all the manuscripts of Byzantine chant known in the whole world. Any doubts or speculation regarding the exact number of manuscripts are due, in all cases, to the absence of full catalogues, and also to their deliberate concealment, chiefly by monks in the kellia. This number does not include a considerable number of manuscripts which in one way or another have been smuggled out of Athos.
The difficult task of compiling a detailed catalogue record of the music manuscripts of Mount Athos was taken on by the present author in October 1970. So far three of the seven volumes of this catalogue have been published under the title Byzantine Music Manuscripts: Mount Athos (in Greek), in 1975, 1976 and 1993 respectively. Volume 4 is already at the press.
Now that 1,500 Athonite music manuscripts have been catalogued, we are in a position to make the following general observations. Mount Athos holds most of the oldest music manuscripts from the tenth and eleventh centuries. The Athonite music manuscripts of the Palaeologan era (14th-15th c.) number over twice as many as those outside Athos. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a huge quantity of music manuscripts were written on Athos: these, which still survive, number twice as many as the manuscripts from the Byzantine era. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries are also represented by a wealth of music manuscripts, most of which were written by Athonite scribes on the Holy Mountain. It is self-evident, I think, that during the continuous thousand-year history of the tradition of chant on Athos at various times and in various monasteries notable scriptoria and bookbinding workshops evolved..
In the monasteries, during both their golden age and later times of harsh oppression and woes, the monks, bent over in the scriptoria or their cells and hermitages, inscribed in red and black ink the various types of music codex - the Sticheraria and Doxastaria, the Mathemataria and Kratemataria, the Papadikai and Anthologia, the Heirmologia and the Akathistos Hymn - in a collective effort to preserve the essence of the authentic and sublime Greek Orthodox form of musical communion with God. The names of those who wrote the music manuscripts - monks, hieromonks, and even prelates and patriarchs, 'humble', 'most sinful' and 'uneducated' men, as they refer to themselves in the colophons of their manuscripts - are like a gentle rain from heaven which has suffused our musical tradition with its rich distinctive fragrance.
The largest collections of music manuscripts are kept in the monastery libraries: Iviron (400 MSS), Vatopedi (approx. 350 MSS), the Great Lavra (approx. 300 MSS), St Panteleimon (190 MSS), Chelandari (130 MSS), Xeropotamou (138 MSS), Docheiariou (125 MSS), St Paul's (117 MSS), Koutloumousiou (98 MSS), Xenophontos (96 MSS), and Dionysiou (96 MSS). The number of music manuscripts in the other monasteries and sketae lies somewhere between 15 and 90.
The music codices, like all other forms of manuscript, are of vellum (parchment) or paper, depending on when they were written. From the fourteenth century onwards paper prevails as the writing material for codices. The music manuscripts are all inscribed in two colours, in black and red ink. The red ink was essential to draw attention to a group of signs, the so-called aphona semadia or unvoiced signs (of which there are 40), which showed the treatment of the music - 'the quick or slow tempo and other ideas of the melody' - that is, the correct interpretation of the musical notation consisting of phonetika semadia or voiced signs. Red ink was also used to write the symbols for the echoi (modes) and the phthorai (modulation signs). Naturally, red ink was used for initial letters and various embellishments. Many pages in the codices are adorned with elegant - or in some cases less artistic - illustrations, as well as decorative headpieces at the beginning of different sections of text.
The contents of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine music manuscripts are diverse in form and nomenclature and are related to the three generations of musical composition: those of the Papadike, the Sticherarion and the Heirmologion. The development of the codices and the creation of new generations - new either in terms of content or type of musical composition - naturally followed the evolution of Chant. Basically, the codices fall into two categories: a) codices of homogeneous content, and b) codices of varied content.
To the first category belong two groups of codices which are related to two of the three kinds of musical composition, those of the Sticherarion and the Heirmologion. These codices are usually the personal creation of a single composer. To be precise, the names of these codices, which are either mentioned by the writers of the manuscripts themselves or are obvious from their contents, are as follows:
The Sticherarion, the oldest form of music codex (10th c.), contains the stichera idiomela for all the movable and immovable feasts of the year. From this basic codex derive the Anthologion or Anthologia Sticherariou, which is an anthology of the troparia for the greatest and most important feasts, and the Ekloge Sticherariou, a small selection of musical settings of chiefly dogmatic character. In addition, there are the Triodion-Pentekostarion, which contains the idiomela for the movable cycle of feasts before and after Easter, the Doxastarion or Doxastikarion, which contains the idiomela in which the first line to be sung is the so-called Lesser Doxology, i.e. Doxa Patri kai yioi kai hagioi Pneumati ('Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost'), the Anastasimatarion, which contains the idiomela of the Octoechos of St John of Damascus based on the theme of the Resurrection, and the Megalai Orai (Great Hours), that is, the idiomela for the four Hours (First, Third, Sixth and Ninth) of the three great feasts of our Lord: Christmas, Epiphany and Easter.
The names of the codices related to the Heirmologion generation are: the Heirmologion itself, which contains the heirmoi of the Canons, classified by ode and mode; the Prologarion, which is an anthology, again arranged by mode, of the prologoi, i.e. the model troparia, which are not canonical heirmoi and serve as models for singing the so-called prosomoia troparia, or troparia in which the melody is the same as that of the prologos; and the Kalophonikon Heirmologion, which contains forms of musical settings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This type of codex contains various heirmoi or troparia from the Canons which are set, however, in a freer and certainly more ornate style.
To the second category belong the codices which contain the fixed melodies sung during the daily and nightly offices, mainly in the Psalms, and which in many cases contain diverse musical settings by a variety of different composers. The names of these codices are as follows: the Papadike, which in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was known as the Akolouthiai; the Psaltikon and the Asmatikon, two types of Byzantine codex from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; the Anthologia; the Akoloutharion; the Kontakarion or Oikematarion, which contains the kontakia for the feasts; the Akathistos Hymn; and the Kratematarion, which, mode by mode, sets out the kratemata, melodies in which meaningless syllables are used instead of text, such as Terirem, enena, Tororon and Titii, which are intended to 'sustain' (krato), i.e. to extend the length of the services and provide rest for the worshippers. In addition, from the fifteenth century onwards, we have the Kalophonikon Sticherarion or Mathematarion and the Anthologion Mathematariou; these codices chiefly contain stichera idiomela, theotokia and poems in a fifteen-syllable metre, set in an expansive melismatic style, interspersed with one long kratema or more. These compositions in the Mathemataria, constituting as they do pure music, clearly represent the apogee of Byzantine Chant.
As we are occupied here with the study of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine music manuscripts of Mount Athos, it is only right that we should investigate those cases which attest to the art of musical composition on Athos itself. Such an investigation is no easy matter, and an anthology of Athonite compositions will never be complete unless all the manuscripts of Byzantine music, not only the Athonite ones, are carefully studied. Nonetheless, the detailed catalogue compiled to date permits us to distinguish two groups of Athonite composition: those of unknown, and those of known authorship.
In the music codices, chiefly those of the post-Byzantine period, the following indications quite frequently occur: hagioreitikon ('as sung on the Holy Mountain'), vatopedinon ('as sung at Vatopedi'), iverikon ('as sung at Iviron') dionysiatikon ('as sung at Dionysiou'), os psalletai en tei hagiai kai megalei Lavrai ('as sung at the holy and great Lavra'), or certain variations of these. These indications correspond to others found elsewhere, such as hagiasophitikon ('as sung at Ayia Sophia'), politikon ('as sung in Constantinople'), thessalonikaion ('as sung in Thessaloniki') and latrenon ('as sung at Latros'). Here it is interesting to note the following combinations of terms: ekklesiastikon-hagioreitikon ('in an ecclesiastical and Athonite style') and, less frequently, hagioreitikon-synoptikon ('in a concise and Athonite style'). The melodies marked by the above indications are always shorter and simpler, compared with other melodies, Athonite or otherwise, of a similar character - a particularly interesting phenomenon. The Athonite tradition of chant displays an exemplary care and concern for the character that music should take in Orthodox worship. These anonymous melodies relate to twelve different forms of musical composition.
The total number of Athonite musical compositions of known authorship cannot, of course, be listed here, nor even in a single volume. They constitute an output of liturgical vocal music of considerable size and importance. To illustrate this point, one need only mention that at least seventy Athonite melodists are known, 'both old and new', major and minor figures, either of great renown or of lesser fame and importance. From the Byzantine era proper a group of Athonite melodists clearly stands out: Ioannis Koukouzelis, the domestikos Gregorios Glykys, Bartholomaios, Dositheos and Anthimos from the Great Lavra; the hieromonk Longinos and the domestikos Ioasaph from Vatopedi; Kosmas 'of Mount Athos', unknown elsewhere, and Athanasios 'a monk of Athos'. This group is completed by the hieromonk Gregorios Bounis Alyatis, who stayed on Athos for a while. The other Athonite melodists mentioned in the manuscripts are all from the post-Byzantine era.
If we consider the individual aspects of Athonite musical composition, we may discern at least four important dimensions which demonstrate the magnitude of its contribution to Byzantine chant and have also had an enduring influence on Greece's musical heritage.
Great emphasis ought to be placed on the fact that Mount Athos preserves many manuscripts which contain the so-called Protheoria tes Papadikes Technes (Introduction to the Art of the Papadike) in a variety of forms, as well as the various known Byzantine and post-Byzantine musical treatises. Mention must be made of the treatise on 'the methods of positioning signs' by the Athonite writers the maistor Ioannis Koukouzelis and Gregorios Bounis Alyatis. In the mid-eighteenth century the theory of chant and the question of musical notation were dealt with by another Athonite theorist, Theodoulos Ainitis.
Throughout the third 'transitional-exegetical' period of notation (1670-1814) quite a few Athonite masters of music concerned themselves with compiling a more detailed record of the creations of previous composers, i.e. with the task of expounding musical notation. After the establishment of the New Method of 'analytical notation' (1st half of the 19th c.), very important contributions to the exegetical process were made by four Athonite masters: Theophanes Pantokratorinos, Matthaios Vatopedinos, Ioasaph Dionysiatis and Nikolaos Docheiarites.
The field of Greek folk - i.e. non-ecclesiastical - music has benefited in particular from the Athonite music manuscripts since, thanks to the monks' love of music, they contain the only surviving examples of songs, scored with Byzantine notation. Iviron Cod. 1189 from the year 1562 contains the oldest song set to music. The well-known thirteen songs in Cod. 1203 (ca. 1700), also from Iviron, and the three in Xeropotamou Cod. 262 (early 17th c.) provide a firm basis for the study of folk music. In addition, mention ought to be made of Vatopedi Cod. 1428, written in 1818 by Nikephoros Kantouniaris ('archimandrite of the throne of Antioch'), which is the fullest collection of songs of all types, principally urban ones.
Here it should be stressed that complete books have also come down to us from Athonite composers. Examples of such books are the Heirmologion of Ioasaph Vatopedinos 'the new Koukouzelis' (late 16th c.), the Heirmologion and the Sticherarion of Kosmas Iviritis the Macedonian (2nd half of the 17th c.), the Prologarion of Ioasaph Dionysiates (1st half of the 19th c.), and the Doxastarion ton apostichon of Matthaios Vatopedinos (1st half of the 19th c.).
Codex 705 of Dionysiou Monastery, the Prologarion of Ioasaph Dionysiates, provides us with the following characteristic entry on fol. 23v: 'With God's help, the first part of the prosomoia and apolytikia for all the feasts of the year, those of Our Lord, the Mother of Our Lord and the saints. Originally set to music by Petros Lampadarios, here revised with improvements according to the style of the Holy Mountain of Athos by Ioasaph Dionysiates, by popular demand'.
Let us dwell on that phrase '...here revised with improvements according to the style of the Holy Mountain of Athos' as a point of comparison, one which ought to be researched, analysed and discussed for the sake of Art and 'the common good'.

Bibliography: Lambros 1985. Vellimirovi 1962, pp. 351-85. Stathis 1975, 1976, 1979, 1993.

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Chronological Classification

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Music Manuscripts

	By a stroke of good fortune, Byzantine musical notation made its appearance at the same time as monastic life first became organised on Athos - with the foundation of the first monasteries from A.D. 963 onwards - and so both share a parallel history stretching back continuously over more than a thousand years. Faith, which was the main driving force behind the organisation of Athos as a monastic state, inspired art, and art, in turn, gave resplendent and monumental expression to faith. More than any other of the fine arts, the Art of Chant, as a raiment of speech, is and always shall be on Athos the most sublime, musical expression of the monks' communication with God and His saints, and above all the Virgin, since this is the purpose for which they went to the Holy Mountain. In the libraries of the twenty monasteries, six or seven (of the twelve) sketae and the many kellia on Athos, well over 2,500, indeed nearly 3,000, manuscripts of Byzantine and post-Byzantine/modern Greek music have been preserved. This number is slightly more than one third of all the manuscripts of Byzantine chant known in the whole world. Any doubts or speculation regarding the exact number of manuscripts are due, in all cases, to the absence of full catalogues, and also to their deliberate concealment, chiefly by monks in the kellia. This number does not include a considerable number of manuscripts which in one way or another have been smuggled out of Athos. The difficult task of compiling a detailed catalogue record of the music manuscripts of Mount Athos was taken on by the present author in October 1970. So far three of the seven volumes of this catalogue have been published under the title Byzantine Music Manuscripts: Mount Athos (in Greek), in 1975, 1976 and 1993 respectively. Volume 4 is already at the press. Now that 1,500 Athonite music manuscripts have been catalogued, we are in a position to make the following general observations. Mount Athos holds most of the oldest music manuscripts from the tenth and eleventh centuries. The Athonite music manuscripts of the Palaeologan era (14th-15th c.) number over twice as many as those outside Athos. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a huge quantity of music manuscripts were written on Athos: these, which still survive, number twice as many as the manuscripts from the Byzantine era. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries are also represented by a wealth of music manuscripts, most of which were written by Athonite scribes on the Holy Mountain. It is self-evident, I think, that during the continuous thousand-year history of the tradition of chant on Athos at various times and in various monasteries notable scriptoria and bookbinding workshops evolved.. In the monasteries, during both their golden age and later times of harsh oppression and woes, the monks, bent over in the scriptoria or their cells and hermitages, inscribed in red and black ink the various types of music codex - the Sticheraria and Doxastaria, the Mathemataria and Kratemataria, the Papadikai and Anthologia, the Heirmologia and the Akathistos Hymn - in a collective effort to preserve the essence of the authentic and sublime Greek Orthodox form of musical communion with God. The names of those who wrote the music manuscripts - monks, hieromonks, and even prelates and patriarchs, 'humble', 'most sinful' and 'uneducated' men, as they refer to themselves in the colophons of their manuscripts - are like a gentle rain from heaven which has suffused our musical tradition with its rich distinctive fragrance. The largest collections of music manuscripts are kept in the monastery libraries: Iviron (400 MSS), Vatopedi (approx. 350 MSS), the Great Lavra (approx. 300 MSS), St Panteleimon (190 MSS), Chelandari (130 MSS), Xeropotamou (138 MSS), Docheiariou (125 MSS), St Paul's (117 MSS), Koutloumousiou (98 MSS), Xenophontos (96 MSS), and Dionysiou (96 MSS). The number of music manuscripts in the other monasteries and sketae lies somewhere between 15 and 90. The music codices, like all other forms of manuscript, are of vellum (parchment) or paper, depending on when they were written. From the fourteenth century onwards paper prevails as the writing material for codices. The music manuscripts are all inscribed in two colours, in black and red ink. The red ink was essential to draw attention to a group of signs, the so-called aphona semadia or unvoiced signs (of which there are 40), which showed the treatment of the music - 'the quick or slow tempo and other ideas of the melody' - that is, the correct interpretation of the musical notation consisting of phonetika semadia or voiced signs. Red ink was also used to write the symbols for the echoi (modes) and the phthorai (modulation signs). Naturally, red ink was used for initial letters and various embellishments. Many pages in the codices are adorned with elegant - or in some cases less artistic - illustrations, as well as decorative headpieces at the beginning of different sections of text. The contents of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine music manuscripts are diverse in form and nomenclature and are related to the three generations of musical composition: those of the Papadike, the Sticherarion and the Heirmologion. The development of the codices and the creation of new generations - new either in terms of content or type of musical composition - naturally followed the evolution of Chant. Basically, the codices fall into two categories: a) codices of homogeneous content, and b) codices of varied content. To the first category belong two groups of codices which are related to two of the three kinds of musical composition, those of the Sticherarion and the Heirmologion. These codices are usually the personal creation of a single composer. To be precise, the names of these codices, which are either mentioned by the writers of the manuscripts themselves or are obvious from their contents, are as follows: The Sticherarion, the oldest form of music codex (10th c.), contains the stichera idiomela for all the movable and immovable feasts of the year. From this basic codex derive the Anthologion or Anthologia Sticherariou, which is an anthology of the troparia for the greatest and most important feasts, and the Ekloge Sticherariou, a small selection of musical settings of chiefly dogmatic character. In addition, there are the Triodion-Pentekostarion, which contains the idiomela for the movable cycle of feasts before and after Easter, the Doxastarion or Doxastikarion, which contains the idiomela in which the first line to be sung is the so-called Lesser Doxology, i.e. Doxa Patri kai yioi kai hagioi Pneumati ('Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost'), the Anastasimatarion, which contains the idiomela of the Octoechos of St John of Damascus based on the theme of the Resurrection, and the Megalai Orai (Great Hours), that is, the idiomela for the four Hours (First, Third, Sixth and Ninth) of the three great feasts of our Lord: Christmas, Epiphany and Easter. The names of the codices related to the Heirmologion generation are: the Heirmologion itself, which contains the heirmoi of the Canons, classified by ode and mode; the Prologarion, which is an anthology, again arranged by mode, of the prologoi, i.e. the model troparia, which are not canonical heirmoi and serve as models for singing the so-called prosomoia troparia, or troparia in which the melody is the same as that of the prologos; and the Kalophonikon Heirmologion, which contains forms of musical settings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This type of codex contains various heirmoi or troparia from the Canons which are set, however, in a freer and certainly more ornate style. To the second category belong the codices which contain the fixed melodies sung during the daily and nightly offices, mainly in the Psalms, and which in many cases contain diverse musical settings by a variety of different composers. The names of these codices are as follows: the Papadike, which in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was known as the Akolouthiai; the Psaltikon and the Asmatikon, two types of Byzantine codex from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; the Anthologia; the Akoloutharion; the Kontakarion or Oikematarion, which contains the kontakia for the feasts; the Akathistos Hymn; and the Kratematarion, which, mode by mode, sets out the kratemata, melodies in which meaningless syllables are used instead of text, such as Terirem, enena, Tororon and Titii, which are intended to 'sustain' (krato), i.e. to extend the length of the services and provide rest for the worshippers. In addition, from the fifteenth century onwards, we have the Kalophonikon Sticherarion or Mathematarion and the Anthologion Mathematariou; these codices chiefly contain stichera idiomela, theotokia and poems in a fifteen-syllable metre, set in an expansive melismatic style, interspersed with one long kratema or more. These compositions in the Mathemataria, constituting as they do pure music, clearly represent the apogee of Byzantine Chant. As we are occupied here with the study of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine music manuscripts of Mount Athos, it is only right that we should investigate those cases which attest to the art of musical composition on Athos itself. Such an investigation is no easy matter, and an anthology of Athonite compositions will never be complete unless all the manuscripts of Byzantine music, not only the Athonite ones, are carefully studied. Nonetheless, the detailed catalogue compiled to date permits us to distinguish two groups of Athonite composition: those of unknown, and those of known authorship. In the music codices, chiefly those of the post-Byzantine period, the following indications quite frequently occur: hagioreitikon ('as sung on the Holy Mountain'), vatopedinon ('as sung at Vatopedi'), iverikon ('as sung at Iviron') dionysiatikon ('as sung at Dionysiou'), os psalletai en tei hagiai kai megalei Lavrai ('as sung at the holy and great Lavra'), or certain variations of these. These indications correspond to others found elsewhere, such as hagiasophitikon ('as sung at Ayia Sophia'), politikon ('as sung in Constantinople'), thessalonikaion ('as sung in Thessaloniki') and latrenon ('as sung at Latros'). Here it is interesting to note the following combinations of terms: ekklesiastikon-hagioreitikon ('in an ecclesiastical and Athonite style') and, less frequently, hagioreitikon-synoptikon ('in a concise and Athonite style'). The melodies marked by the above indications are always shorter and simpler, compared with other melodies, Athonite or otherwise, of a similar character - a particularly interesting phenomenon. The Athonite tradition of chant displays an exemplary care and concern for the character that music should take in Orthodox worship. These anonymous melodies relate to twelve different forms of musical composition. The total number of Athonite musical compositions of known authorship cannot, of course, be listed here, nor even in a single volume. They constitute an output of liturgical vocal music of considerable size and importance. To illustrate this point, one need only mention that at least seventy Athonite melodists are known, 'both old and new', major and minor figures, either of great renown or of lesser fame and importance. From the Byzantine era proper a group of Athonite melodists clearly stands out: Ioannis Koukouzelis, the domestikos Gregorios Glykys, Bartholomaios, Dositheos and Anthimos from the Great Lavra; the hieromonk Longinos and the domestikos Ioasaph from Vatopedi; Kosmas 'of Mount Athos', unknown elsewhere, and Athanasios 'a monk of Athos'. This group is completed by the hieromonk Gregorios Bounis Alyatis, who stayed on Athos for a while. The other Athonite melodists mentioned in the manuscripts are all from the post-Byzantine era. If we consider the individual aspects of Athonite musical composition, we may discern at least four important dimensions which demonstrate the magnitude of its contribution to Byzantine chant and have also had an enduring influence on Greece's musical heritage. Great emphasis ought to be placed on the fact that Mount Athos preserves many manuscripts which contain the so-called Protheoria tes Papadikes Technes (Introduction to the Art of the Papadike) in a variety of forms, as well as the various known Byzantine and post-Byzantine musical treatises. Mention must be made of the treatise on 'the methods of positioning signs' by the Athonite writers the maistor Ioannis Koukouzelis and Gregorios Bounis Alyatis. In the mid-eighteenth century the theory of chant and the question of musical notation were dealt with by another Athonite theorist, Theodoulos Ainitis. Throughout the third 'transitional-exegetical' period of notation (1670-1814) quite a few Athonite masters of music concerned themselves with compiling a more detailed record of the creations of previous composers, i.e. with the task of expounding musical notation. After the establishment of the New Method of 'analytical notation' (1st half of the 19th c.), very important contributions to the exegetical process were made by four Athonite masters: Theophanes Pantokratorinos, Matthaios Vatopedinos, Ioasaph Dionysiatis and Nikolaos Docheiarites. The field of Greek folk - i.e. non-ecclesiastical - music has benefited in particular from the Athonite music manuscripts since, thanks to the monks' love of music, they contain the only surviving examples of songs, scored with Byzantine notation. Iviron Cod. 1189 from the year 1562 contains the oldest song set to music. The well-known thirteen songs in Cod. 1203 (ca. 1700), also from Iviron, and the three in Xeropotamou Cod. 262 (early 17th c.) provide a firm basis for the study of folk music. In addition, mention ought to be made of Vatopedi Cod. 1428, written in 1818 by Nikephoros Kantouniaris ('archimandrite of the throne of Antioch'), which is the fullest collection of songs of all types, principally urban ones. Here it should be stressed that complete books have also come down to us from Athonite composers. Examples of such books are the Heirmologion of Ioasaph Vatopedinos 'the new Koukouzelis' (late 16th c.), the Heirmologion and the Sticherarion of Kosmas Iviritis the Macedonian (2nd half of the 17th c.), the Prologarion of Ioasaph Dionysiates (1st half of the 19th c.), and the Doxastarion ton apostichon of Matthaios Vatopedinos (1st half of the 19th c.). Codex 705 of Dionysiou Monastery, the Prologarion of Ioasaph Dionysiates, provides us with the following characteristic entry on fol. 23v: 'With God's help, the first part of the prosomoia and apolytikia for all the feasts of the year, those of Our Lord, the Mother of Our Lord and the saints. Originally set to music by Petros Lampadarios, here revised with improvements according to the style of the Holy Mountain of Athos by Ioasaph Dionysiates, by popular demand'. Let us dwell on that phrase '...here revised with improvements according to the style of the Holy Mountain of Athos' as a point of comparison, one which ought to be researched, analysed and discussed for the sake of Art and 'the common good'. Bibliography: Lambros 1985. Vellimirovi 1962, pp. 351-85. Stathis 1975, 1976, 1979, 1993.
	Exhibits per Monastery Chronological Classification