An Unknown Source of the Heirmologion Kalophonikon’s Printed Edition (1835)
An Unknown Source of the Heirmologion Kalophonikon’s Printed Edition (1835)

Summary/Abstract: The melismatic genre of kalophonic heirmoi has been investigated during the past years by a handful of musicologists which have achieved remarkable results. Still, a great amount of new and surprising data related to this rather large field of interest continues to emerge. The successful spreading of this type of chant in the New Method was due to the intense copying for almost twenty years of Gregory the Protopsaltes’ exegese of Heirmologion Kalophonikon (1817) and to the popularity gained by the printed collection published in 1835 by Theodoros Fokaefs. Until now the unanimous belief of the musicologists was that the primary source of the book must be one of the numerous copies of Gregory’s autograph, Φάκελος Β΄ from the Konstantinos Psachos Music Archive (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), dated 1817. But when one compares a manuscript copy with the print it becomes very clear that they are not identical, the most striking differences involving formulas and phtoras substitutions, ornamental signs exclusions or adjustments of the meter. The present paper aims to reveal an unknown manuscript that seems to be probably the real source of the printed Heirmologion Kalophonikon. This unique musical codex of 297 folios is deposited in the Library of the Ordre Basilien Alepin from Sarba – Jūniyah (Lebanon) and represents a revised version of the collection ("επιδιορθώτεν κατά γραμμήν"), signed in January 1833 by Chourmouzios the Chartophylax.

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