(Gk.: ‘orders of service’).
Handbooks transmitting the 14th- and 15th-century chant melodies of the Byzantine rite. Alternative names are anthologion anoixantarion, anthologia, psaltikē and mousikon. Akolouthiai manuscripts contain within a single volume a collection of monophonic chants, both Ordinary and Proper, for the psalmody of Hesperinos and Orthros, and settings for the three Divine Liturgies (see Divine liturgy (byzantine)). Although relatively short, simple melodies for the Greek liturgical texts are transmitted, the greater portion of a manuscript consists of elaborate kalophonic settings of these same texts (see Kalophonic chant). Most akolouthiai also include a preliminary Papadikē and other didactic texts on Byzantine music and notation.
Akolouthiai were probably assembled for the first time in about 1300 by the singer and composer Joannes Koukouzeles. Their immediate antecedents were the so-called Asma collection of the 13th century, preserved exclusively in manuscripts of South Italian origin, and the asmatikon and the psaltikon, which apparently preserved the chanted repertories of the urban rites of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople between the 11th and 13th centuries. Although certain chants from the asmatikon and psaltikon were copied into some of the early akolouthiai, most of this older repertory had disappeared by the 15th century. This change reflected the gradual replacement of the imperial liturgy at Hagia Sophia by the less elaborate practices followed in Byzantine monasteries, a process that was complete by the end of the 13th century.
Although akolouthiai include chants with rubrics such as ‘palaion’ (‘old’) or ‘archaion’ (‘ancient’), indicating that they belong to an older and anonymous layer of the repertory, the manuscripts mostly contain newly composed liturgical music by Koukouzeles, his immediate predecessors, contemporaries and successors. The attribution of chants to specific composers is one feature that distinguishes the akolouthiai from older collections. The akolouthiai are generally similar in content, but each copy may also reflect the musical predilections of a particular monastery and even the tastes of an individual compiler. Although akolouthiai transmit the early strata of the new musical corpus, scribes were constantly modernizing repertories by deleting older chants and substituting new melodies as they were composed. It is therefore possible to determine the approximate dates of activity of many 14th- and 15th-century Byzantine composers. The melodies of over 100 composers are preserved in akolouthiai of this period; among those who contributed the greatest number of works are Joannes Glykys, Nikephoros Ethikos, Joannes Koukouzeles (maïstōr), Xenos Korones, Georgios Kontopetres, Demetrios Dokeianos, Joannes Kladas (lampadarios) and Manuel Chrysaphes. Some chants bear rubrics indicating usage in certain localities, for example, ‘Hagiosophitikos’ (‘of Hagia Sophia’), ‘Thessalonikos’ (‘of Thessaloniki’) or ‘Hagioreitikos’ (‘of Mount Athos’).
About 20 akolouthiai manuscripts from the 14th century and over 40 from the 15th have so far been discovered; considerably more date from after the fall of Constantinople in the mid-15th century (and such manuscripts continued to be produced until the early 19th century). The oldest dated akolouthiai manuscript, GR-An 2458, was copied in 1336, probably during the lifetime of Koukouzeles. Two 15th-century manuscripts, An 2401 and 2406, the latter bearing the date 1453 (the year the empire fell), are unusually large and rich anthologies containing chants by various composers from different regions of Greece as well as music sung in the city of Thessaloniki and some monasteries on Mount Athos.
B. di Salvo: ‘Gli asmata nella musica bizantina’, Bolletino della Badia greca di Groltaferrata, xiii (1959), 45–50, 127–45; xiv (1960), 145–78
O. Strunk: ‘The Antiphons of the Oktoechos’, JAMS, xiii (1960), 50–67
M. Velimirović: ‘Byzantine Composers in MS Athens 2406’, Essays Presented to Egon Wellesz, ed. J. Westrup (Oxford, 1966), 7–18
E.V. Williams: ‘The Treatment of Text in the Kalophonic Chanting of Psalm 2’, Studies in Eastern Chant, ii, ed. M. Velimirović (London, 1971), 173–93
A.E. Pennington: ‘Seven Akolouthiai from Putna’, Studies in Eastern Chant, iv, ed. M. Velimirović (London, 1979), 112–33
G. Stathēs: ‘Hē asmatikē diaphoropoiēsē: hopōs katagraphetai ston kōdika EBE 2458 tou etous 1336’ [A comparison of the chants in codex Gr-An 2458 dating from 1336], Christianikē Thessalonikē, Palaiologeios epochē: Vlatadon 1987 (Thessaloniki, 1989), 165–211
G. Stathēs: Hoi anagrammatismoi kai ta mathēmata tēs byzantinēs melopoiïas [Anagrammatismoi and exercises in Byzantine chant] (Athens, 1979) [with Fr. summary]
G. Wolfram: ‘Erneuernde Tendenzen in der byzantinischen Kirchenmusik des 13./14. Jahrhunderts’, IMSCR XV: Madrid 1992 [RdMc, xvi (1993)], 761–8
A. Jakovljević: Diglōssē palaiographia kai melōdoi-hymnographoi tou kōdika tōn Athēnōn 928 [Old bilingual writings and hymn melodies in Athens codex 928] (Leukosia, 1988)
For further bibliography see Byzantine chant.
EDWARD V. WILLIAMS/CHRISTIAN TROELSGÅRD