(b ?1770; d Bursa, 1846). Greek archimandrite, chanter and teacher of music. With his two collaborators Chourmouzios the Archivist and Gregorios the Protopsaltes, he was responsible for the much needed reform of the notation of Greek ecclesiastical music. His first endeavours were presented in a short introductory treatise (Eisagōgē) published in 1821. This was followed 11 years later by the more exhaustive and highly influential Theōrētikon mega tēs mousikēs (‘Great Theoretical Treatise on Music’), the first part of which expounds the New Method and notational principles of the three reformers. The second part is purely historical: an ambitious but unsuccessful attempt to present, in the form of a chronicle, a general history of music from the time before the Flood to his own day.
Chrysanthos’s reform consisted essentially of a simplification of medieval Byzantine neumatic notation, which by the early 19th century had become so complex and technical that only highly skilled chanters were able to interpret the symbols accurately. As an aid to beginners, Chrysanthos invented a kind of sol-fa based on the first seven letters of the Greek alphabet. Each degree corresponds to one note in a scale, as shown in ex.1. In addition, he systematized the ordering of the eight modes into the three species: diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic. Within each of these three categories the intervallic progression of the degrees was fixed according to elaborate mathematical calculations. Chrysanthos also introduced new processes of modulation and chromatic alteration, and abolished some of the notational symbols. Fundamental to this New Method was the system of ‘interpreting’ the medieval chants composed in the 14th and 15th centuries, a process known as exegesis (exēgēsis). The reformers eliminated a large number of the red subsidiary symbols (cheironomiai) and replaced them by fully realized musical ‘positions’ (theseis). As a result of these efforts, a large repertory of medieval hymnody was made available to chanters who were ignorant of the melodic and dynamic content of these signs.
Despite its numerous shortcomings, Chrysanthos’s work represents a landmark in the history of Greek church music since it introduced the system of neo-Byzantine music upon which are based the present-day chants of the Greek Orthodox Church.
Eisagōgē eis to theōrētikon kai praktikon tēs ekklēsiastikēs mousikēs syntachtheisa pros chrēsin tōn spoudazontōn autēn kata tēn nean methodon [Introduction to the theory and practice of ecclesiastical music written for the use of those studying according to the new method] (Paris, 1821)
Theōrētikon mega tēs mousikēs [Great theoretical treatise of music] (Trieste, 1832/R)
FétisB
G.I. Papadopoulos: Symbolai eis tēn historian tēs par’ hēmin ekklēsiastikēs mousikēs [Contribution to the history of our ecclesiastical music] (Athens, 1890/R), 332
J.-B. Rebours: Traité de psaltique de l’église grecque (Paris, 1906)
K. Psachos: Hē parasēmantikē tēs byzantinēs mousikēs [The notation of Byzantine music] (Athens, 1917, 2/1988)
M. Merlier: ‘Un manuel de musique byzantine: le “Théorétikon” de Chrysanthe’, Revue des études grecques, xxxix (1926), 241–6
M.M. Morgan: ‘The “Three Teachers” and their Place in the History of Greek Church Music’, Studies in Eastern Chant, ii, ed. M. Velimirović (London, 1971), 86–99
K. Romanou: ‘Hē metarrythmisē tou 1814’, Mousikologia, i/1 (1985), 7–22
K. Romanou: ‘A New Approach to the Work of Chrysanthos of Madytos: the New Method of Musical Notation in the Greek Church and the Mega theōrētikon tēs mousikēs’, Studies in Eastern Chant, v, ed. D. Conomos (Crestwood, NY, 1991), 89–100
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