(fl c144063). Byzantine composer and theorist. The only surviving biographical evidence about Chrysphes is contained in music manuscripts. Information in IL-Jp 31 (c1440) reveals that he held the office of lampadarios (leader of the left choir) in the Byzantine palace. His autograph appears in an Akolouthiai manuscript, GR-ATSiviron 1120, which bears the date 1458. The latest recorded date for Chrysaphes is in a signed manuscript, TR-Itks 15, completed on 29 July 1463. A number of sources indicate that some of his compositions were commissioned by the last two Byzantine emperors, John VIII Palaeologos (142848) and Constantine XI Palaeologos (144953). Chrysaphes is also known to have spent some time in Crete and even to have travelled as far as Serbia, where he wrote liturgical music.
His treatise, Peri tōn entheōroumenōn tē psaltikē technē kai hōn phronousi kakōs tines peri autōn (On the theory of the art of chanting and on certain erroneous views that some hold about it; GR-ATSiviron 1120, ff.11r-28v), contains important evidence, not found in any other source, for certain aspects of modal theory and musical practice; it also provides a great deal of information about the development of the tradition of Byzantine singing in the 14th and 15th centuries. Chrysaphes deplored the practice of those chanters who were satisfied to follow only the bare melodic line without considering the ornamental formulae (theseis) that were introduced by the early 14th-century composers. The second part of the treatise deals with an explanation of the phthorai, notational symbols that refer to modal transposition.
Chrysaphes's chant compositions appear in unequalled numbers in Byzantine music manuscripts written after the mid-15th century. Like his predecessors, Joannes Glykys, Nikephoros Ethikos, Joannes Koukouzeles, Xenos Korones and Joannes Kladas, he adhered to the new stylistic trends of the Palaeologan renaissance, characterized by the dominant Kalophonic chant. Chrysaphes recomposed older chants and enriched the repertory with new vocal settings. His prolific output includes hymns and psalmic compositions for choirs and soloists, embellished chants, kratēmata, mathēmata, anagrammatismoi etc. These were known and sung for four centuries, not only in the Greek Church but also in the Slavonic and Romanian Churches.
G.I. Papadopoulos: Symbolai eis tēn historian tēs par' hēmin ekklēsiastikēs mousikēs [Contribution to the history of our ecclesiastical music] (Athens, 1890/R), 292
A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus: Manouēl Chrysaphēs: lampadarios tou basilikou klērou [Manuel Chrysaphes: lampadarios of the royal clergy], Vizantiskiy vremmenik (1901), 53445
C.G. Patrinelis: Protopsaltai, Lampadarioi and Domestikoi of the Great Church, 14531821, Studies in Eastern Chant, iii, ed. M. Velimirović (London, 1973), 14170
D.E. Conomos: The Treatise of Manuel Chrysaphes, the Lampadarios, MMB, Corpus scriptorum, ii (1985)
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