(fl c1300–50). Singer, composer and reviser of Byzantine chant. Traditionally known as the maïstōr (‘master’), the ‘second source of Greek music’ (the first being John Damascene, 8th century) and angelophōnos (‘angel-voice’), he was one of the most eminent Byzantine musicians during the Palaeologan dynasty (1261–1453) and was later made a saint of the Greek Orthodox Church.
Koukouzeles probably lived during the reigns of the Emperor Andronikos II Palaeologos (1282–1328) and his successor. Evidence in Byzantine music manuscripts suggests that his musical career was well established by about 1300, and by the mid-14th century he was considered the most important Byzantine composer.
Much of what is known about Koukouzeles’ life is contained in a short saint’s biography, or vita, the earliest extant copies of which date from the 16th century. According to this text he was born in Dyrrachium, now Durrës in Albania, but moved to Constantinople while still a child to attend the imperial school as a protégé of the Byzantine emperor. His mother appears to have been Slavonic, according to instances of her speech recorded (albeit in Greek letters) in the vita; nothing is known about his father, although a few music manuscripts state that Koukouzeles’ real surname was ‘Papadopoulos’, that is, ‘son of a priest’. The vita says that Koukouzeles was not the composer’s true name, but that it was given to him by his fellow pupils at the imperial school when they observed his difficulties with the Greek language; the nickname was a combination of the Greek word koukia (‘beans’) and the Slavonic zeliya (‘cabbage’).
Koukouzeles became famous at the imperial court for his exceptional voice, but at the height of his fame as a singer he left Constantinople to enter the monastery of the Great Lavra on Mount Athos. Although he sang for the liturgical services in the monastery church on Sundays and important feasts during the week, he lived outside the walls in a small chapel that he had built himself. The description in the vita of Koukouzeles’s life on Mount Athos suggests that he was influenced by hesychasm, a mystical movement within Orthodoxy that was prevalent among the Athonite monks during the first half of the 14th century. There is no evidence that he ever left the Holy Mountain.
Strunk suggested that Koukouzeles may have revised the traditional Byzantine Heirmologion and Stichērarion. The two earliest heirmologia with references to his name, RU-SPsc gr.121 and ET-MSsc gr.1256, were copied in 1302 and 1309 respectively; and a stichērarion dating from 1341, GR-An 884, has the subscription ‘[copied] from a thoroughly corrected exemplar written by the old [?late] Koukouzeles’. Raasted’s comparison of the traditional stichērarion with Koukouzeles’s revised version has shown that original conflicts between melody and textual accent have been eliminated; some parts of the repertory have been transposed to a higher register, and the transitions between lines have been treated more uniformly. The general impression, however, is that Koukouzeles remained faithful to the older tradition.
Although the oldest known chants by Koukouzeles are preserved in appendixes to the two heirmologia mentioned above, most of his music is transmitted in the newer liturgical books, the Akolouthiai manuscripts and the kalophonic stichēraria; rubrics in these manuscripts reveal that Koukouzeles played a major role in their organization and early development. Many akolouthiai manuscripts include as part of the Papadikē (a brief treatise often attached to such manuscripts) Koukouzeles’s most famous single work, the didactic chant Ison, oligon, oxeia (also known as To mega ison), which provides a melodic realization of the Byzantine neumes and traditional musical formulae represented in the notation and named in the text (see Byzantine chant, ex.5, for an extract from this chant). Ison, oligon, oxeia is based on a similar work by Joannes Glykys, Koukouzeles’ older contemporary and former teacher, but Koukouzeles’ version is more refined. A number of diagrams attributed to Koukouzeles demonstrating the Byzantine scales and modes are also often included in papadikai, that of a wheel (trochos) to illustrate the tetrachords being most commonly found.
As a composer at the beginning of the 14th century, Koukouzeles was undoubtedly an innovator; he was perhaps the first to abandon the older, conservative traditions of chant composition in favour of new melodic invention. For example, the prooimiakos (Psalm ciii, sung at Saturday Hesperinos) in the older, traditional layer of chant has a simple refrain that functions as a brief cadential appendage to certain lines of the psalm; in Koukouzeles’ settings, however, the refrain is no longer subordinate but is expanded through textual tropes and has greater melodic interest than the psalm verse (in two of his five prooimiakos settings the music for the refrain is almost twice as long as that for the verse). Koukouzeles also expanded the text in his kalophonic settings of Psalm ii for Hesperinos; all such chants by his older contemporaries are built on a single line from the psalm, whereas Koukouzeles always augmented the basic text by incorporating into the principal line of the psalm at least one phrase from a different line, or elements from another verse (or even other verses). As a result of this textual expansion, Koukouzeles’s kalophonic settings of Psalm ii are all of great length.
Koukouzeles also used a bolder vocal style in his chants than earlier composers: the melodic range either equals that of the traditional repertory or exceeds it, as the psalm refrains particularly show; and there is a substantial increase in the use of disjunct motion through the employment of intervals greater than the ascending and descending 3rd, even though his melodic lines remain predominantly conjunct. In general, the melodies of Koukouzeles are more skilfully and seamlessly wrought than those of the older, traditional repertory as well as the vast majority of chants by his contemporaries and successors.
S. Eustratiadēs: ‘Iōannēs ho Koukouzelēs, ho maïstōr, kai ho chronos tēs akmēs autou’, [Joannes Koukouzeles, the maïstōr, and the date of his activity], Epetēris hetaireias byzantinōn spoudōn, xiv (1938), 3–38
R. Palikarova-Verdeil: La musique byzantine chez les Bulgares et les Russes (du IXe au XIVe siècle), MMB, Subsidia, iii (1953), 193–210
G. Dévai: ‘The Musical Study of Koukouzeles in a 14th-Century Manuscript’, Acta antiqua Academiae scientarum hungaricae, vi (1958), 213–35
O. Strunk: ‘Melody Construction in Byzantine Chant’, Congrès d’études byzantines XII: Ohrid 1961, 365–73
E.V. Williams: John Koukouzeles’ Reform of Byzantine Chanting for Great Vespers in the Fourteenth Century (diss., Yale U., 1968)
O. Strunk: ‘P. Lorenzo Tardo and his “Ottoeco nei manoscritti melurgici”: some Observations on the Stichera Dogmatika’, Essays on Music in the Byzantine World, ed. K. Levy (New York, 1977), 255–67
A. Jakovljević: ‘Ho Megas Maïstōr Iōannēs Koukouzelēs Papadopoulos’, Klēronomia, xiv (1982), 362–74
E. Trapp: ‘Critical Notes on the Biography of John Koukouzeles’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, xi (1987), 223–4
E. Trapp: Prosopograpisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit, vi (Vienna, 1983), 34
S. Karas: Iōannēs Maïstōr ho Koukouzelēs kai hē epochē tou [Koukouzeles and his times] (Athens, 1992)
C. Troelsgård: ‘The Development of a Didactic Poem: some Remarks on the “Ison, oligon, oxeia” by Ioannes Glykys’, Byzantine Chant: Athens 1993, 69–85
J. Raasted: ‘Koukouzeles’ Revision of the Sticherarion and Sinai gr. 1230’, Laborare fratres in unum: Festschrift László Dobszay zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. J. Szendrei and D. Hiley (Hildesheim, 1995), 261–77
M. Alexandru: ‘Koukouzeles' Mega Ison: Ansätze einer kritischen Edition’, Cahiers de l’Institut du Moyen Age grec et latin, lxvi (1996), 3–23
EDWARD V. WILLIAMS/CHRISTIAN TROELSGÅRD