(fl c1400). Composer of Byzantine chant. Together with his predecessors Joannes Glykys, Joannes Koukouzeles (fl c1300–50) and Xenos Korones, Kladas was one of the most important and prolific composers of Byzantine liturgical music active during the 14th and 15th centuries. The little that is known of his life derives from rubrics in musical manuscripts, many of which call him solely by the name ‘Lampadarios’ (i.e. leader of the left-hand choir); one 15th-century manuscript, GR-An 2406, identifies him as ‘Lampadarios tou evagous basilikou klērou’, that is, lampadarios of the imperial clergy of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. In the same manuscript there is a rubric indicating that his daughter may have composed a kalophonic koinōnikon that is otherwise ascribed to Kladas himself.
Chant melodies composed by Kladas appear in the Akolouthiai manuscripts copied at the end of the 14th century and in sources from the first half of the 15th century. He is also mentioned in a treatise written by Manuel Chrysaphes in the mid-15th century as the last of five major Byzantine composers of kalophonic oikoi for the Akathistos Hymn. It is certain, therefore, that Kladas was active during the first half of the 15th century, and that he was an older contemporary of Chrysaphes himself.
The akolouthiai manuscripts of the first half of the 15th century contain chants by Kladas for almost all the musical repertories of the Byzantine rite. Akolouthiai were constantly brought up to date by scribes who, at the time of recopying, would replace older chants with newly composed melodies. An examination of the prooimiakos repertory (verses of Psalm ciii – the Prooimiac Psalm – sung at Saturday Hesperinos) in successive versions of the akolouthiai shows that the melodies of Kladas’s 14th-century predecessors, such as Koukouzeles and Korones, were often transferred from one verse to another, whereas the ten settings by Kladas remain attached to the original lines of psalm text. The simple doxology Doxa soi O Theos (‘Glory to Thee, O God’), sung as a refrain after each line of the prooimiakos, was troped for the first time and to a moderate degree by Koukouzeles, but in the settings of Kladas this refrain was lengthened considerably and given even greater structural importance in the chant as a whole by the addition of the trope ‘Glory to thee, unbegotten Father; Glory to thee, begotten Son; Glory to thee, Holy Spirit, which proceeds from the Father and reposes in the Son; Glory to thee, Holy Trinity; Glory to thee, O God’. Kladas also composed a set of ‘kalophonic repetitions’ (perissai) for troparia and a number of kalophonic stichēra; the latter are not found in the akolouthiai manuscripts.
Melodies by Kladas show a marked preference for greater proportions and wider vocal ranges than chants by Koukouzeles and other 14th-century composers. His kalophonic melodies (see Kalophonic chant) are typical of the later period of that style, with chants extended by chains of melodic formulae and the repetition of melodic patterns, either at the same pitch or sequentially, for example, the descending line b–a b–a, a–g a–g, g–f g–f, f–e f–e etc. As a result, Kladas’s compositions appear more sequential in their melodic construction, less focussed vocally and more effusive than those of his predecessors.
K. Levy: ‘A Hymn for Thursday in Holy Week’, JAMS, xvi (1963), 127–75, esp. 155–7
M. Velimirović: ‘Byzantine Composers in MS. Athens 2406’, Essays Presented to Egon Wellesz, ed. J. Westrup (Oxford, 1966), 7–18
E.V. Williams: John Koukouzeles’ Reform of Byzantine Chanting for Great Vespers in the Fourteenth Century (diss., Yale U., 1968)
E. Trapp: Prosopograpisches Lexikon der Palaiologenzeit, v (Vienna, 1981), 184–5
D.E. Conomos, ed.: The Treatise of Manuel Chrysaphes, the Lampadarios, MMB, Corpus scriptorum, ii (1985), 45, 61, 67
A. Jakovljević: Diglōssē palaiographia kai melōdoi-hymnographoi tou kōdika tōn Athēnōn 928 [Old bilingual writings and hymn melodies in Athens codex 928] (Leukosia, 1988), 70–72
EDWARD V. WILLIAMS/CHRISTIAN TROELSGÅRD