(b c1730; d Constantinople, 1778). Greek chanter, composer and teacher of Byzantine music. He received his first music lessons in monastic communities in Smyrna (Papadopoulos). In 1764 he travelled to Constantinople, where he became associated with the well-known prōtopsaltēs of Hagia Sophia, Joannes Trapezountios, with whom he chanted as second domestikos in the right choir. He held this office until his promotion to lampadarios (leader of the left choir) between 1769 and 1773. He was made an instructor in the second patriarchal school of music, founded in 1776, and from this time his reputation as an important teacher and composer was established. It is reported that he was also a specialist in Armenian and Turkish music and that he composed melodies based on the oriental maqāmāt.
Petros contributed a number of original compositions to the Offices and liturgies of the Greek Church, including complete sets of Cheroubic Hymns and communion chants in all eight modes, as well as music for funerals, ordinations, baptisms, weddings etc. In addition, he composed exercises and lessons for students of chant. Although his life as a composer was short (he died prematurely when a plague swept Constantinople in 1778), he proved to be the most prolific writer of the post-Byzantine period and his works are available in many musical anthologies from the 18th and 19th centuries.
Apart from original compositions, Petros produced many ‘interpretations’ of older chant melodies, writing a full realization (exēgēsis) of the ornamental signs in the neumatic line of the earlier manuscripts. This system was further developed by Petros Byzantios, his pupil, and subsequently employed by the three reformers of Byzantine notation, Chrysanthos of Madytos, Gregorios the Protopsaltes and Chourmouzios the Archivist. One manuscript in particular, GR-ATS ε 103 (late 18th-century), contains Petros's interpretations of works by the 14th-century musicians Joannes Glykys and Joannes Koukouzeles.
Petros Peloponnesios was the first to introduce the syntomon (‘quick’) melodies into the liturgical anthologies. These were designed for ordinary services requiring simple, unembellished chants. The revisions he made between 1765 and 1775 of virtually all the earlier music books (anastasimatarion, heirmologion and doxastarion) quickly gained a wide reputation; they gradually replaced the older editions and settings of Panagiotes the New Chrysaphes, Balasios and Germanos of New Patras, and are still predominant within the Greek chant repertory. Continuing the work of Joannes Trapezountios, Petros developed a simpler, more analytical system of musical writing which contributed to the formulation that took place in the early 19th century.
FétisB
G.I. Papadopoulos: Symbolai eis tēn historian tēs par’ hēmin ekklēsiastikēs mousikēs [Contribution to the history of our ecclesiastical music] (Athens, 1890/R), 318–24
K.A. Psachos: Hē parasēmantikē tēs byzantinēs mousikēs [The notation of Byzantine music] (Athens, 1917, 2/1978)
S. Karas: Hē byzantinē mousikē sēmeiographeia [Byzantine musical semiography] (Athens, 1933)
H.J.W. Tillyard: ‘Byzantine Music at the End of the Middle Ages’, Laudate, xi (1933), 141–51
D. Stefanović and M. Velimirović: ‘Peter Lampadarios and Metropolitan Serafim of Bosnia’, Studies in Eastern Chant, i, ed. M. Velimirović (London, 1966), 67–88
P. Georgiou: ‘Petros ho Peloponnēsios’, Thrēskeutikē kai ēthikē enkyklopaideia [Encyclopedia of religion and ethics], x (Athens, 1967), 318–24
G. Stathēs: ‘I synchysē tōn triōn Petrōn’ [The confusion of the three Peters], Byzantina, iii (1971), 213–51
C.G. Patrinelis: ‘Protopsaltai, Lampadarii and Domestikoi of the Great Church during the Post-Byzantine Period (1453–1821)’, Studies in Eastern Chant, iii, ed. M. Velimirović (London, 1973), 141–70
D.E. Conomos: ‘Sacred Music in the post-Byzantine Era’, The Byzantine Legacy in Eastern Europe, ed. L. Clucas (New York, 1988), 83–105
For further bibliography see Byzantine chant.
DIMITRI CONOMOS