(b Constantinople, ?1615; d ?1700). Romaic (Greek) composer and patriarchal official. Born into a family of Peloponnesian origin, he received his general education at the Patriarchal Academy under Theophilos Korydalleus. Together with Kosmas Makedonos he was taught Byzantine chant by Germanos of New Patras, for whom he composed an acclamation. In a pre-1660 manuscript Balasios refers to himself as a domestikos, which therefore places him among the musicians of the patriarchal cathedral at the time Panagiotes the New Chrysaphes was prōtopsaltēs. After ordination to the priesthood he continued to serve the Ecumenical Patriarchate in an impressive series of liturgical and administrative posts (c1663–1700), but in musical manuscripts he is customarily described as ‘nomophylax’, a patriarchal title that he appears to have held from about 1680.
As a composer Balasios continued the renewal of the received medieval chant repertories pursued by Panagiotes and Germanos, complementing their ‘beautified’ stichēraria with a new edition of the Heirmologion and a complete series of 8 modally ordered Great Doxologies, the first such set ever written. Other chants for the Divine Office include a modally ordered series of eight kekragaria (Psalm cxl.1–2) for Hesperinos, and, for Orthros, eight Magnificat verses for the 9th ode of the kanon. He composed numerous works for the Byzantine eucharistic liturgies, including two sets of eight Cherubic Hymns, modally ordered series of 8 communion verses for Sundays, and two dynamis (codas to the Trisagia) for the feasts of the Holy Cross and of the Lord (the latter ed. Phōkaeus, 1834). He also contributed to the post-Byzantine repertories of kalophonic heirmoi and other paraliturgical chants. A number of his chants, transcribed by Gregorios the Protopsaltes, appear in Chrysanthine editions (see bibliography). A Turkish song attributed to Balasios in GR-ATSiviron 999 (f.389r) places him at the head of a distinguished series of Romaic church musicians who participated in the ‘external’ tradition of Ottoman secular music. (For a fuller list of works see Stathēs, 1995.)
Balasios was the first to produce realizations (exēgēseis) of pre-existing chants, featuring the transcription into intervallic neumes of melismas hitherto notated in shorthand with stereotyped melodic formulae (theseis). These exēgēseis, which mark the beginnings of a movement towards notational precision in florid repertories, also attest the existence in the later 17th century of a stenographic interpretation for Byzantine neumes. Arvanitis, however, has argued persuasively for a comparatively literal realization of Balasios's Heirmologion, an influential volume that remained in use until its replacement by that of Petros Peloponnesios.
T. Phōkaeus, ed.: Tameion anthologias [Treasury of an anthology] (Constantinople, 1834), ii, 124–6 [transcr. Gregorios the Protopsaltes]
T. Phōkaeus: , ed. Heirmologion kalophōnikon (Constantinople, 1835), 3–18, 51–2, 59–64, 79–81, 109–10, 124–6, 141–2, 159–66 [transcr. Gregorios the Protopsaltes]
I. Lampadarios and Stephanos the First Domestikos, eds.: Pandektē (Constantinople, 1850–51), i, 149–83; iii, 21–33, 107–18, 152–77, 229–43, 283–93, 306–40; iv, 50–52 [transcr. Gregorios the Protopsaltes]
S.I. Karas: ‘Hē orthē hermēneia kai metagraphē tōn byzantinōn mousikōn cheirographōn’ [The correct interpretation and transcription of Byzantine musical MSS], Hellēnika, ix (1955), 140–49 [repr., with an afterword, Athens, 1990]
G.T. Stathēs: Ta cheirographa byzantinēs mousikēs: Hagion Oros [The MSS of Byzantine Music: Holy Mountain] (Athens, 1975–93)
G.T. Stathēs: Hē dekapentasyllabos hymnographia en tē byzantinē melopoiïa [15-syllable hymnography in Byzantine composition] (Athens, 1977) [with Fr. summary]
M. Chatzēgiakoumēs: Cheirographa ekklēsiastikēs mousikēs (1453–1820) [MSS of ecclesiastical music] (Athens, 1980)
G.T. Stathis: ‘The “Abridgements” of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Compositions’, Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen-Age grec et latin, no.44 (1983), 16–38
A. Şirli: The Anastasimatarion: the Thematic Repertory of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Musical Manuscripts (the 14th-19th centuries), i (Bucharest, 1986)
D. Conomos: ‘Sacred Music in the Post-Byzantine Era’, The Byzantine Legacy in Eastern Europe, ed. L. Clucas (Boulder, CO, 1988), 83–105 [based on Chatzēgiakoumēs, 1980]
I. Arvanitis: ‘A Way to the Transcription of Byzantine Chant by Means of Written and Oral Tradition’, Byzantine Chant: Athens 1993, 123–41
G.T. Stathēs: ‘Balasēs hiereūs kai nomophylax’ [Balasios the Priest and Nomophylax], Melourgoi tou iz aiōna [Composers of the 17th century], ed. E. Spanopoulou (Athens, 1995), 33–41
Polychronismos to the Ecumenical Patriarch by Balasios the Priest, Greek Byzantine Choir, dir. L. Angelopoulos, CD ELBUC 33 (1997)
ALEXANDER LINGAS