Dionysios Foteinos: a Greek melourgos in Romania. Nektarios Vlachos: a Romanian melourgos on Mount Athos.Their enchanted Doxologies
Dionysios Foteinos: a Greek melourgos in Romania. Nektarios Vlachos: a Romanian melourgos on Mount Athos.Their enchanted Doxologies

Summary/Abstract: After the first blossom period of Psaltic art during the post-Byzantineperiod, the melopoitiko kind of Doxologies presents great development and wideacceptance. Certainly, such rise does not appear suddenly but draws its affect fromthe famous 17th century group of four: Balasios the priest, Petros Bereketes,Panagiotis Chrysafis the new and Germanos of New Patras. Along with these, asignificant number of prominent musicians - melourgoi deliver a series ofDoxologies composed in all eight echoi (modes). Daniel Protopsaltes, PetrosLambadarios, Iakovos Protopsaltes and Petros Byzantios are some of the lastcomposers – melourgoi of Doxologies of the period between 18th and 19th centuries.To them we owe on one hand the creation and recording on musical manuscripts ofthe so-called slow (αργή) and brief (σύντομη) tradition on psaltic compositionsaccording to the new kind of melopeoia and on the other the introduction of thisPsaltic tradition to the Danubian Principalities and Black Sea territories at thisperiod.Dionisios Fotinos, a great Greek scholar, poet, painter, writer, famous Psalt(chanter) and melourgos (composer) follower of the Psaltic tradition ofConstantinople (as a student of Iakovos Protopsaltes and Petros Byzantios) andIeromonachos Nektarios Prodromitis Vlachos, experienced melourgos who camefrom Wallachia in his way to Mount Athos, they both constitute the link to thecontinuity of the Psaltic tradition at Mount Athos and the Danubian Principalities.Two musical manuscripts at the Library of the Romanian Academy inBucharest as well as one at the University of Thessaloniki and the printed version ofChristodoulos Georgiades Kessaniaios (1856), preserve the Doxologies of DionisiosFotinos. On the other hand, the Doxologies of Nektarios Vlachos, both his own aswell as his adaptations of Doxologies of Greek melourgoi in the Romanianlanguage, are displayed in many Mount Athos musical manuscripts.

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