Koukouzelis is one of the most celebrated names in the history of Greek music, and is, indeed, a Saint of the Orthodox Church (The controversy concerning whether Koukouzelis was of Bulgarian origin is dealt with in resumé in Angelopoulos’s notes to disc 5). He was not only a composer but a theorist and maistor (master of music) at the imperial palace in Constantinople. His music is characterized by the new “kalophonic” style, highly melismatic and protracted. It was at this time too that the kratime appeared. These are nonsense syllables (“te-ri-rem”, “me-ne-na”, etc.) which are sung instead of a poetical text and which were later defended as being an expression of the incomprehensibility of the Godhead, a kind of angelic song. One astonishing example by Koukouzelis, a kratima in the fourth plagal mode, lasts for more than thirty minutes [It has been recorded by Angelopoulos, disc 5].

The modern repertoire of Greek chant owes a great deal to Petros Lampadarios (c.1730-1777), who as well as composing himself, undertook the transcription of nearly all of the music for the Church offices, ie, the oral tradition as he knew it [Disc 3]. And in spite of the printed books of the Chrysanthine reform, chant today in Greek churches continues to be subject to local variation and to be very much a part of oral tradition [Disc 6 provides a magnificent glimpse of the celebration of the Easter Vigil and other Holy Week services at the Xenophontos Monastery on Mount Athos; disc 9 is a recent compilation of dazzlingly beautiful recordings also from the Holy Mountain. Discs 20-27 contain music from a number of non-Greek traditions, either recordings of live celebrations or studio recordings made by Soeur Marie Keyrouz, and which would ideally require a separate article all to themselves. Disc 23, entitled Chant Byzantin, is in fact sung principally in Arabic; 21 and 22 are deeply impressive anthologies of live recordings of Syriac chant.]