Giannopoulos Emmanouil, New elements concerning the musical work of Meletios-Matthaios from Ephesos, monk in Vatopedi monastery (1st half of the 19th century)
Τhe monk Meletios-Matthaios (1774-1849), born in Ephesos and lived for many years in the monastery of Vatopedi-Mount Athos, is an outstanding figure in the Athonite monasticism during the first half of the 19th century. It is well known that Matthaios was particularly distinguished for his musical work, which is preserved in more than 45 manuscripts written by his own hands and in many other volumes. His work consists of numerous new compositions, the supplementation of some older musical pieces, the “exigisis”-interpretation (or transcription) of many compositions written in the older musical notation, into the “New Method” of analytical notation (after AD 1815), his musical teaching and his activity as a skillful scribe of beautiful and useful musical volumes. Matthaios’ autographs preserved in many collections in Greece (Holy Mountain, Athens, Greveniti-Epirus, Thessaloniki, Santorini Island), Cyprus, Romania, Bulgaria. In 1996 professor Grigorios Stathis had made a preliminary research and then presented Matthaios’ figure in a lecture in Athens (yet unpublished). I also presented many new information about his oevre in a paper of mine in 2005, while in December 2019 the monastery of Vatopedi organized in Athens an musicological event about his work and published a volume concerning his musical activities and some others which contain many of his compositions. However, during the last years I have discovered and consulted some additional psaltic manuscripts written by him which contain interesting musical compositions. In this paper I present these manuscripts and comment their musical content. More specifically, I have found out that Matthaios wrote the manuscripts Greveniti- collection of Eustathios Skarpas 1394 (AD 1809) which contains the Heirmologion composed by Petros lampadarios from Peloponnesos (†1778) and some other melodies, Vatopedi monastery 1253 (the first part of the volume which contains the Anastasimatarion, the eleven heothina idiomela and the eight syllabic doxologies composed by the same Petros), Ecclesiastical Museum of Sofia 877 (a musical Anthology in a rather bad condition which contains compositions of Constantinopolitan musicians), Archdiocese of Cyprus 42, Stauropoleos monastery (Bucharest) 53 (part), Patriarcal Foundation for Patristic Studies (Thessaloniki) 11 (a very interesting volume in which Matthaios recorded also some of his compositions), Simon Karas’ collection (Athens) 97, 136 and 144 (part), Prof. Elias monastery (Santorini Island) 37 (part). Matthaios also wrote a musical manuscript which has been sold in an auction in Athens (17-3-2014). In this last volume declares that he had been taught the way the notorious Protopsaltes of the Ecumenical Patriarchate Petros Vyzantios (†1808) used to chant, by his teacher Ioannikios, who was a student of Petros. Each of these “new findings” of Matthaios’ autographs increase our knowledge about his musical works and contribute to a clearer image of the evolution of the Psaltic Art in this period.
Matthaios’ compositions had a wide dissemination among the musicians of Mount Athos and elsewhere, copied in many other volumes and some of them published in printed musical books. While we study his own volumes and also musical manuscripts written by other chanters, we can ascertain how popular his melodies were, especially in the Services and vigils of the monasteries of Mount Athos. Matthaios’ life and musical work is extremely important for the history, evolution, morphology and the living chanting tradition of the Psaltic Art.
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