Simon Karas (3 June 1905 – 26 January 1999) was a

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

musicologist Musicology (from Greek μουσική ''mousikē'' 'music' and -λογια ''-logia'', 'domain of study') is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some mu ...

, who specialized in

Byzantine music Byzantine music (Greek: Βυζαντινή μουσική) is the music of the Byzantine Empire. Originally it consisted of songs and hymns composed to Greek texts used for courtly ceremonials, during festivals, or as paraliturgical and liturgical ...

tradition. Simon Karas studied

paleography Palaeography ( UK) or paleography ( US; ultimately from grc-gre, , ''palaiós'', "old", and , ''gráphein'', "to write") is the study of historic writing systems and the deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysi ...

of Byzantine musical notation, was active in collecting and preserving ancient musical manuscripts, collected performances of

Greek folk songs Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

and of Byzantine chant from different regions, in most cases writing them down in Byzantine notation, further altered and modified by him, to better match his needs. He also wrote his own music, and performed himself as a chanter or singer. The figure of Simon Karas is highly controversial, and it strongly divides Byzantine music scholars and performers into two camps: one supporting, and one opposing his philosophy and his works. His opponents' chief argument is that some works and musical experiments of Simon Karas are highly non-traditional, at the edge of being

heretical Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. The term is usually used in reference to violations of important religi ...

, at least from their point of view.

Revisionism

Simon Karas proposed several revisions to the standard practice of contemporary Byzantine church singing. While these revisions were at least to some extent accepted by some groups of Byzantine chanters, they are at the same time furiously rejected by some other chanters. This practical division constitutes the main part of the controversy around Karas' name and heritage.

Notation

In his works, Simon Karas has observed that in many cases the qualitative Byzantine

neume A neume (; sometimes spelled neum) is the basic element of Western and Eastern systems of musical notation prior to the invention of five-line staff notation. The earliest neumes were inflective marks that indicated the general shape but not ne ...

s can be read (interpreted) in several different ways, and it is the experience of the chanter, and, to some extent, his personal choice that determine, what particular interpretation will be used in practice in each particular case. For example, there are several alternative interpretations for a combination of neumes "''a kentemata above an oligon above a psefiston''", and although in practice some readings of this combination can be more frequent than the others, theoretically, all these interpretations would be equally valid. Simon Karas proposed to decrease this ambiguity by re-introducing some of the old (paleographic) qualitative sings, to differentiate between different possible embellishments.

Modes interpretation

Karas also attempted to revise the classification of

musical mode In music theory, the term mode or ''modus'' is used in a number of distinct senses, depending on context. Its most common use may be described as a type of musical scale coupled with a set of characteristic melodic and harmonic behaviors. It ...

s, used by church chanters and choirs, from a musicological point of view, and not necessarily in line with the traditional 8-modes classification system. He also tried to guess and reconstruct the relations and history of these modes and scales, as well as regularities of their internal interval structure.

Selected works

* Method of Greek Music (a series of books) * Ioannis Maistor Koukouzelis and his era * Engomia

Most prominent followers

Among the chanters and choirs embracing the theories and practical proposals of Simon Karas at least to some degree are: *

Cappella Romana Cappella Romana is a vocal ensemble founded in 1991 in Portland, Oregon. Its name, meaning "Roman Chapel", refers to the medieval Greek concept of the Roman oikoumene (inhabited world), which embraced Rome and Western Europe, as well as the Byzanti ...

Lycourgos Angelopoulos Lykourgos Angelopoulos ( el, Λυκούργος Αγγελόπουλος; 1941 – 18 May 2014) was a Greek chanter. He was professor at the School of Byzantine Chant at the Conservatory of Athens, the founder and director of the Greek Byzant ...

(and the current practice of the Greek Byzantine Choir in general) *

Vatopedi The Holy and Great Monastery of Vatopedi ( el, Βατοπέδι, ) is an Eastern Orthodox monastery on Mount Athos, Greece. The monastery was expanded several times during its history, particularly during the Byzantine period and in the 18th an ...

monastery choir

References

External links

Analytical information about Simon Karas, his life and work
(in Greek)

www.simonkaras.gr Center for Research and Promotion of National and Greek Music - Archives of Simon and Aggeliki Kara
{{DEFAULTSORT:Karas, Simon 1905 births 1999 deaths Greek musicologists Performers of Byzantine music 20th-century musicologists People from Elis