Lycourgos Angelopoulos

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Lycourgos Angelopoulos · Lykourgos Angelopoulos was a Greek singer of Byzantine church music. He was born in 1941 in Pyrgos in the Peloponnese and studied Byzantine music at the School of National Music with the musicologist Simon Karas, alongside law at the University of Athens. He became first cantor at the Church of Saint Irene in Athens, founded the Greek Byzantine Choir and taught at conservatories in the city. In 1994 Patriarch Bartholomew I appointed him first chanter of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Music and breakthrough

Byzantine music is monophonic. A soloist or a choir sings the melody above a long, sustained note, the ison. The melodies follow fixed modes and are full of ornaments. Angelopoulos published editions of his own using signs from the late Byzantine notation and followed Karas's innovations in his performances. His albums, such as The Byzantine Maestro from 1995 and Hymns from the Holy Mount Athos from 2003, present psalms and hymns from that tradition.

Influence

He also became known outside Greece. He contributed to Marcel Pérès's research in France into early Western chant and its connection with Byzantine chant, and with Ensemble Organum he recorded Byzantine, Old Roman and Ambrosian chants. In this way he linked a centuries-old tradition of church singing with the modern world of early music. He died in 2014.

Listening

Discography

Studio albums

• 1995The Byzantine Maestro : Mathimata - Psalms, Sticheron, Kratima
• 2003Hymny ze Świętej Góry Atos / Hymns from the Holy Mount Athos