Some Remarks on the Art of Exegesis in the Kalophonic Style

Abstract

The present article focuses on the technique and art of the so-called exegesis, the traditional interpretation of the kalophonic piece Ἀπόλαυε τῶν θαυμάτων τὰς ἰάσεις – Enjoy, seing the miraculous healings, in honor of St Demetrios, by St John Koukouzeles, in the first authentic mode. It is based on the manuscripts Zakynthos 7, Metochion Panagiou Taphou 728, and three Anthologia from the Music School of the Putna Monastery, and highlights several exegetical procedures through microsyntactical and generative analyses of chosen passages of the piece. The profile of the kalophonic melody revealed through the slow exegesis is mainly characterized by stepwise up-and-down movements of the voice around and between the structural notes, with few skips only, and in a perfect balance with the poetical text, which emerges for the singer and the listener syllable by syllable, carried on a continuous melodic flow, a sort of Byzantine ‘unendliche Melodie’.