In the Laura Monastery on the Holy Mountain (Eastern Greece), Jan Kukuzeli, an outstanding figure of Byzantine musical culture, singer, composer and music theorist, passed away. He was born in Durrës, around the year 1280. Since childhood, he attracted attention for his beautiful voice. He was admitted to the school of the Imperial Palace in Constantinople, where he stood out as the most capable and was nicknamed “the angel” and “the master”. He was the leader of the singers and master of the imperial chapel, he made a name for himself as the greatest singer and musician of Constantinople in his time. He then settled in the Laura Monastery on the Holy Mountain, where he created the system of musical writing, called the Kukuzelic script, which is presented as the third stage of Byzantine semiography. He elaborated this system in a special treatise entitled “The beginning of psaltic signs compiled and elaborated by master Jan Kukuzeli”. His musical notation was used for several centuries in church music. Jan Kukuzeli was also a lecturer, poet and hymnographer. Some of his main creations are the hymns “Aniksandri”, “Song of the Cherubim”, “Psalm 107”, etc. He also wrote important didactic works for the history of music. (In the photo: Jan Kukuzeli)
Text: Albanian encyclopedic dictionary – Vol. 2 , Academy of Sciences of Albania, “Kristalina-KH”, Tirana, 2008, page 1400.
Photo: © https://sq.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Kukuzeli
Graphic processing: AHCF
