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Simon Karas (
Lepreo Lepreo (, before 1916: Στροβίτζι - ''Strovitzi'') is a village and a community in the municipality of Zacharo, Elis, Greece. The community includes the small villages Agrapidia, Drakos, Panagies, Revelaiika and Skoupas. It is situated on a ...
,21 May 1903 –
Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...
, 26 January 1999) was a
Greek Greek may refer to: 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 of all kno ...
musicologist Musicology is the academic, research-based study of music, as opposed to musical composition or performance. Musicology research combines and intersects with many fields, including psychology, sociology, acoustics, neurology, natural sciences, f ...
, who specialized in
Byzantine music Byzantine music () originally consisted of the songs and hymns composed for the courtly and religious ceremonial of the Byzantine Empire and continued, after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, in the traditions of the sung Byzantine chant of East ...
tradition. Simon Karas was born in
Lepreo Lepreo (, before 1916: Στροβίτζι - ''Strovitzi'') is a village and a community in the municipality of Zacharo, Elis, Greece. The community includes the small villages Agrapidia, Drakos, Panagies, Revelaiika and Skoupas. It is situated on a ...
,
Zacharo Zacharo () is a town and municipality in western Peloponnese, Greece. Administratively, it belongs to the regional unit of Elis (regional unit), Elis in West Greece. Zacharo is situated on the coast of the Gulf of Kyparissia, a part of the Ionian S ...
municipality,
Elis Elis also known as Ellis or Ilia (, ''Eleia'') is a historic region in the western part of the Peloponnese peninsula of Greece. It is administered as a regional unit of the modern region of Western Greece. Its capital is Pyrgos. Until 2011 it ...
. He studied
paleography Palaeography (American and British English spelling differences#ae and oe, UK) or paleography (American and British English spelling differences#ae and oe, US) (ultimately from , , 'old', and , , 'to write') is the study and academic disciplin ...
of Byzantine musical notation, was active in collecting and preserving ancient musical manuscripts, collected performances of Greek folk songs 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, particularly the accepted beliefs or religious law of a religious organization. A heretic is a proponent of heresy. Heresy in Christianity, Judai ...
, 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 some Eastern systems of musical notation prior to the invention of five-line staff (music), staff notation. The earliest neumes were inflective marks that indicated the gener ...
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 signs, 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 * Lycourgos Angelopoulos (and the current practice of the Greek Byzantine Choir in general) *
Vatopedi The Holy and Great Monastery of Vatopedi (, ) is an Eastern Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodox monastery on Mount Athos, Greece. The monastery was expanded several times during its history, particularly during the Byzantine period and in the 18t ...
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 People from Zacharo Greek musicologists Performers of Byzantine music 20th-century musicologists