Petros Peloponnesios ("Peter the Peloponnesian") or Peter the Lampadarios (c. 1735 – 1778) was a cantor, composer and teacher of Byzantine and Ottoman music. He served as second domestikos between his arrival about 1764 until the death of Ioannes Trapezountios, and it is assumed that he became lampadarios (leader of the left choir) between 1770 and 1778 at the Great Church of Constantinople, after Daniel the Protopsaltes became Archon Protopsaltes. Large parts of the monodic chant sung in several current traditions of Orthodox Chant are transcriptions of his compositions. He wrote these as a teacher of the "New Music School of the Patriarchate".
Life Petros was born at Tripolis, Rumelia Eyalet between 1730 and 1740.According to Gregorios Stathis (1971, 228) neither the year nor the place of his birth is known, except that the name "Peloponnesian" points at the Peloponnesian peninsula. According to Georgios Papadopoulos he was educated in monastic communities of Smyrna.Georgios Papadopoulos worked as a legal employee for the Patriarchate and his "Historical Survey of Byzantine Church Music" (1904) was one of the first publications about its singers until Chrysanthos (see Katy Romanou's article). John Plemmenos (2012, 163, note 9) quoted Hatzegiakoumes as evidence that Petros' teacher in Smyrna was Archdeacon Theodosios of Chios. In 1764 he came to Constantinople to study with Ioannes Trapezountios, the Archon Protopsaltes, while Daniel like Ioannes student of Panagiotes Halacoğlu was Lampadarios at the Great Church of Constantinople. Petros could serve there as second domestikos who was usually in charge to notate the versions sung by the cantors with the higher ranks. Between 1770 and 1778 he served as lampadarios (leader of the left choir), until he became ill.According to Chrysanthos (1832, p. XL, note β) Petros usurped the position of Iakovos, the first domestikos and student of Daniel who had become Protopsaltes as the follower of Ioannes, and he mentioned a rivalry between Iakovos and Petros and the latter's student Petros Byzantios. Chrysanthos himself was one of Petros Byzantios' students and clearly an advocate of his own school. The page of the Patriarchate (list of Archon Protopsaltes) dates Ioannes' death already to 1765, Manolis Hatzegiakoumes (see article about Ioannes) on the other hand to 1770 which seems more likely. Dimitri Conomos (New Grove) and Nina-Maria Wanek (2007, 91) date carefully "between June 1769 and November 1773" and the year 1778 is assumed to be the one of his death, since the epidemic is documented for this year and not earlier.
Together with Iakovos the Protopsaltes, the first domestikos between 1764 and 1776, he followed the first Archon Protopsaltes Daniel as official teacher of the New Music School of the Patriarchate in 1776. He also taught Petros Byzantios he chose as second domestikos after being announced as lampadarios, and composed many exercises () for his students. The term "" usually referred to the way to embellish the old stichera (sticheron kalophonikon, anagrammatismos), the old heirmoi (heirmos kalophonikos), certain theotokia or kontakia.See the manuscript GR-Ams Dossier 133 of the Archive Gregorios the Protopsaltes (Psachos Collection). Listen to Petros' Mathema for St Euphemia composed according to the sticheron in echos tritos (P. Tzanakos). Its method was usually taught by John Koukouzeles' «Mega Ison».According to Chrysanthos (1832, XLIIIf) Petros Peloponnesios did the exegesis of John Koukouzeles' mathema which was the fundament of the kalophonic method to sing the stichera. See also the manuscript GR-Ams Dossier 137, f. 1r of the Archive Gregorios the Protopsaltes (Psachos Collection). Chourmouzios transcribed it according to the New Method (Kyriazides 1896).
Within other musical traditions of the Ottoman Empire, Petros had a very exceptional knowledge of makamlar, probably even of Armenian chant, and even if he did not invent the new analytical way to use Middle Byzantine notation, he had the reputation to have a very profound understanding of music which enabled him to notate music after just have listened to it once, even music which was not composed according to the octoechos. He also had the reputation of being a rather intrigant musician. On the one hand, Hafiz invited him and were very eager to learn even makam melodies from him (probably rather a Greek way of developing them), on the other hand, he was called "Hırsız" (thief) and "Hoca Petros" (teacher), because he had many students coming from a different traditional background. Since he could easily memorise compositions and he liked to change them and perform them in such a convincing way, that some musicians asked for his "permission", before they published them.Georgios Papadopoulos (1904, 117–124) referred in his biography to Chysanthos and decorated it with a lot of anecdotes (for an English translation see the biography at the Patriarchal web site). Some of them are hardly credible like the one that he invented Hampartsoum notation and taught it to its real inventor, because he must have learnt it during an age between 8 and 10 years, when Petros died. It is rather a "thief story" about Petros (in case of the dervishes "thief" for a musician might have meant as an eccentric compliment), a compilation of different Ottoman anecdotes which had been now related to Petros and his time, but the historical circumstances speak rather against Papadopoulos' interpretation that Ottoman musicians did have such an attitude of creating original music, and copyright regulations did not even develop in Western Europe before the 19th century. When the dervish Rauf Yekta (1871–1935) found out, that Mevlevi compositions were performed by Maftirim brotherhoods in the Zulfaris Synagogue of Galata, he was delighted by the well-skilled performance and the ritual context within the divine service. It is well-known since the time of Dimitrie Cantemir that Phanariotes did have a profound interest in makam music and that they invented notation systems to record them. Petros was also strongly associated with the Mevlevi tekke in Peran.The Mevlevi dervishes of this tekke offered exceptional privileges to him (Plemmenos 2012), but not necessarily just because of certain intrigues he might have done on their behalf. But he was not the first Archon Protopsaltes of the Great Church who had an interest in makam music documented by neume transcriptions of makam music, already Panagiotes Halacoğlu who preceded Ioannes as Archon Protopsaltes (ca. 1726–1736), had it.The dates here refer to Manolis Hatzegiakoumes' biography of Panagiotes Halacoğlu. According to him Panagiotes who died in 1748, was already followed by Ioannes during the 1730s. Halacoğlu's student Kyrillos Marmarinos transcribed makamlar into Byzantine neumes and both wrote treatises about it.See the edition by Popescu-Judeţ and Şırlı (2000). Petros was in his forties, when he died during a plague in Constantinople which killed a third of its population.
Petros' contribution to church and makam music
His reputation―as an important teacher and composer―is mainly based on his vast contributions concerning the Heirmologion (Katavaseion or Heirmologion argon, printed the first time in transcription in 1825) and the short or simple Sticherarion (Doxastarion syntomon, printed the first time in transcription in 1820).Emmanouil Giannopoulos (2015) proved that parts of Petros' Heirmologion were made of compositions by Balasios the Priest, where Petros corrected the accentuation according to the text. He also mentioned that large parts of Petros' works are based on Daniel's tradition of the , while Daniel partly used compositions which were identical with Kyrillos Marmarinos', the student of Panagiotes Halacoğlu who often sang with Daniel in the Patriarchal church of St George. These innovations of Orthodox chant had been written during his last years and parts of it were likely continued by his second domestikos Petros Byzantios who followed him as lampadarios, but also as teacher at the New Music School of the Patriarchate. According to Chrysanthos, Petros Peloponnesios' realisations for the Anthology of the Divine Liturgies (like the Papadic cherubikon, and koinonikon cycles) were already written, while he was still second domestikos and not supposed to contribute with own compositions.Already Balasios Hiereos wrote down composed in different lengths. Chrysanthos (1832, p. XL, note β) mentioned that the koinonika cycle by Daniel was doubled, sometimes even tripled by the young Petros. Petros composed two cycles of for the weekdays, unlike other composers who composed in all eight echoi, his cycles follow the order of the weekly koinonika ( for Monday, for Tuesday, for Wednesday, for Thursday, and for Friday). Later as lampadarios, Petros did not simply transcribe and contribute to the new created by his masters Ioannes and Daniel, he also studied the Byzantine tradition as well as innovative Protopsaltes of the Ottoman period like Petros Bereketis.Petros' reception of the traditional psaltic art (Ioannes Glykys, John Koukouzeles, John Kladas) has been documented in the Ms. E 103 (Mount Athos, Mone Koutloumousiou), while Petros Bereketis whose works appeared very popular in many collections, was never directly associated to the Patriarchate. Although it is not clear, whether Georgios Papadopoulos was right that Petros stole makam music, since the author rather compiled earlier Ottoman anecdotes in his biography of Petros, the latter had a certain reputation to usurp the contribution to the by other composers like Ioannes the Protopsaltes and Daniel the Protopsaltes as his own work, especially of those he was charged to transcribe as a second domestikos.According to Achilleas Chaldaiakis (2010, 47) the Anastasimarion syntomon in a heirmologic melos, conserved in the Xeropotamou Monastery as Ms. 374, was created by Daniel the Protopsaltes, and 1905 published together with Petros' Anastasimatarion neon in print, but some manuscripts like to ascribe it wrongly to Petros (Naoussa, Pontic National Library, Ms. Sigalas 52), while the print edition ascribes it to Ioannes the Protopsaltes who initiated the project in the second generation. Sometimes he simply pointed at the project he shared with Daniel the Protopsaltes and other students of Ioannes. He did not write down the background of a traditional melos as was the traditional synoptic use of notation, but also details of a personal realisation like in case of the doxastikon of Kassia's troparion, which he specified "in imitation of Daniel the Protopsaltes".