Abstract
The Library of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest preserves an unusual printing from the first half of the 19th century, which contains Byzantine musical repertories in Greek, notated with an alternative semiography to the Chrysanthine one. The chant anthology is a collection of hymns for Vespers, Orthros, and the Divine Liturgy, printed in Bucharest in 1832 by Petros Manouil Ephesios (†1840) with his own musical notation, based on an alphabetic system capable of accurately capturing the parameters of vocal interpretation: melody, dynamics, agogic, and ornamentation. The aim of this article is to explore the peculiarities of the alphabetic notation developed by the Constantinopolitan teacher and to study the collection of hymns from the point of view of its arrangement and the possibilities of deciphering its musical content. Although Petros Ephesios’ system was never widely  adopted, being considered an inappropriate innovation for the representation of the traditional music of the Orthodox Church, his semiographic model successfully records various options for the oral decoding of the most common musical formulas.

Keywords: Petros Ephesios, alphabetic notation, alternative semiographic systems.

About the author
Cătălin Cernătescu is a researcher at the National University of Music in Bucharest and a probationary member of the Union of Composers and Musicologists of Romania. Cernătescu specializes in alternative notation systems for church music and composition. Between 2012 and 2023, he received significant awards at the Festival-Contest of Church Music "Praise the Lord!", organized by the Romanian Patriarchate.
As an editor, co-editor, and sole author, Cătălin Cernătescu has published 15 volumes on Byzantine music and musicology. These works include studies on sacred chant, personal compositions, and re-editions of iconic chant collections by Dionysios Photeinos, Petros Ephesios, Macarie the Hieromonk, and Anton Pann. Since January 2025, Cernătescu has been coordinating the postgraduate course on Byzantine music writing using the Melodos program, organized by the National University of Music in Bucharest.

DOI: 10.47809/MP.2024.39.02.02

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