Historical chant studies often require more specialised descriptions of musical repertories and notation types than is offered by general manuscript catalogues. Within the discipline of Byzantine chant, the first particular catalogue of this kind was probably the Introduction à la paléographie musicale byzantine: catalogue des manuscrits de musique byzantine de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris et des bibliothèques publiques de France by Amédée Gastoué (Paris, 1907). It was soon followed by Jean-Baptiste Thibaut's Monuments de la notation ekphonétique et hagiopolite de l'Église Grecque: exposé documentaire des manuscrits de Jérusalem, du Sinaï et de l'Athos conservés à la Bibliothèque Impériale de Saint-Pétersbourg (St Petersburg, 1913). Such specialised and illuminated catalogues eventually became a great stimulus for the study of Byzantine chant. They might be considered the first step in the process to make the sources of Byzantine chant more easily accessible and as such serve as a prelude to the establishment of the Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae in 1931. In subsequent years, Lorenzo Tardo compiled shorter lists and descriptions of the Byzantine musical manuscripts in the Vatican library, the library of the Badia Greca of Grottaferrata, and the University Library of Messina.Footnote ¹ In 1963 Dimitrie Stefanović and Nigel Wilson published a catalogue of Manuscripts of Byzantine Chant in Oxford, but since 1975 catalogues of Byzantine chant manuscripts from specific collections or regions have begun to appear more frequently:Footnote ²

• Grigorios Stathis, Τὰ χειρόγραϕα βυζαντινῆς µουσικῆς, Ἅγιον Ὄρος. Κατάλογος περιγραϕικός [Byzantine Musical Manuscripts of Mount Athos], 3 vols. (Athens, 1975–93).

• Manolis Chatzigiakoumis, Μουσικὰ χειρόγραϕα Τουρκοκρατίας (1453–1832) [Musical Manuscripts of the Turkish Domination] (Athens, 1975), containing dated manuscripts from several collections in Greece, and its illustrated companion volume Χειρόγραϕα ἐκκλησιαστικῆς µουσικῆς, 1453–1820 [Manuscripts of Greek Church Music] (Athens, 1980).

• Bjarne Schartau, ‘Manuscripts of Byzantine Music in Denmark’, Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen Âge Grec et Latin 48 (1984), 15–104.

• Andreas Jakovljević, Catalogue of Byzantine Chant Manuscripts in the Monastic and Episcopal Libraries of Cyprus (Nicosia, 1990).

• Evgeny V. Gertsman, Grecheskie muzykal'nye rukopisi Peterburga: katalog (Manuscripta graeca musica petropolitana: catalogus), 2 vols. (St Petersburg, 1996–99).

• Grigorios Stathis, Τὰ χειρόγραϕα βυζαντινῆς µουσικῆς, Mετέωρα. Κατάλογος περιγραϕικός [Byzantine Musical Manuscripts of Meteora] (Athens, 2005).

• Ozana Alexandrescu, Catlogul manuscriselor muzicale de tradiţie bizantină din secolul al xvii-lea [Catalogue of Seventeenth-Century Musical Manuscripts in Romania] (Bucharest, 2005).

• Achilleas Chaldaiakis, Τὰ χειρόγραϕα βυζαντινῆς µουσικῆς, Νησιωτικὴ Ἑλλάς: Ὕδρα. Κατάλογος περιγραϕικός [Byzantine Musical Manuscripts: The Greek Islands. 1: Hydra] (Athens, 2005).

• Emmanouil Giannopoulos, Τὰ χειρόγραϕα ψαλτικῆς τέχνης τῆς νήσου Ἄνδρου. Ἀναλυτικὸς περιγραϕκὸς κατάλογος [Manuscripts of the Psaltic Art in Andros: An Analytical and Descriptive Catalogue] (Andros, 2005).

• Dimitri Balageorgos and Flora Kritikou, Τὰ χειρόγραϕα βυζαντινῆς µουσικῆς, Σινᾶ. Κατάλογος περιγραϕικός [Byzantine Musical Manuscripts: Sinai, vol. I– ] (Athens, 2008–).

• Emmanouil Giannopoulos, Τὰ χειρόγραϕα βυζαντινῆς µουσικῆς, Ἀγγλία. Κατάλογος περιγραϕικός [Byzantine Musical Manuscripts in England] (Athens, 2008).

Diane Touliatos-Miles's descriptive catalogue of the musical manuscripts in the National Library of Greece is the newest addition to this list of publications. The collection is very important in both size and content, and a catalogue of it has long been a desideratum. Touliatos-Miles mentions in her foreword that the first major catalogue of the library, published by Ioannes and Alkibiades Sakkelion in 1892 (covering MSS 1–1856), ‘is not a catalogue in the true sense of the word but rather a checklist with broad descriptive statements (or, at best, short phrases) of varying length’, which is now ‘Because of omissions … (and the sometimes mistaken sources they cite) and because of the new acquisitions since 1892 … incomplete, outdated and of limited usefulness’ (p. 1). The large number of later accessions consists primarily of private donations and manuscripts from monastic libraries and other institutions in Northern Greece. MSS 1857–2500 were later described in detail by Linos and Maria Polites,Footnote ³ while preliminary descriptions of the remainder of the collection, MSS 2501–3121, have been accessible only in the library itself, through a set of notebooks prepared by students of Linos Polites, which have been at Touliatos-Miles's disposal during her work on the catalogue.

The author offers the following classes of information for each manuscript: signature (such as EBE 883 for Ethnike Bibliotheke tes Hellados manuscript no. 883), a general classification of the manuscript (in Greek, with a transliteration), ‘type of paper’, measurements, number of folios (including information on extra leaves and uneven bindings), notational type, date, provenance (if known), an analytical index of the manuscript contents (rendition of the most important rubrics, generally in the orthography of the manuscript, or brief English descriptions), notes, and a select bibliography.

The catalogue includes descriptions of 242 manuscripts, including both notated chant manuscripts and treatises on Byzantine chant with musical examples in neumes.Footnote ⁴ The inclusion of EBE 1062 and 1081 among these musical manuscripts is surprising, since they are Byzantine grammatical commentaries on ancient Greek (e.g. on Pindar's metrics) and Christian school texts, and contain no musical notation. Touliatos-Miles refers to the analysis of the ancient, quantitative metres, which she sees as ‘equally applicable to the musical rhythms of Byzantine hymnography’ (p. 5). Further, is it not clear to me why only sixteen lectionaries with ekphonetic notation are chosen for description, while some forty others, primarily from the older parts of the collection, are passed by in silence.Footnote ⁵

The general classification of the manuscripts is not without problems. Under the heading ‘Sticherarion’ one finds both manuscripts of the traditional sticherarion, of the embellished, kalophonic sticherarion of the late and post-Byzantine era, and of the seventeenth-century version by Germanos of New Patras, while kalophonic sticheraria are found also under the rubrics ‘Mathematarion’ and ‘Anthologion Sticherarion’, and copies of the traditional sticherarion also under ‘Triodion/Pentecostarion’. A similar overlap exists between the types ‘Papadike’, ‘Psaltike techne’, ‘Akolouthia’, ‘Anthologia’ and ‘Anastasimatarion’. It must be admitted, though, that classification of Byzantine musical manuscripts is not an easy task, since many different and partly incompatible systems have been and are still in use. An explicit introduction to or clarification of the terminology appropriated by Touliatos-Miles in this catalogue would have been very helpful, however, perhaps with a more extensive use of double or triple classifications in the many instances of composite manuscripts.

It would appear that Touliatos-Miles has adopted the system of describing writing materials from the Sakkelion catalogue of 1892. Accordingly, the field ‘Type of paper’ is filled with terms such as ‘Turkish’, ‘bombycinous’, ‘common’, ‘thin’, ‘parchment’, ‘Italian’, ‘chartaceous’ and ‘Western’. In general, ‘bombycinous’ is reserved for what is now commonly referred to as ‘oriental’ paper, but occasionally Touliatos-Miles uses the term to describe occidental paper, somewhat misleadingly.Footnote ⁶ In this respect, and as regards the dating of manuscripts, more advantage should have been taken of the meticulous modern codicological analysis presented by Linos and Maria Polites in their 1991 catalogue.

The notational types and stages are classified in two series, one for the lectionaries (‘very early ecphonetic’, ‘early ecphonetic’, ‘early ecphonetic, not easily transcribed’, ‘ecphonetic’, ‘late ecphonetic with red coloured neumes’), and one for the hymnographic manuscripts (‘archaic, early round Byzantine’, ‘early round Byzantine, not fully developed’, ‘undeveloped early round Byzantine’, ‘middle/round Byzantine’, ‘late round Byzantine’, ‘late 17th-c. Byzantine’, ‘very late round Byzantine’, ‘very late round Byzantine, verging on Chrysantine’, ‘very late round Byzantine, but not quite in the newer Chrysantine system’, ‘neumatic style of the very late round Byzantine’, ‘very early Chrysantine’, ‘Chrysantine’, ‘newer Chrysantine’). The many adjectives generally reflect the date of the manuscript and do not provide much new information of the possible peculiarities of the notation. Had the criteria behind the classification system been explained in the introduction, the reader might have had a better understanding when a thirteenth-century sticherarion is said to be written in an ‘archaic’ and ‘early’ state of the ‘round notation’ (EBE 883), or of whether a qualitative difference can be seen between the notation of EBE 1868 (ad 1820, ‘very early Chrysantine’) and that of EBE 3001 (ad 1823, ‘newer Chrysantine’).

The listings of contents of manuscripts vary a great deal in size and detail, which is perhaps unavoidable when describing such a sizeable manuscript collection. EBE 883 is catalogued in greater detail than average (pp. 11–30), but still not every incipit of a sticheron or every ascription to a hymnographer is mentioned. In the notes on the same manuscript Touliatos-Miles publishes a hypothesis of multiple Vorlagen regarding a couple of double ascriptions to hymnographers – for example, on fol. 203v to ‘Ephraim and Andrew’ – but in fact the manuscript reads in this place ‘Ἐϕραὶµ Καρίας’ (‘Ephraim of Caria’) which is quite a common ascription elsewhere in the same manuscript. Mostly, however, the notes are informative.

Touliatos-Miles offers a selective bibliography for each manuscript. This is very helpful, and the addition of references to page numbers would have increased the value further. Unfortunately, some important references are missing, an example being the bibliography for EBE 968: the first fifty-three folios of that manuscript render a vernacular Greek version of a treatise generally referred to as ‘Akribeia’, but the critical edition of that text from 1998 is not mentioned.Footnote ⁷ The catalogue is furnished with a very useful index of names, a vocabulary, and a summary list of 107 musical manuscripts from the dependency monastery of the Holy Sepulchre (Metochion tou Hagiou Taphou) at Istanbul/Constantinople, which are now kept in the National Library of Greece.

In the real world, the ideal cataloguer, who combines musicologist, palaeographer, art historian and philologist, is very seldom found, and many catalogues remain mere ‘checklists’ or ‘not catalogues in the true sense of the word’. Nevertheless, we need catalogues, checklists, inventories, and other reference material, however limited in their various respects. Irrespective of the weaknesses mentioned above, the present catalogue is to be welcomed into the group of specialised catalogues of Byzantine chant manuscripts. It will definitely help to make the precious music manuscripts of the National Library of Greece much better known, especially as regards EBE 2501–3121 of which no previous descriptions have been published. Touliatos-Miles has done a considerable amount of work to compile an overview of (almost) all musical manuscripts of that collection, and I am convinced that both musicologists and scholars from other disciplines will benefit from it. The catalogue sometimes demonstrates its author's own approaches to these manuscripts, but, most importantly, she invites the rest of us to find our own paths through this impressive collection of sources.