Book Reviews
fore and after it. Recommended for all col-
lections with an active guitar program.
Gary R. Boye
Appalachian State University
A Descriptive Catalogue of the Musical
Manuscript Collection of the National
Library of Greece: Byzantine Chant
and Other Music Repertory Re-
covered. By Diane H. Touliatos-Miles.
Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. [x, 632
p. ISBN 9780754651680. $134.95.]
Appendices, bibliography, glossary, in-
dexes, plates.
Scholars, researchers, students, and any-
one interested doing research on the musi-
cal sources of Byzantine music at the
National Library of Greece have to face a
frustrating reality: the lack of an current,
accurate, and scholarly descriptive catalog
that brings to light the holdings of one of
the richest repositories of Byzantine music
manuscripts in the world.
The music manuscript collection of the
National Library of Greece in Athens con-
sists of 242 centuries-old manuscripts,
mainly of Byzantine music but including
some Western music as well, 149 of which
were never published or properly invento-
ried before. All previous attempts to orga-
nize the materials yielded partial results
since none of the people involved in the
projects of putting the sources in order was
a trained musicologist. Consequently, the
release of this updated descriptive cata-
logue came as a gratifying surprise to all
users interested in the wealth of music
housed in this library. Diane H. Touliatos-
Miles undertook this painstaking task with
exceptional results.
The author is a researcher, scholar and
professor of Western and Byzantine musi-
cology who has published extensively on
such topics as ancient Greek music, Eastern
medieval chant, and women composers.
Her goal in publishing this book was
twofold. The first of these was to create an
invaluable resource tool in order to make
available music sources of noteworthy sig-
nificance for music research. She accom-
plishes this by enriching this catalog with
notes, bibliography, plates, appendices,
and indexes in order to present the reper-
405
tory of these manuscripts as comprehen-
sively as possible. Second, in order to make
these sources available to a broader audi-
ence, she makes use of two languages,
Greek to describe the contents of the
sources and English to comment on and
provide information about the particular
source with relevant bibliographic refer-
ences for further research.
The catalogue is well structured and easy
to use. It starts with a checklist organized by
manuscript accession number according
to the National Library of Greece (EBE),
and its corresponding pages in the book.
Following this is an informative preface
that provides an overview of the collection
and its contents, an annotated list of the
collection’s highlights, and an account of
the author’s objectives and aspirations.
The actual descriptive catalogue begins
by providing in succession the following in-
formation: the name/number of the manu-
script, the type of liturgical book, descrip-
tive notes regarding the type of paper,
measurements, number of folios, type of
notation used, date of creation and prove-
nance. Then Touliatos-Miles describes the
contents of each folio in Greek (following
the recto and verso fashion), frequently ac-
companied by English transliterations as
well as interpolated translations. Following
this is a notes section in which she provides
frequently extensive information on au-
thorship, types of chants, inscriptions,
scribes, and comments about the repertory.
Relevant bibliography for further study
concludes the description of each source.
Sixteen pages of plates are offered be-
tween pages 500 and 501 in order to pro-
vide a visual presentation of selected exam-
ples from the sources. More specifically,
the plates depict illuminations, in color as
well as in black and white, including por-
traits of saints, images of two voiced chants,
examples of rubrics, diagrams, colophons,
an initial page of a music treatise, different
types of notation, and more.
Although Touliatos-Miles may describe
some sources meticulously, anyone who has
already done some work with these manu-
scripts may observe sporadic oversights
here and there regarding rubrics, chant ini-
tial words, or other minute limitations in
describing some of the sources. However,
these omissions, as Touliatos admits, were
consciously made by the author to avoid
406
extending the delay of the publication any
longer.
The appendices begin on page 585. The
first of these provides a list of the previously
analytically described music manuscripts
sorted by book type such as Akolouthia,
Evangelium, ancient Greek treatises, etc.,
with their corresponding chronology. The
number of the manuscript is also provided
in order to refer back to the descriptive cat-
alogue for more details. The next appendix
is devoted to a list of musical manuscripts
from the Library of the Holy Sepulcher
in Constantinople, now housed in the
National Library of Greece. This list is
sorted by manuscript number and is en-
riched with information such as liturgical
book type, measurements, folio number-
ing, type of notation used, and date. These
manuscripts had been catalogued already
by another scholar so there was no need for
further elaboration or discussion here.
A valuable glossary appendix follows
along with an extensive bibliography on the
discipline of Byzantine musicology in order
Notes, December 2011
to inform the novice and enlighten the
scholar not fluent in Greek with regard to
terminology. The book concludes with an in-
dex sorted by author name with correspond-
ing pages pointing back to the manuscripts.
I cannot stress enough the validity of this
resource for those researchers interested in
the field of Byzantine chant and medieval
music in general. This catalogue is an indis-
pensable navigation tool that guides the
user through the recovered musical sources
and their diversity in terms of notation,
book type and chronology. It is also a must-
have for any library that has a collection em-
bracing the fascinating field of Byzantine
musicology. Unquestionably, the Byzantine
musicological community has acquired a
landmark work with the publication of this
book, which hopefully will stimulate fur-
ther study on topics of this rich but greatly
overlooked musical tradition.
Arsinoi Ioannidou
The New School
Copyright of Notes is the property of Music Library Association Inc. and its content may not be copied or
emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission.
However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.