Joannes Kladas

Joannes Kladas, also known simply as Lampadarios, was one of the most important and prolific composers of Byzantine liturgical music between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Together with his predecessors Joannes Glykys, Joannes Koukouzeles and Xenos Korones, he belongs to the group of authors who shaped the repertoire of the Byzantine tradition in those centuries.

Information about his life is scarce and derives mainly from the rubrics of musical manuscripts, where he often appears only with the epithet Lampadarios, that is, director of the left-hand choir. A fifteenth-century manuscript, GR-An 2406, describes him as lampadarios of the imperial clergy of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. The same codex suggests that his daughter may have composed a kalophonic koinonikon that other sources attribute to Kladas, a detail that should be treated with caution.

His melodies appear in the akolouthiai manuscripts copied at the end of the fourteenth century and in sources from the first half of the fifteenth century. Manuel Chrysaphes, in a treatise from the mid-fifteenth century, names him as the last of the five great composers of kalophonic oikoi for the Akathistos. For this reason it can be stated with certainty that he was active in the first half of the fifteenth century and that he was somewhat older than Chrysaphes himself.

The akolouthiai were constantly updated, and copyists replaced old chants with new melodies. In the prooimiakos repertoire, Koukouzeles's and Korones's melodies were relocated between different verses, whereas Kladas's ten compositions remain tied to the original verses of the psalm. Moreover, Kladas considerably expanded the acclamation Doxa soi O Theos and added a Trinitarian troparion that gives it greater structural weight within the whole.

His style is distinguished by broad proportions, wider vocal ranges and chains of melodic formulas with sequential repetitions. Compared with his predecessors, his compositions are more sequential, less focused on the voice and more effusive, features typical of the late phase of the kalophonic style.