ABSTRACT
The De cerimoniis contains many references to the role of the singers of the demes at court ceremonies, and it transmits the texts of various acclamations, but not of real hymns. Taking account of all the existing evidence, it might agreed with Marc Lauxtermann who stated recently that the political verse at the very beginning was not the verse of the demes. However, by the beginning of the tenth century it seems that it had acquired this function, as it might conclude from the poems on the deaths of Leo VI and Constantine VII transmitted in the Skylitzes Matritensis and published a quarter of a century ago by Ihor Sevcenko. These poems were obviously composed and performed in the realm of the court, certainly sung by two alternating choirs.
