ABSTRACT
Travellers' accounts show that the Phanariot princes in Romania had created a mosaic of musical ensembles to entertain themselves and their guests. The Romanian principalities, Moldavia and Wallachia, due to their special status as semi-independent Ottoman provinces, soon attracted a number of Greek cantors who brought with them a plethora of musical manuscripts of Byzantine chant. Romania's second largest city, Jassy, saw the establishment of another school of chant by the Greek Archdeacon, Nikiphoros of Chios, who lived in Istanbul and moved to the Moldavian capital early in the second decade of the nineteenth century. Contemporary with Petros was the Greek writer and composer, Dionysios Photeinos, who settled in Bucharest in the late eighteenth century. The musical history of Greek rule in Romania has great significance in the general history of European courts, because it marks the first Greek royal house since the fall of the Byzantine Empire.
