Source: St. George Publishing
To honor Mr. Velon’s work and to preserve his musical contributions, a project was initiated at the request of the Velon family under the leadership of George Stefanidakis, PhD to preserve the Velon manuscripts in electronic form.
John’s works are now preserved and available online! A special website has been constructed, Saint George Publishing, that enables you to order individual collections of transcriptions or the entire collection. Copies of the Velon manuscripts are no longer available in printed form, but on the website, they are assembled as PDF files or as a programmed interface to the collection.
The new website contains the extraordinary work of John C. Velon as he transcribed hymns of the Greek Orthodox Church from Byzantine notation into Western staff notation in the Greek language. He devoted countless hours accomplishing these transcriptions. All the hymns contained on this website are transcriptions from traditional Post-Byzantine sources. As is typical for hymns of the Greek Orthodox Church, Mr. Velon adapted many of these hymns to his transcriptions of model or original melodies.
As chanters aged in the United States and in other parts of the world, Mr. Velon saw a growing need for the availability of the ecclesiastical music of the Greek Orthodox Church in Western staff notation which was more familiar to the younger chanters beginning to take their place at the chanters stand.
The transcriptions are useful for chanting the hymns in the original Greek or as melodic examples for chanting the hymns in English. The collection is remarkably complete, in the form of selected collections of hymns of services for major feast days and liturgical periods of the entire ecclesiastical year of the Greek Orthodox Church.
The collection contains more than 10,000 hymns organized into the following individual collections as well as a programmed interface to the entire collection called VIVECOL:
The Anastasimatarion
- Orthros and Vespers in all eight modes.
- The Eleven Eothina Exapostilaria and Doxastica.
- Katavasias for the entire year.
The Triodion
- From the moveable start of the Triodion period through Palm Sunday
Holy Week
- Palm Sunday Nymphios through the Agape Service.
The Pentecostarion
- Thomas Sunday through Sunday of all Saints.
Fixed Feast Days and Special Hymns and Services of the Greek Orthodox Church
- A searchable portfolio of hymns sorted by Feast Name and Feast date.
- A searchable portfolio of PDF files containing hymns for special occasions and services of the Greek Orthodox Church.
- Other services include Wedding, Paraclesis, Akathist, and many more.
The entire Velon Collection is also available in a set of two (2) compact disks
- CD #1 – All the individual collections shown above as separate PDF’s.
- CD #2 – A single portfolio PDF file of all the individual collections.
The VIVECOL program, an interface to all the individual hymns and collections.
To access and order from the Velon Collection, visit the Velon Family’s website: stgeorgepublishing.org. Your support of this worthy project is greatly appreciated.
George Stefanidakis, PhD
