Mezenets, Aleksandr

Mezenets, Aleksandr 

(pseudonym of A. Stremmoukhov). Dates of birth and death unknown. Russian music theoretician of the mid-17th century and expert (didaskal) in church singing.

From 1657, Mezenets was a proofreader at the Moscow Printing House (Pechatnyi dvor), and from 1668, an elder, or member of the Council of Elders, of the Zvenigorod Savva-Storozhki Monastery. He headed the commission of six didaskals that established the standard editions of the church chants. His theoretical work, written jointly with other didaskals, Notice About the Most Harmonious Notes (published by V. S. Smolenskii as Alphabet of the Znamennyi Chant: Elder Aleksandr Mezenets’ Notice About the Most Harmonious Notes, Kazan, 1888), is the most complete exposition of the theory of the Znamennyi chant.

REFERENCES

Smolenskii, S. V. O drevnerusskikh pevcheskikh notatsiiakh. St. Petersburg, 1901.
Brazhnikov, M. “‘Azbuka’ Aleksandra Mezentsa.” Sovetskaia muzyka, 1968, no. 6.