In memorial: Georgios Epam. Hatzichronoglou (1946 – 2026), the most versatile singertranslated

By Elder Ioannous Boutsis

I remember a slow, heavy chanting phthong hanging in the air of the church, just before it was completely extinguished, as if hesitating to leave. This is how the voice of Georgios Hatzichronoglou comes to mind these days. It is not easy to write about a man who had heard him sing for so many years, because his voice had become, over time, a part of our own ear, a part of the hearing with which we prayed. Now that note has fallen silent, and we are left with its echo. In Boeotia we know well this light at the turn of September, when the summer leaves slowly and reluctantly, leaving behind a heat that is in no hurry to forget; in this very light he also left.

He was born in Thebes in 1946, at a time when this city still had an abundance of chanting teachers in the houses themselves and around the bank. His father put him close to the lectern long before he could understand what and how, and from 1962, just sixteen years old, he was already chanting in churches in the province and the capital with a voice that surpassed his age. He received a diploma in Byzantine Music from the "Romanos o Melodos" Conservatory, with honors and first prize:...