Nicholas Kalargyros, 78

Nicholas Kalargyros, 78, of Lancaster, passed away peacefully at home surrounded by his family on Sunday, February 5, 2012. He was born in the village of Agios Giorgios Sikousis, Chios, Greece to the late Vasilios and Despina (Pouleros) Kalargyros.

Nicholas is survived by his wife, Eleftheria (Agadis) Kalargyros. They were married on September 11, 1966 in Greece.

Nicholas retired from former RCA, now Burle Industries after 26 years.

Nicholas’s lifelong love and commitment was his faith and divine skill of chanting. He began chanting at the young age of 13 in his home village in Greece. After moving to the United States to Lancaster in 1969, he became the cantor for the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church and has chanted for the church and the community since then, totaling 43 years.

He was a loyal member of the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church.

Nicholas enjoyed gardening, spending time with his family, especially his children and grandchildren, and Byzantine chanting.

Surviving in addition to his loving wife, are his three children; two daughters, Chrisovalantou “Chrissy” wife of Keith Michael Cordischi, of Lititz, Despina, wife of Jeremy Colon, of Lancaster,

son, Vasili “Billy” Kalargyros, of Lancaster, five grandchildren, two sisters, Eleni Christopoulos and Maria Patras, both of Greece. He was preceded in death by two sisters, Markela Tsiknis and Angelika Billis.

Funeral Services will be held on Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 10am at the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church 64 Hershey Ave. Lancaster, PA 17603 with the Rev. Alexander Goussetis, Rev. Alexander Veronis, and Rev. Hector Firoglanis officiating. Viewings will be Wednesday evening at the church from 6-9PM with a Trisagion Service at 7:30PM and again Thursday morning from 9-10AM prior to the service. Interment will be in Conestoga Memorial Park. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made in Nicholas’s memory to The Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church or to St. Nektarios Greek Orthodox Monastery 100 Anawanda Lake Rd, Roscoe, NY 12776. To send the family an online condolence, please visit SnyderFuneralHome.com. Charles F. Snyder Jr. Funeral Home & Crematory 717-560-5100

Our Psalti (Cantor in Greek)
Nicholas Kalargyros – Longtime Cantor for the
Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church

On December 6 we celebrate the feast day of Saint Nicholas. One of the people who celebrate on this day is our psalti, Mr. Nick Kalargyros.

In the month of December, Psalti also celebrates another important day in his life. He celebrates the day when he became a psalti. I found out about this one Christmas Eve.

On Christmas Eve 2003, I was in church for the service. I had just walked into the narthex and was venerating the icons when I saw Psalti walk in. Walk is not the right word. He stumbled through the door, and holding on to the handrail he slowly climbed the few steps and walked into the narthex. Pain was written on his face.

Back then, Psalti was seventy years old. Being a diabetic, having been on kidney dialysis for five years, living with chronic foot, ankle, and heart problems, and having had a recent kidney transplant, he was not in the best of health. But walking up a short flight of stairs was not counted among his problems.

When I saw him walk in like that I asked him what happened. He told me that four days earlier he had been to the heart doctor. The doctor wanted him to go to the hospital and have a pacemaker put in. Psalti had refused. He told the doctor that he had to be in church; he was going to wait till after Christmas to be operated on.

We lit our candles, venerated the icons and walked into the Holy Altar. We were a few minutes early, so Psalti sat down to catch his breath. I sat next to him.

“I became a cantor on Christmas Day," he said to me. "On this day, today, I have been chanting for fifty-three years. I can’t stay away from the church."

A few years earlier I had asked him and he had told me his story, how he had become a cantor. He told me how he had grown up in a small village on the island of Chios, Greece. While he was a young boy, his pious father, who was a cantor, often brought him to church. His father was one of the old-time cantors. He had learned how to chant not in a school but by standing next to a cantor. He had learned in Constantinople back when thousands of Orthodox Christians lived there.

From a young age, Psalti loved church. He often went to church with his father and listened to the hymns and prayers. One day, he mustered the courage and asked his father if he could go up to the cantor stand with him. His father allowed him. He went up to the cantor stand, and because he was not tall enough to see the books, his father stood him on a chair. Our young psalti was eight years old.

He stood on a chair next to his father for six years. During these years, he read the Epistle readings and chanted some of the easy hymns.

One time, a music teacher heard him chanting. "You have a good voice," the teacher said to him, "You should come so that I can teach you how to chant."

But our young psalti could not go. His father did not have enough money to send him.

In the year 1942 his father had a stroke and could no longer chant. About this time, a priest named Father Stylianos heard our young Psalti, liked his voice, and offered to heip him. Starting on that day, every time Father Styiianos went to someone’s home for a Water Blessing or a Paraclesis he took our young Psalti with him. He also took him to chapels and churches on feast days to celebrate liturgy. Once or twice a week, Psalti went to Father Stylianos, and he taught him how to read Byzantine Music. Psalti, in turn, helped Father Stylianos with the chores around his home, chores such as painting, chopping wood, and going on errands. That’s how Psalti learned how to chant: in people’s homes and in chapels throughout Chios, with a few people present.

After ten years, he became a cantor. It was Christmas Day, 1950. Psalti was seventeen years old.

Our young psalti had become a cantor, but he was afraid to chant in front of many people. Father

Stylianos told him he must chant even though he was afraid. "That, the chanting in front of others even though you are afraid, is what will make you good," he said to him.

As the years passed, Psalti bought his own chanting books. But back then on Chios not all the hymn books were available, so he copied many hymns by hand. One day, he copied the Hymn of Cassiani, the hymn we sing on Holy and Great Tuesday night. Because the hymn is long (it is the longest and most difficult hymn we sing in church) and he could not copy it in one sitting, he sat for many days and painstakingly copied it-word-byword, symbol-by-symbol.

Our eight-year old lover of church music had finally become a psalti with his own books, but he could not chant at the church in his village. The church there already had a cantor. In time, Psalti found a place where he could chant: the village of Dafnona. As he tells the story, the ten years he worked at learning how to chant was the easy part.

The village of Dafnona was not near his village. It was over a mountain range that stretched for miles. Back then, not many people had cars and there were not many taxis on Chios. To be in church in time for orthros, which in Greece starts at 7:00 in the morning, Psalti had to wake up early, while it was still dark out, and walk to the village using a large flashlight. This walk was not an easy walk: it was a treacherous one and a half hour walk on what in Greece is called a monopati, a "single-person-path": a narrow path through hills and valleys on which only one person or animal at a time can walk. Psalti walked to Dafnona at least once a week, and even more often if there were weekday services. He did this until he became friends with some of the people in the village and could stay at their homes overnight during feast days and on Holy and Great Week. After walking to Dafnona every week for about five years he started using a mule or a horse. After chanting at Dafnona for ten years, he became the cantor at a village near his own called Ziffies.

He chanted at the church there till 1969. In March of that year, by invitation of Father Alexander Veronis and the Greek Orthodox Church of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he and Elefteria, his wife of three years, boarded the Italian ocean liner Columbus and sailed to America. They arrived in America on March 28, 1969.

Ever since that day, he has been filling our church with his beautiful voice, glorifying God. During all these years, many young (and old) men have stood next to our cantor from Greece to chant the hymns of the Church and learn the Ancient Faith. Psalti’s way of teaching is not what you might expect.

“I don’t like egoism," he said to me early on.

“I don’t like it when someone is eager to chant. This only shows he has ego in him,"

That was his first major teaching, “There are two ways that someone can learn how to chant": he said, "one is by going to school. The other is the practical way. For the first you learn from books. For the second you stand next to the cantor, listen, and try to follow."

Psalti does not care about how good your voice is; not as much as he cares about your desire to learn.

"It’s your desire together with the grace of God that will teach you," he says.

And he teaches not by words or lessons from a book. Byzantine chant can be learned, and learned well, by going to school and reading books. But through the years, the time-honored way that cantors have learned how to chant is by standing next to a master cantor and listening, paying attention, and trying their hand when given the go-ahead.

That’s how Psalti teaches.

In the few years that I have been up on the cantor’s stand with him, rarely has he told me, "you’re chanting low"; ‘you’re off key"; "you’re in the wrong tone"; or other such things. And the opposite is also true. He never pumps up your ego by telling you that you chanted a particular hymn well. "Together," He will say in a low voice and tell you that he wants you to chant the next hymn with him. This one-word exhortation conveys something important to a student. It tells him what chanting is: a doxology; a praising, of God. "Chant high!" he also tells us. "Chanting must be done in a high voice. What is chanting," he asks rhetorically, ‘if not a glorification of God? And how best do you glorify God? You shout it out! If you sing low, it will sound like you’re falling asleep. How will people then chant along with you? You must have it in your heart. I f you don’t have it in your heart, how can you sing it?"

In addition to the chanting of the hymns, Psalti also teaches the order of the Church: what hymns we chant on a given day and in what order. And oh how he becomes upset when the order of the Church is not followed to the letter: "These hymns and prayers," he says with urgency in his voice, "were written by saints. We should not change them!" During lulls in the service he tells us tidbits of information, information that might not be found in books but which instead has been passed down through the years from psalti to psalti. Information such as the start of the Christmas Liturgy in the old country (5:OO am); the first Katevasia of Christmas (the hymn that starts out as Christ is born Glorify Him!) the cantor chants while standing in front of and facing the Holy Altar; the length of the hymn Epi Si Heri, (All Creation

Rejoices in You) that’s chanted in place of It is Truly Right in the Liturgy of Saint Basil: many minutes long, to allow the priest to recite the long prayers of the consecration of the Gifts; how someone can know if a psalti is good or not (a psalti is known by his chanting during Great Lent and especially during Holy and Great Week–that’s because the hymns chanted at that time are chanted in many tones.)

I am sure that all this, Psalti’s entire life, was on his mind that Christmas Eve as he was sitting in the Holy Altar waiting for Christmas Orthros to start.

We made it through the service that night: we chanted the hymns; we read the prayers; we glorified God. The church was packed, yet, other than me, my family, and a few of his relatives, how many people knew that Psalti was sick–sick almost to the point of death?

After the service, my wife told me that she had talked with Psaltifs wife. With tears in her eyes, Psalti’s wife had told her that she had tried but could not keep Psalti away from the church–not on this night. Even though he had spent many days in the hospital and the doctor had tofd him he needed a pacemaker, he had postponed everything till after Christmas. He could not be away from the church on this night, the same night of the year on which fifty-three years earlier he had become a cantor. And how fitting that Psalti would insist on coming to church on this night, for this service. How fitting, because even the hymns we chant on this night give us the reason why he and all of us were in church:

Christ is born: glorify Him, Christ is come from Heaven: receive Him. Christ is on earth: be exalted. All the earth, sing to the Lord, and all the people, praise Him in joy, for He has been glorified!

A few days after Christmas Psalti went to the hospital and had a pacemaker put in. Since that day, he has made a full recovery and is back in church glorifying God with his God-given voice, Since that Christmas Eve of 2003, many colds and infections have attacked our Psalti. Every time this has happened, his tenacity in insisting on coming to church to offer his God-given voice back to God has shined through. And oh, that voice! When he hits the high notes, the sound fills the church. And if you look closely at Psalti while he’s chanting, you can see an 8-year-old boy who loves church hymns. Chronia Polla Psalti! May God grant you many years!