Kir Stefan the Serb

Kir Stefan the Serb (second half of the 14th and 15th century) was a Serbian monk, protopsaltos, musicologist, choirmaster and more importantly, composer of the chants developed within the sphere of the activities of Byzantine culture in the Serbian state. Together with (but independently from) Isaiah the Serb and Nikola the Serb he followed faithfully the Byzantine musical traditions, writing in the late kalophonic style of the 14th and 15th centuries. With his distinctive compositional style, he is one of the earliest (if not the earliest) identifiable Medieval Serbian composers and also one of the original founders of new and distinctive style called Serbo-Byzantine school.

The presence of Greeks in the courts of Serbian despots who had been reared since their early infancy in the spirit of Romaic culture, had additionally intensified the need for liturgical services to be as magnificent as possible, like those in Constantinople. The fact that chanted services were taking place under the watchful eyes of professional musicians is confirmed by high ranks of those musicians we are familiar with today. Joachim, monk of the Harsianites, probably Greek by birth, was a domestikos in Serbia, just as one of the three Serbian composers of the 15th century, Kir Stefan.

The direct information about his life are scarce and often self-contradictory. Previous research has shown that Stefan lived in the 14th and 15th century. Traces of his existence are found in the monastery in Kumanovo, in today's Macedonia and in Putna monastery in Romania. However, evidence show that he spent most of his life at the court of Despot Lazar Branković in Smederevo, where he served as domestikos — choir conductor and dijak — clerk. Some sources say he lived from 1360 to 1430, and that he became Hegumen, protopsaltos and domestikos of the monastery of Hilandar in his later life, the position he probably undertook to escape the Turkish occupation of Serbia. A number of original Stefan's texts and manuscripts are preserved in foreign libraries, in Vatican, Moscow, Athens and in the library of the monasteries of Hilandar, Great Lavra, Iviron and Simonopetra.

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