Joseph the Protopsaltis of Neamt

Joseph, called Nemțeanu, was a hieroschemamonk and the greatest teacher of psaltic music at Neamț Monastery in the first half of the nineteenth century. He fell asleep in 1840, according to the Paterikon, with a question mark. He is named in the Romanian Paterikon and venerated by the faithful, without synodal canonization; the sources available to us give no day of commemoration.

He was from the area and entered the lavra around 1790. Endowed with wisdom and the gift of beautiful singing, he learned from the old teachers spiritual things and the craft of church music, and in a few years surpassed all the Neamț cantors. He sang with devotion, his voice filled the church, awoke hearts and drew tears, and many came to hear him.

He received priesthood and for more than twenty years was a great confessor and chief cantor and the first teacher of psaltic chant from Neamț, founding at Neamț a school of traditional church music. In the time of Saint Paisius the right choir in church sang from linear notation, after the Slavic custom, and the left sang old psaltic music. Seeing that the monks were drifting from the old Byzantine music, systematized by Saint John Damascene, Joseph sought to adorn the church again with the psaltic chants of the eight tones.

He wrote and composed chants to psaltic melody and trained renowned disciples in the monasteries of Neamț. His school shone at Neamț until near the end of the nineteenth century, and he is regarded as the predecessor of the hieromonk Macarius the Chief Cantor, the renewer of Romanian psaltic music. The History of the Neamț and Secu Monasteries says that in the time of Abbot Dometian (1823-1834) the monastery was adorned by Father Teacher Joseph, and the founders' commemoration book records that he brought to Neamț the science of the old music and taught it to many fathers. With his chants he adorned the Church until his passing to the heavenly dwellings, in 1840, leaving numerous disciples.