Early years Pann was born sometime between 1794 and 1798, in
Sliven,
Rumelia (in what is today
Bulgaria). According to some accounts, his mother, Thomaida, was an
ethnic Greek, while his father, Pantoleon Petrov, was Bulgarian; it is known that he worked as a coppersmith bucket-maker. There is a commonly held view by
Romani community activists, who consider Pann among the most prominent Romani artists. This view is also accepted by some Romanian authors. Various other interpretations state that Pantoleon Petrov, who died during Anton Pann's childhood, The writer, who was the youngest of Petrov and Thomaida's three sons, eventually adopted the family name
Pann, as a colloquial contraction of his father's given name. and allowed to attend the religious music school founded by
Petros Ephesios (d. 1840). This was matched by his interest in other musical traditions: in his churchly practice, he endorsed the tradition of
Byzantine hymns and removed
modulations of
Levantine inspiration, while he was among the first of his generation to use
modern notation and
Italian markings for
tempo. In 1843, Pann established a
printing press inside the
Olteni Church, which published works by several authors of his day, as well as a long series of
almanacs. He later confessed that this enterprise had drained his economies, and that he had relied on support from various benefactors. Upon Neofit's request, he also began the translation of various religious texts. Pann's comprehensive and innovative textbook for music, ("The Theoretical and Practical Basis of Church music or the Melodic Grammar"), was officially endorsed by the Metropolitan and taught at the seminary after 1845 and became a template for similar works; in addition, his printing shop sold cheap copies of popular novels, such as the
Alexander Romance, the
Book of 1001 Nights, the
Book of Til Owl-Mirror, and the
Story of Genevieve of Brabant. In March 1847, Anton Pann authored an account of the
Great Fire of Bucharest. During the latter disaster, his printing shop was heavily damaged, and he was only able to salvage the presses. He resumed his activities only in 1849, when he moved the business to a house owned by Catinca Pann on Taurului Street.
Later years In 1848, he published a
lexicon of words and expressions in Romanian,
Russian, and
Ottoman Turkish. Later in the same year, Pann sided with the
liberal revolutionaries in their action against
Prince Gheorghe Bibescu, was a supporter of the new Wallachian Provisional Government, participating in popular rallies in
Craiova and
Râmnicu Vâlcea (
see 1848 Wallachian revolution). The following year, after falling severely ill, he wrote down the first version of his testament in verse (
Adiata), in which he asked to be buried in (where he hoped that his wife Catinca would become a nun). After a series of other satirical works, Pann produced a collection of writings centered on the figure of
Nastratin Hogea and owing inspiration to
Balkan folklore at large (first published in 1853). In autumn 1854, Pann fell ill with
typhus and the
common cold during a visit to Râmnicu Vâlcea, dying soon after at his Bucharest residence; he was buried in the
Lucaci Church of Bucharest, although, in his second will of August, he had asked for his final resting place to be the hermitage of Rozioara (this failure to comply was attributed to the difficulties in transportation). Catinca Pann remarried soon after this. During the early 1900s, Lucaci Church became home to a monument in Pann's honor, donated by the General Association of Church Singers — an institution presided over by . ==Literature==