published their mantinadas, much like other books of poetry. Some mantinadas are excerpted as stand-alone rhyming couplets from longer poems, particularly the Erotokritos, an epic poem that is a staple of Cretan Renaissance literature. Singers, professional and amateur alike, frequently improvise in the moment which mantinadas they sing or improvise entirely new ones on the spot. Sometimes a certain pairing of a particular mantinada with a particular melody (e.g., based on a well-known professional recording) will also congeal among much of the population and therefore tend to be repeated in performance. A common musical accompaniment for the improvisation of large numbers of mantinadas is called a kontilia (), a four-measure melody. The same kontilia (or a traditional pairing of kontylies) can be repeated for virtually any length of time, but musicians can also improvise changes in which kontylia is being played, stringing together different kontylies over the course of a performance. There is also a tradition of the kantadha (serenade) in Crete in which mantinadas are sung and improvised. The music of a kantadha may be kondylies or structured like the music of a syrtos (the dance form) but not actually intended for dancing or even necessarily sung at a tempo appropriate for dancing. A Cappella singing (Rizitika) There is also a strong a cappella tradition of mountain songs known as rizitika. The rizitika are conventionally divided into rizitika "of the road" (tis stratas) and rizitika "of the table" (tis tavlas). Since the twentieth century, an island-wide canon of rizitika songs has taken shape, especially in the wake of a commercially influential recording of them arranged by Yannis Markopoulos and sung by Nikos Xylouris in the early 1970s. Folklorists and other scholars have also published large collections of rizitika song texts. (For example, Rizitika: Dimotika Tragoudia tis Kritis by Stamatis Apostolakis.) Erotokritos There is also a vigorous tradition of singing excerpts of the Erotokritos to a specific set of tunes as a "song" genre in its own right (with or without instrumental accompaniment).The entire set of tunes will repeat as many times as required for the length of the excerpt that is being sung. Sometimes, rhyming couplets are excerpted from the Erotokritos and sung as mantinadas. The First Lines of the Erotokritos: Του Κύκλου τα γυρίσματα, που ανεβοκατεβαίνουν, και του Τροχού, που ώρες ψηλά κι ώρες στα βάθη πηαίνουν Tou Kiklou ta girismata, pou anevokatevainoun, kai tou Trochou, pou ores