Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, Op. 31 (russian: Литургия Иоанна Златоуста), is a 1910 musical work by

Sergei Rachmaninoff Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff; in Russian pre-revolutionary script. (28 March 1943) was a Russian composer, virtuoso pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one o ...

, one of his two major unaccompanied choral works (the other being his

All-Night Vigil The All-night vigil is a service of the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches consisting of an aggregation of the canonical hours of Compline (in Greek usage only), Vespers (or, on a few occasions, Great Compline), Matins, and the ...

). The

Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom The Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom is the most celebrated divine liturgy in the Byzantine Rite. It is named after its core part, the anaphora attributed to Saint John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople in the 5th century. History It ...

is the primary worship service of the

Eastern Orthodox Church The Eastern Orthodox Church, also called the Orthodox Church, is the second-largest Christian church, with approximately 220 million baptized members. It operates as a communion of autocephalous churches, each governed by its bishops via ...

History

Rachmaninoff composed the work in July, 1910 at his summer estate Ivanovka, following his American tour of 1909. Writing to his friend Nikita Morozov, Rachmaninoff said of the work, "I have been thinking about the ''Liturgy'' for a long time and for a long time I strove to write it. I started to work on it somehow by chance and then suddenly became fascinated with it. And then I finished it very quickly. Not for a long time have I written anything with such pleasure." Note: Liner notes PDF file is only accessible by first going to the Hyperion website, then clicking the ''View sleeve notes/artwork (PDF)'' link The work premiered November 25, 1910 in Moscow. Russian Orthodox ecclesiastical authorities strongly objected to the work's "spirit of modernism" and refused to sanction it for use during church services. Rachmaninoff did nothing to promote the work himself, and it soon fell into obscurity. A portion of the ''Liturgy'' was given in concert performance in New York on January 24, 1914, by the male choir of the Russian Cathedral of St. Nicholas, conducted by Ivan Gorokhov. A new edition, reconstructed from surviving part books at an Orthodox monastery in the U.S. and microfilm at the U.S.

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The libra ...

, was published by Anthony Antolini in 1988. This reconstruction was the subject of a PBS documentary entitled "Rediscovering Rachmaninoff", produced by KTEH television in San Jose, California.

Movements

The ''Liturgy'' consists of twenty movements for unaccompanied mixed choir. Three contain solo passages: Movement 2 (Blagoslovi, dushe moia, Ghospoda/Bless the Lord, O my soul) for alto, Movement 10 (Veruiu/The Nicene Creed) for Bass, and Movement 12 (Tebie poiem/To Thee we sing), for treble or soprano. Two (Movements 14 and 19) are scored for double choir. The twenty movements are these:

Recordings

References

External links

* Compositions by Sergei Rachmaninoff Choral compositions 1910 compositions Eastern Orthodox liturgical music John Chrysostom {{classical-composition-stub

History

Movements

Recordings

See also

References

External links