Cherubic hymn rachmaninov biography
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Rachmaninoff Vespers Text and Translations
No. 1 Priidite, poklonimsia
The Vigil opens with a proclamation of “Glory to the Holy, Consubstantial, Life – creating an Undivided Trinity,”
followed bygd a majestic choral call to worship, Pridite, poklonimsia (Psalm 95:6). The multilayered melody is of Rachmaninoff’s invention,
but its undulating, step-wise movement and unsymmetric, text-related structure at once establish its kinship with the ancient
Znamenny Chant.
Amen. komma, let us worship
God, our King.
Come, let us worship and fall down
before Christ, our King and our God.
Come, let us worship and fall down
before the very Christ, our King and our God.
Come, let us worship and fall down before Him.
No. 2 Blagoslovi, dushe moya, Ghospoda
Vespers begins, as it does every day, with Psalm 104: Blogoslovi, dushe moya, Ghospoda,
which hymns the wonders of God’s creation. The solo voice personalizes this song of praise, while the choral voic
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The word ‘Liturgy’ is used in the Orthodox Church specifically to mean the Eucharistic service—what in the West would be called the Mass. There were in the early Church a number of Liturgies, but at the present day there are fyra forms in use in the Eastern Church: the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom (the usual form on Sundays and days of the week), the Liturgy of St Basil the Great (used ten times a year), the Liturgy of St James, the Brother of the Lord (used on St James’s Day, 23 October, in only a few places in the world), and the Liturgy of the Presanctified, used on Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent and the first three days of Holy Week. The Liturgy is always sung. Structurally, all these fyra have points in common with the Western Mass. A non-Orthodox would, for example, recognize in the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom the Introit (in the the form of the Little Entrance), Epistle, Alleluia, Gospel, Creed, Lord’s Prayer,
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Release: February 2022
BIS-2571 SACD
EPCC, conductor Kaspars Putniņš
The music of the Russian Orthodox Church was an essential part of Sergei Rachmaninov’s musical background. As a boy he was deeply moved by the sound of St Petersburg’s cathedral choirs, and phrases reminiscent of liturgical chant permeate his music. His Vespers has long been admired as a summit of Russian liturgical music. It has unfortunately tended to overshadow the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, his earlier large-scale sacred composition. Named after the fourth-century Archbishop of Constantinople and Church Father, the Liturgy consists of a sequence of prayers, psalms and hymns, which are sung or chanted by the different participants in the service.
Rachmaninov did not make use of any existing chants (as he would later do in his Vespers), but chose to reflect their style and spirit with music entirely of his own. The sonorities he creates is rarely achieved by plain four-part writing: i