The Orthodox Concert Stage: Performing Rachmaninoff's All-Night Vigil, Op. 37 in a Liturgical Style

Transcription

1 The Orthodox Concert Stage: Performing Rachmaninoff's All-Night Vigil, Op. 37 in a Liturgical Style Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Generalow, Alice Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 07/04/ :31:01 Link to Item

2 THE ORTHODOX CONCERT STAGE: PERFORMING RACHMANINOFF S ALL-NIGHT VIGIL, OP. 37 IN A LITURGICAL STYLE by Alice Generalow Copyright Alice Generalow 2015 A Document Submitted to the Faculty of the FRED FOX SCHOOL OF MUSIC In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2015

3 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Document Committee, we certify that we have read the document prepared by Alla Generalow entitled The Orthodox Concert Stage: Performing Rachmaninoff s All-Night Vigil op. 37 in a Liturgical Style and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the document requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Musical Arts. Date: 12/01/2015 Bruce Chamberlain Date: 12/01/2015 Elizabeth Schauer Date: 12/01/2015 Thomas Cockrell Final approval and acceptance of this document is contingent upon the candidate s submission of the final copies of the document to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this document prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the document requirement. Date: 12/01/2015 Document Director: Bruce Chamberlain

4 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This document has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this document are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgement of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: Alice Generalow

5 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES...6 LIST OF TABLES...7 ABSTRACT...8 CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION...9 Overview...9 Intent and Scope of Study...10 Review of Scholarly Literature...11 CHAPTER TWO: THE ALL-NIGHT VIGIL SERVICE...15 Overview...15 Early Christians and Evening Worship...18 East and West: The Rise of Byzantium...22 Jerusalem and the Anastasis...25 Sabaitic Typikon...28 The Byzantine Dark Ages...34 Studite Typikon...36 The All-Night Vigil in Russia...38 The neo-sabaite Typikon in Russia...40 CHAPTER THREE: RACHMANINOFF AND THE ORTHODOX CHURCH...44 Early Church Experience...44 Sacred Choral Works Overview...52 CHAPTER FOUR: RACHMANINOFF S ALL-NIGHT VIGIL, OP Historical Context...57 Composition...60 Performing in a Liturgical Style...62 CHAPTER FIVE: PERFORMANCE HISTORY...91 Premiere and Reception...91 From Concert to Church...97 Sacred Music Interlude: High Stalinism Revival of the All-Night Vigil CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION...115

6 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Continued APPENDIX A: THE DAILY OFFICE AS SERVED AT THE ANASTASIS IN JERUSALEM APPENDIX B: THE RESURRECTION VIGIL AS SERVED AT THE ANASTASIS IN JERUSALEM APPENDIX C: RECOLLECTION BY RACHMANINOFF OF PASCHA APPENDIX D: ALL-NIGHT VIGIL TEXT AND TRANSLATION APPENDIX E: PRINTED LITURGICAL COMPILATIONS NEEDED FOR AN ALL-NIGHT VIGIL APPENDIX F: PERMISSION FOR MUSICAL EXAMPLES APPENDIX G: GLOSSARY OF NON-ENGLISH TERMS REFERENCES...133

7 6 LIST OF MUSICAL EXAMPLES Musical Example 4.1 All-Night Vigil Movement I, measures Musical Example 4.2 All-Night Vigil Movement II, measures Musical Example 4.3 All-Night Vigil Movement II, measures Musical Example 4.4 All-Night Vigil Movement III, measures Musical Example 4.5 All-Night Vigil Movement III, measures Musical Example 4.6 Resurrection Dogmatik, Tone 1 Znamenny chant...75 Musical Example 4.7 Aposticha Stichera, Tone 1 Znamenny chant...77 Musical Example 4.8 Bogoroditse Devo, Tone 4, Znamenny chant...79 Musical Example 4.9 Bogoroditse Devo, Two-part chant...80 Musical Example 4.10 All-Night Vigil Movement VI, measures Musical Example 4.11 All-Night Vigil Movement VII, measures Musical Example 4.12 All-Night Vigil Movement VII, measures Musical Example 4.13 All-Night Vigil Movement VIII,measures

8 7 LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Resurrectional Great Vespers...27 Table 2.2 Resurrectional Matins and First Hour...32 Table 4.1 Selected All-Night Vigil Settings from the New Russian Choral School..58

9 8 ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that Sergei Rachmaninoff s All-Night Vigil, op. 37 can successfully be performed by choral ensembles in a liturgical style by careful selection and grouping of individual movements, along with the interpolation of other chants or musical settings traditionally used in the Russian Orthodox Church that are not part of the composer s original score. This would make the work more accessible to choirs and conductors that may otherwise not be inclined to program an unaccompanied work over seventy minutes in duration. Additionally, such performances would more accurately reflect the Russian liturgical performance practice history of the work as traced in this document. This document explores the history and form of the All-Night Vigil service, Rachmaninoff s exposure to the Orthodox Church, performance decisions made for the viva voce presentation portion of this document, and the performance history of Rachmaninoff s All-Night Vigil before and after the Russian Revolution.

10 9 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Overview Sergei Rachmaninoff s (April 1, 1873 March 28, 1943) All-Night Vigil, Op. 37 was never performed in totality during the composer s lifetime. Rachmaninoff left no correspondence stating his preference for the work s performance in either a sacred or secular context. The question of whether Rachmaninoff s All-Night Vigil is a work intended for the concert stage or for liturgical performance remains a controversial topic of debate in some corners. 1 Today, listeners encounter Rachmaninoff s All-Night Vigil primarily in concert settings. 2 Often, concert performances present all fifteen movements of the work. However, there is no documented evidence that this is the only way the composer intended the work to be heard. 3 Rachmaninoff never heard the work performed in this way in Russia. 4 The complete work has been performed liturgically in Russian Orthodox All- Night Vigil services with interpolation of other music and texts as prescribed by church 1 Vladimir Morosan, The Sacred Choral Works of Sergei Rachmaninoff foreward to Polnoe sobranie dukhovno-muzykal nykh proizvedenii [The Complete Sacred Choral works] edited by Vladimir Morosan (Madison, Connecticut: Musica Russica, 1994), lxvi. 2 Ibid., lxvi. 3 Ibid., lxviii. 4 The Synodal Choir, the ensemble that premiered Rachmaninoff s All-Night Vigil, did not perform movements 1, 13, or 14 of the work.

11 10 rubrics. Excerpts of the work have also been performed liturgically. Concert performances incorporating liturgical aspects would more accurately depict to listeners the context of the work as understood by many within the Russian Orthodox Church today to be worship music. Intent and Scope of Study In order to provide conductors and scholars the tools to better understand and perform Rachmaninoff s All-Night Vigil, this document addresses: 1. the historical background and form of the All-Night Vigil service in the Orthodox liturgical cycle 2. Rachmaninoff s early exposure to the Orthodox Church 3. the performance history of Rachmaninoff s All-Night Vigil 4. how conductors may appropriately incorporate liturgical style into concert performances of the work The viva voce performance presented in conjunction with this document was a liturgically informed rendition of Rachmaninoff s All-Night Vigil incorporating elements not included in the score, such as the interpolation of additional music from the Russian Orthodox tradition, and the use of a soloist to perform chant. This document and performance demonstrated that concert presentations of Rachmaninoff s All-Night Vigil incorporating liturgical aspects (based on an understanding of Orthodox service and rubrics) can create more informed performances of the work.

12 11 Review of Scholarly Literature Rachmaninoff composed far less sacred choral music than the composers who preceded him in setting the All-Night Vigil, creating only three works on Orthodox texts (V molitvah neusypaiushchuyu Bogoroditsu [The Mother of God, ever-vigilant in prayer], Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Op. 31, and All-Night Vigil, Op. 37). 5 His All- Night Vigil, the last great unaccompanied choral composition on a sacred text premiered in Russia preceding the Revolution of 1917, was hailed by critics as one of the greatest works in the genre to that point 6 and considered by the composer to be among his greatest works. 7 Today, Rachmaninoff s All-Night Vigil is considered the greatest work in the Orthodox choral genre. 8 Though Rachmaninoff lived almost another thirty years after the work s premiere, he never composed another sacred choral piece after the All-Night Vigil. Considering the magnitude of both the work and its composer, there is remarkably little scholarship available specifically about Rachmaninoff s All-Night Vigil. Two dissertations focus on compositional techniques used by Rachmaninoff in the work, providing ample and thorough theoretical analysis, but little performance history or an explanation of the 5 For a comprehensive list of large-scale works composed by Rachmaninoff s predecessors and contemporaries on sacred liturgical texts, see Vladimir Morosan s Choral Performance in Pre- Revolutionary Russia (Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1986), Ibid., Sergei Bertensson and Jay Leyda s Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001), 284. During a 1932 interview, Rachmaninoff awarded that honor only to his All-Night Vigil and The Bells. 8 Liner notes by Nick Jones to Vespers sung by the Robert Shaw Festival Singers, conducted by Robert Shaw in 1990 (Telarc CD-80172).

13 12 development of the liturgical service. 9 The best available source for historical background and performance suggestions is the introduction to a score of Rachmaninoff s All-Night Vigil published by Musica Russica, edited by Vladimir Morosan. 10 In 1957, during the period known as Khruschev's Thaw, Rachmaninoff s All- Night Vigil was given its first complete liturgical performance in Russia. Even after 1957, the All-Night Vigil was not performed in Russia as a concert piece for decades, and was only presented in annual liturgical performances conducted by Nikolai Vasilievich Matveyev ( ) at the Transfiguration Church (also known as Joy of All That Sorrow) located on Bol shaya Ordynka Street in Moscow. 11 Liturgical performances of Rachmaninoff s All-Night Vigil during the Communist era most likely initially began as a result of the lessening of State repression during the short period of Khruschev's Thaw ( ). The Soviet regime lifted some of the restrictions on the Russian Orthodox Church, particularly in Moscow in the late 1950s, as a demonstrative symbol (aimed at Western governments) of religious freedom and tolerance. Restrictions on the arts were similarly lessened during the same period as Soviet-American dialogue was cultivated by the State. 9 Stephen H. Prussing, Compositional Techniques in Rachmaninoff's Vespers, opus 37 (PhD dissertation, Catholic University of America,1979). Eric Loftis, An Investigation of the Textural Contrasts in Sergei Rachmaninov's Night Vigil, Opus 37 (PhD dissertation, University of Southern Mississippi, 1980). 10 Sergei Rachmaninoff, Polnoe sobranie dukhovno-muzykal nykh proizvedenii [The Complete Sacred Choral works] edited by Vladimir Morosan (Madison, Connecticut: Musica Russica, 1994). 11 Though recordings were made of the work beginning in the 1960s, they were not available for purchase by Soviet audiences. The first public concert of the complete work was presented in 1982 by the Leningrad Capella, directed by Vladislav Chernushenko.

14 13 The importance of these liturgical presentations within the context of the work s performance history has not always been received well in the past: The tradition, begun sometime in the 1960s of performing it in a service around the time of Rachmaninoff s birthday in one of the Moscow churches, must be looked upon as an idiosyncratic practice that has little to contribute to the real issues of Orthodox liturgical aesthetics and performance practice. 12 The use of the Rachmaninoff All-Night Vigil in liturgical services, even only once per year, particularly within the context of an era when no other performances of the work, either sacred or secular, existed, is striking and must be re-evaluated in light of the radical political and social changes of the last two decades. It seems ironic in today s post-soviet era to limit the work to only secular performance, disregarding the importance of a major composition on a religious text having a living liturgical performance tradition, let alone in a nation under communist rule. There is no scholarly work available advancing the legitimacy of the work s liturgical performance history. With the exception of Morosan s foreward to his edition of the work, there are no sources for conductors to easily reference in regard to what the All-Night Vigil service is and how its historical development may affect our understanding of the fifteen movements set musically by Rachmaninoff. The fall of Eastern bloc Communism in the early 1990s has provided an opportunity for greater Western scholarship of and access to Orthodox liturgical music. Though there are now performance editions of Russian Orthodox music available in the United States, because of the complexity of the traditional services of the church, conductors still face many questions concerning how this music would be used in or has 12 Vladimir Morosan, The Sacred Choral Works of Sergei Rachmaninoff, lxvi.

15 14 developed from a liturgical context. Many conductors believe that Rachmaninoff s All- Night Vigil has only been, and is only to be used for concert performance. Better understanding of the liturgical framework surrounding the All-Night Vigil, and the work s performance history will allow conductors to prepare presentations that more accurately portray the Orthodox context listeners would have experientially understood when the All-Night Vigil was premiered, and how it is understood by many contemporary listeners today.

16 15 CHAPTER TWO THE ALL-NIGHT VIGIL SERVICE Overview The All-Night Vigil is infrequently included in the contemporary liturgical cycle of Christians outside the Orthodox tradition. Though the All-Night Vigil is currently most often associated with the Russian Orthodox Church, variants of this liturgical form were in practice long before Rus accepted Christianity in the tenth century. 13 The All-Night Vigil service has historically developed as part of the Daily Office of Christian worship. 14 Predating the Great Schism of 1054, the All-Night Vigil s roots can be found in the early Church and liturgical history common to both East and West. 15 Most scholarship in the field of liturgical theology has not dealt with the Daily Office. Those engaged in scholarship relevant to the Daily Office have often, but not exclusively, been experts on the Byzantine tradition. 16 The Daily Office as practiced in 13 In the tenth century, Russia was part of a larger geographical territory known as Rus, which stretched from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea, with its capital in Kiev. Rus adopted Christianity in The Daily Office is the cycle of services as practiced in the Christian tradition in the course of a single twenty-four hour period. 15 This paper will limit the term East to the four canonical Orthodox Patriarchates (Jerusalem, Antioch, Georgia, and Constantinople) from the ancient Church, excluding Rome because of its separation from the Pentarchy in This paper includes in the term East all other Orthodox Patriarchates recognized by the four canonical Orthodox Patriarchates: Georgia, Serbia, Russia, Bulgaria, and Romania. Other churches (Armenian, Coptic, East Syrian, and Indian) can be considered part of the Eastern tradition, but are not in communion with the Orthodox Patriarchates. West refers in this paper to what is today known as the Catholic Patriarchate of Rome, and any subsequent divisions that have occurred from Catholicism since the Great Schism of Byzantine tradition refers to the liturgical rites as practiced in the Christian East both during the historical period of the Byzantine Empire, and as developed and practiced by the churches of the East after the fall of Byzantium, and still in use today.

17 16 the Byzantine rite is regarded as a confusing and overwhelming tradition for those not accustomed to the Eastern Church: This daily office is in a league of its own. The sheer volume of material makes it difficult to discern any clear form to the services, and the amount of variety and possible changes means that anyone innocently trying to follow them with a book will quickly flounder. Its creators over many generations have fused together material from many different sources, giving the impression of an attempt to preserve, at least in token form, as much relevant liturgical matter as they knew of. Some parts of it are impossible to perform fully (for example, the priest s silent prayers at the beginning of matins); and some have shrunk to a mere shadow (such as brief versicles from once-entire psalms). Scattered fragments of old forms lie embedded in it, making it rather like a battered celestial body. For the Westerner, Byzantine worship raises puzzling questions. In particular: how could anyone arrive at such a form of daily office? 17 Within the scholarship available on the Daily Office, few experts have undertaken research on the development of the All-Night Vigil service. It is by far the most complex of all the services of the Daily Office, complicated by rubric variants and widespread individualized practices of its component parts. Additionally, study of the All-Night Vigil s history as a form is complicated by a lack of manuscripts, with extant sources lagging behind chronological development by hundreds of years, and varied reconstruction theories presented by contemporary liturgists. The whole question of vigils remains fraught with pitfalls for the unwary historian of liturgy. 18 The most significant work of scholarship on the Daily Office is Robert Taft s The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West: the origins of the Divine Office and its meaning 17 George Guiver, Company of Voices: Daily Prayer and the People of God (Eugene: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2008), Robert Taft, Liturgy of the Hours in East and West: The Origins of the Divine Office and Its Meaning for Today (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1993), 165.

18 17 for today. The most extensive contribution to the history of the All-Night Vigil as served in the Russian Orthodox Church has been Nikolai Dmitrievich Uspensky s book, Pravoslavnaya vechernya: Istoriko-liturgicheskiy ocherk. Chin vsenoshnogo bdeniya (agripniya) na Pravoslavnom Vostoke i v Russkoy Tserkvi [Orthodox vespers: a historical-liturgical guide. The All-Night Vigil rite ( vigil 19 ) in the Orthodox East and the Russian Church]. Unfortunately, scholars increasingly consider sections of Uspensky s work, written in the 1920s and periodically revised and published up through the 1970s, out of date with currently available manuscripts and methodology. The complete book is still only available in its original Russian text, though a short extract has been translated into English. 20 This particular study of Rachmaninoff s All-Night Vigil must limit discussion of the All-Night Vigil service to major periods of its development as a liturgical rite without delving into myriad details of liturgical theology. Two thousand years of historical development cannot be given the attention it is due in such a document. Those interested in the subject should see the works and authors cited above. This paper excludes all but periphery discussion of services of the Daily Office other than the All-Night Vigil. 19 Uspensky does not use vigil twice, but inserts the Greek word agrypnia in parenthesis. Agrypnia means without sleeping. 20 Nikolai Uspensky, Evening Worship in the Orthodox Church, translated and edited by Paul Lazor, (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir s Seminary Press, 1985).

19 18 The All-Night Vigil is comprised of three separate services of the Daily Office: Great Vespers, Matins, and First Hour. 21 Vigil is derived from the Latin verb vigilia, meaning, To keep watch. 22 Therefore, any all-night vigil can simply be defined as the act of keeping watch throughout an entire night. Early Christians and Evening Worship The Jewish traditions that preceded and existed at the same time as the early Christian Church impacted the genesis of what eventually became a Christian daily cycle of prayer. Morning and evening were the most general and privileged hours of prayer in the several traditions of Judaism. 23 It is likely that the early Christians would have adapted their prayer life from these previous customs. 24 The Jewish evening prayer service is described in Leviticus chapter 24: The principal element of this service is the rite of lighting the lamp and placing it outside the veil of the testimony, in the tent of the meeting. The lamp is to burn from evening to morning before the Lord continually, and in front of it Aaron and his sons are to offer incense. 25 The evening ritual was the closing formal corporate service of the day. However, individual prayer at night was also common in the first century. Jesus kept an all-night 21 The divisions of time over the course of a day come from the Roman tradition, including twelve hours for day and twelve hours for night. The twelve hours of both day and night were divided into four watches. The first hour of the day corresponds approximately to 6:00 a.m., modern time. 22 Oxford English Dictionary, 2 nd ed., s.v. Vigil. 23 Taft, Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, Ibid. 25 Uspensky, Evening Worship in the Orthodox Church, 14.

20 19 vigil of prayer: And it came to pass in those days, that [Jesus] went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God (Luke 6:12). References to night prayer by the followers of Jesus also exist in the New Testament: the disciples imitated Jesus in praying at night (Acts 16:25; 2 Cor 6:5). 26 However, there is no explanation as to the nature of night prayer for the early Christians, or what, if any, formal elements or texts may have been part of such prayer. Therefore, though keeping a vigil all-night was common to both the Jewish and early Christian tradition in the first century, it is vital to note the distinction between the formal rite of corporate evening prayer (including the lamplighting ritual) and individual private night prayer. Evening and night prayer were established aspects of Christian practice by the third century. A preliminary monastic Daily Office gradually formalized during the period in Egypt, including night prayer: In the Pedagogue 2:9, Clement of Alexandria (d. ca.215) says: We must therefore sleep so as to be easily awakened. For it is said: Let your loins be girt, and your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the marriage feast, so that they may open to him at once when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes (Luke 12:35-37). For a sleeping man is of no more use than a dead one. Therefore at night we ought to rise often and bless God. For blessed are they who watch for him, and so make themselves like the angels, whom we call watchers. A man asleep is worth nothing, no more than if he were not alive. But he who has the light watches, and the darkness does not overcome him (John 1:5), nor does sleep, since darkness does not. 27 Vigils in Egypt at this time would have been individual private prayer or prayer in small groups held in monastic cells. However, the nature of individual prayer would have been 26 Taft, Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, Ibid., 15.

21 20 considered universal. Even if one prayed alone in a monastic cell: each person s prayer was seen as being a participation in the prayer of the whole Church. 28 All prayer, individual or corporate, would have been understood as eschatological in nature, and the devout Christian of the second and third centuries was expected to take seriously the apostolic injunction to pray without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17). 29 Accounts of corporate prayer at the beginning of the third century refer to assemblies at night, (nocturnes conuoationibus). 30 These gatherings would likely have included a communal evening agape (love) meal and the lamplighting ritual that would have been a familiar element from the earlier Jewish tradition. 31 The agape meal could include a celebration of the Eucharist or be non-eucharistic. Sacred music was part of the burgeoning practice: the psalms were generally used in connection with community meals, whether Eucharistic or not, where various individuals sang either one of the canonical psalms or a hymn of their own composition to the others. 32 Tertullian described such an agape meal as early as 197: After the washing of hands and the lights, 28 Paul Bradshaw, Daily Prayer in the Early Church: A Study of the Origin and Early Development of the Divine Office (Eugene, Oregon: WIPF and Stock, 2008), Bradshaw, Daily Prayer in the Early Church, Taft, Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, Ibid. 32 Bradshaw, Daily Prayer in the Early Church, 106.

22 21 someone who is able is prompted to stand in the center and sing a hymn from Sacred Scripture or of his own composition. 33 Despite having primary sources from the third century that mention evening prayer and night prayer, it is difficult to draw conclusions regarding practices during the period, as the evidence from the first three Christian centuries, though not disparate, is diverse enough to exclude any facile attempt to harmonize it all and fit it into one system or horarium without doing violence to the facts. 34 The Easter Vigil was a commonality in the early Christian communities. Vigils were also held as group periods of prayer before martyrdom, or at the tombs of martyrs. The first available manuscript reference to liturgical vigils in honor of the martyrs is the Apocryphal Acts of the Martyrdom of St. Saturninus of Toulouse, a document from the year The early centuries of Chrisitianity were marked by persecution, and Christians were in the minority in their communities. Corporate gathering would have attracted unwanted attention and at times was extremely dangerous: except for an occasional nocturnal vigil the only two times when Christians gathered regularly on weekdays was in the morning for instruction or in the evening for an agape supper. 36 The development of formalized liturgical rites for corporate evening or night worship did not flourish until 33 Taft, Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., 21.

23 22 the new religion s legitimacy in the Roman Empire was recognized in the fourth century. East and West: The Rise of Byzantium Though not a baptized Christian until he was on his deathbed, Roman Emperor Constantine considered his military victory at the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312, and his subsequent ascendancy to the imperial throne, a direct result of the intercession of the Christian God. In 313, Constantine signed the Edict of Milan, granting Christians the legal right to freedom of worship without fear of persecution The fledgling Christian Church suddenly and unexpectedly had an imperial patron, showering enormous sums of money on the Church and building lavish houses of congregation and martyrs shrines. 37 As a result, Christian church life throughout the Empire became public and formalized: The effects were immediately visible in church organization, in art and architecture, and in liturgy. Ecclesiastical dioceses and provinces were organized, synods held, monasteries founded, basilicas and baptisteries built, mosaics created to adorn them. And Christian worship, formerly the furtive affair of a persecuted minority, became an integral part of the daily public life of the Roman Empire. The resulting flowering of liturgical uses was striking. 38 Though liturgical development flourished, it could not possibly be called uniform. The early fourth-century Church was still defining its major tenets and doctrines 39 at ecumenical councils, and immediate histories of the time relate the wide variety of 37 Cyril Mango, New Religion, Old Culture, in The Oxford History of Byzantium, ed. Cyril Mango (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), Taft, Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, Peter Sarris, The Eastern Roman Empire from Constantine to Heraclius ( ), in The Oxford History of Byzantium, ed. Cyril Mango (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 25.

24 23 liturgical practice: to give a complete catalogue of all the various customs and ceremonial observances in use throughout every city and country would be difficult or rather, impossible. 40 Constantine established a new capital for the Roman Empire at Byzantium, consecrated in 330 as Constantinople, which would dominate imperial history for the next thousand years. The two imperial cathedrals of Constantinople were Hagia Eirene, the first church in the city, and built slightly later, Hagia Sophia, known as the Great Church. The practice for services at the Great Church became known as the asmatic office. 41 In general, the liturgical offices celebrated according to the cathedral tradition of Constantinople are referred to as the asmatic office, or sung office the adjective asmatic means that, at these celebrations, nothing is said that is not sung except for the prayers of the priest and the petitions of the deacon. The asmatic office essentially consisted of the antiphonal singing of psalms following the Psalter of the Great Church, which was divided into antiphons...it is evident that the asmatic office underwent its own evolution. However, the circumstances of the origin of its ordo are unknown Mansvetov notes correctly that We do not know what the sung office was in its original form. 42 The cathedral office of the Great Church would become the common practice for all non-monastic churches in and near the capital city, and did not include continual night prayer in its Daily Office. In Constantinople of the fourth century, public, common 40 Taft, Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, For further information regarding the ordo of the asmatic office, see Nikolai Uspensky, Evening Worship, Archbishop Job Getcha, The Typikon Decoded (Yonkers: St. Vladimir s Seminary Press, 2012), 41.

25 24 vigils were only occasional assemblies. 43 These would have been occasional cathedral vigils for particular needs: to prepare for a feast with the Eucharist, to honor martyrs on their anniversary, to counteract the Arians, to gain strength in time of persecution. The core of these vigils was a series of psalms and lections psalmody, lessons, prostrations, and prayers. 44 Constantinopolitan monastics developed a particular and unique approach to the Daily Office, unlike the cathedral rite of the Great Church. The akoimetoi (lit. sleepless ones ) were pledged to perpetual praise of God; their offices (popularly known as the akolouthia ton akoimeton) 45 were continuous and uninterrupted, performed by three choirs in succession, each doing one eighthour shift per day an unending cycle of twenty-four offices, one per hour. 46 Though Constantinople was the imperial capital, it was not the only vital center of liturgical development for the Christian East. 47 Other major centers included Antioch, Alexandria, Cappadocia, and most importantly, Jerusalem. Because Jerusalem was the city where Jesus experienced his final week, trial, execution, and resurrection, the sites of 43 Taft, Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, Ibid., Akolouthia means succession, as in a succession of events, or a liturgical rite, or office. Akolouthia ton akoimeton, therefore, means the Office of the Sleepless Ones. 46 Alexander Kazhdan, ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), Rome declined throughout the fourth century as Constantinople, the New Rome, ascended. After the fall of Rome to the Visigoths in 410, the Daily Office in the Western part of the Roman Empire developed under very different historical factors than in the Eastern part of the Empire. Though there were attempts made by the Byzantine emperors, most notably Justinian in the sixth century, to re-establish the importance of Rome, these attempts ultimately failed. The term Byzantine Empire is a relatively contemporary construction, credited to Hieronymous Wolf ( ). Until the fall of Constantinople in the fifteenth century, the territories of both East and West would have been considered part of the Roman Empire, and its citizens considered themselves Romans. For a detailed discussion of the development of the Daily office in the West, see Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, chapters 6 through 9.

26 25 the city were considered holy and natural gathering places for Christian worship. The liturgical practices of these two cities, Constantinople and Jerusalem, would influence each other and ultimately form the Byzantine rite as understood today. 48 Jerusalem and the Anastasis The tomb of Christ, or Holy Sepulchre, was a particularly significant site for Christians in Jerusalem. Constantine had a basilica built on the site complex, known in the East as the Anastasis, 49 which was dedicated on September 14, 335. The diaries of the pilgrim nun Egeria, who traveled to Jerusalem at the end of the fourth century (ca ), describe daily services at the Anastasis. 50 Written to her fellow sister monastics in Spain, the account demonstrates that daily worship in the time of Egeria s travels were already highly formalized, structured, and had complete service sections that would have been familiar and recognizable to monastic pilgrims. These services included psalms, antiphons, hymns, intercessions, clerical blessings and dismissals. The basic format of Daily Office Egeria described is still an important component in the Byzantine All-Night Vigil service structure as used today Robert Taft, The Byzantine Rite: A Short History (Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1992), Resurrection. 50 See Appendix A. 51 See Appendix A.

27 26 Egeria used the term vigil in a particular manner in regards to the Resurrection services, denoting prayer that was not part of the cursus of offices. 52 This vigil began at cock-crow (approximately four o clock a.m.) and consisted of three antiphons with prayers, intercessions, a Gospel reading, blessing and dismissal. 53 The evening Vespers services Egeria observed included the lamplighting ritual, psalms, hymns, antiphons, intercessions, and a blessing dismissal. This structure is the basic scaffolding of the Great Vespers portion of the All-Night Vigil as served today (see Table 2.1) Taft, Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, Ibid., Ibid., 51.

28 27 Monastic Vespers Cathedral Vespers Fixed Opening Monastic Psalmody Lucernarium Introit Table 2.1 Resurrectional Great Vespers Today Egeria Rachmaninoff All-Night Vigil Movement # Clergy Blessing Come, let us 1 worship Psalm Great Litany Kathisma: Blessed is the man. Little Litany Lord, I call (verses of Psalm 140) Gladsome Light* (Entrance of Clergy) Lighting of the lamps* Psalms (including Psalm 140) and Antiphons Entrance of the Bishop Responsory Prokimenon Hymns and Antiphons Augmented Litany Intercessions and Blessing Intercessions Vouchsafe, O Lord Evening Litany Rogation Litya** (Stichera and petitions) Aposticha Aposticha Concluding Nunc dimittis 5 Prayers Trisagion Prayers Troparia*** 6 Dismissal Dismissal Litya** * At the Anastasis, the lamplighting preceded the psalmody. ** At the Anastasis, the Litya included processions to the different holy sites of the complex, following the dismissal. Today, the practice is to hold the Litya in the narthex, or outside, in front of the church. *** Troparia are variable, not always Bogoroditse Devo, raduysya [Rejoice, O Virgin Theotokos]. 3 4*

29 28 The services of the Jerusalem practice at the Anastasis as experienced by Egeria would have included those presided over by the bishop and his clergy as part of the Daily Office, and also corporate prayer led by monastics, as the bishop physically could not have presided over the nearly continual presence of pilgrims at the Anastasis. 55 Monastics were needed to help lead prayer at the Anastasis, but it was more typical for monastics to live outside the urban context, within their own community. Sabaitic Typikon 56 Two major types of ascetic monastic communities existed in the fourth and fifth centuries in the Roman Empire: In the early period rural monastic buildings took two forms. One was that of the lavra where monks lived separately in cells scattered around the church and service buildings. In the other form, the coenobium, monks had communal quarters and a refectory. 57 The coenobium included daily interaction among members of the community, whereas life in the lavra was a more solitary form of monasticism. In the lavra, the hermits lived during the week in cells that were remote from each other. On Saturdays and Sundays they assembled in the church, located at the lavra s core, for a communal prayer and meal. In a coenobium the monks met daily in the church and in the dining room. In both types the daily schedule was divided between 55 Egeria mentions the monazontes and parthenae. See Appendix A. 56 Typikon is the rule of a monastic community. The Typikon covers all general issues of life at a monastery, and liturgical Typikon refers specifically to the ordo of services. Typikon can also refer to the book where the rule of the monastic community has been written down. 57 Marlia Mango, Monasticism, in The Oxford History of Byzantium, ed. Cyril Mango (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 212.

30 29 prayer and manual labor, which in the lavra was done in the cell. 58 For both types of communities, weekday prayer at night would be announced by the precentor knocking on the sounding board, spurring monastics to rise from sleep. 59 In the coenobium all the monks would hurry to the church for the night prayer, while each cell dweller or anchorite would recite the night psalms in his own cell or cave. 60 In the coenobitic tradition, there would be corporate night prayer of continuous psalmody held in the church, but the monastics would return to sleep before coming to the church for morning prayer. In the lavra tradition, monastics would not go to the church on weekday nights. Instead, they would rise from sleep and remain in their cells where they would pray alone. Palestinian monastic life was lavriote, not strictly coenobitic, monk was more a job description than a permanent address, and koinonia 61 was a precarious business at best. 62 The geographic distance from the monastic cells to the church of the lavra community and the dangerous cliff topography of the Palestinian desert would have made daily corporate night prayer virtually impossible. 58 Joseph Patrich. Sabas, Leader of Palestinian Monasticism: A Comparative Study in Eastern Monasticism, Fourth to Seventh Centuries. (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1995), Ibid., Ibid., The Greek word κοινωνία (koinonia) means communion; in this context, community. 62 Robert Taft, Mount Athos: A Late Chapter in the Byzantine Rite, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, vol 42 (1988): 187.

31 30 However, the lavra cell dwellers were expected to gather in corporate prayer at the lavra church on Saturday and Sunday. The lavrites returned to their cells sometime after the Saturday communal meal and then came again to the church for the Sunday office. 63 Travel by foot at night among the cliffs must not have been a particularly pleasant experience, or a safe one. A major innovation in the Saturday and Sunday practice of prayer developed in the late fifth century at the Great Lavra of Mar Saba, the monastery of St. Sabas, that eliminated the need for lavra monastics to return to their cells: Sabas instructed that at the Lavra an all-night vigil (agrypnia) be held, uninterruptedly from evening until the morning, in both the churches on Sundays and dominical feasts. These vigils were initiated by Sabas upon the dedication of the Theotokos Church (July 1, 501). 64 The Resurrectional All-Night Vigils at Mar Saba included hundred of monastics: The Saturday night agrypnia was of great importance in this system: as in Lower Egypt, the brotherhood assembled for common synaxes only on the weekend. The hundreds of anchorites who lived in small groups or as solitaries in scattered huts and grottoes came in from the wilderness for the vigil in droves, overflowing the Church of St. Sabas into the courtyard and surrounding chapels. 65 The new approach at Mar Saba would have meant that after the evening prayer, the monastics would remain in the church and spending the entire night in communal prayer. This was a major change in established monastic practice: The Sunday agrypnia was an important innovation that Sabas introduced into the 63 Patrich, Sabas, Leader of Palestinian Monasticism, Ibid., Taft, Mount Athos,

32 31 Palestinian monastic rite. There was nothing like it either in Pharan 66 or in the laurae of Euthymius and Gerasimus. During the sixth century it spread to other monasteries, and by the end of that century it was practiced in Choziba. At about the same time it is also attested in Sinai Cyril of Scythopolis does not give any details about the ordo of this office. 67 Sabas had a written rule for the monastics of Mar Saba that he transferred to other monastic communities. Unfortunately, manuscripts of that written rule, or Typikon, do not exist dating from the time of Sabas. Scholars to date cannot confirm if his written rule included a specific liturgical order for the Daily Office or only the general rule of life for the monastery. 68 However, a specific ordo for the Sabaite All-Night Vigil is described in an account which dates to the late sixth or early seventh century. 69 This description is the core of the Matins portion of the All-Night Vigil service of the Russian Orthodox Church today (see Table 2.2) One of the first Palestinian monasteries, established by Chariton in Patrich, Sabas, Leader of Palestinian Monasticism, Miguel Arranz, N. D. Uspensky: The Office of the All-Night Vigil in the Greek Church and in the Russian Church, St. Vladimir s Theological Quarterly 24 (1980): Taft, Mount Athos, Ibid.

33 32 Table 2.2 Resurrectional Matins and First Hour Nocturnal Psalmody Matins Hexapsalmos Kathisma Matins Today Sabaite Practice ANV* Glory to God in the highest. 7 O Lord, open Thou my lips. Psalms 3, 37, 62, 87, 102, 142 Great Litany God is the Lord Troparia Stasis I Variable Kathisma Psalms 1-50 Little Litany Our Father Kathisma Hymns Kyrie eleison (50x) (Patristic Reading) Lesson from James Stasis II Stasis III Variable Kathisma Little Litany Kathisma Hymns (Patristic Reading) Variable Kathisma Little Litany Psalms Our Father Kyrie eleison (50x) Lesson from 1 or 2 Peter Psalms Our Father Kyrie eleison (50x) Lesson from 1, 2, or 3 John Polyeleon Psalms Evlogetaria 9 Little Litany Hypakoe and Kathisma hymns (Patristic Reading) Hymn of Degrees Prokeimenon Let everything that breathes Gospel Reading Having beheld the Resurrection 10 Psalm 50 Through the prayers of the Apostles. Prayer Canon** Odes 1, 3 Odes 1, 2, 3 Little Litany Kathisma hymn Little Litany Our Father Kyrie eleison Odes 4, 5, 6 Our Father

34 33 Kontakion and Ikos Kyrie eleison Odes 7, 8 My Soul magnifies the Lord Ode 9 11 Ode 9 Little Litany Exapostelarion The Praises Psalms Stichera Troparion Litanies Today Salvation or Having risen Great Doxology 12 Creed Our Father Kyrie eleison (300x) Augmented Litany Morning Litany Dismissal Dismissal Concluding Prayer * Rachmaninoff All-Night Vigil Movement number ** The canons in contemporary use are freely composed hymnography. The Biblical Odes were used in Sabaitic practice and 14 Structure Common to all the Hours First Hour Texts Invitatory Come let us worship. Psalms Psalms 5, 89, 100 Glory Alleluia Kyrie eleison (3x) Troparion of the Hour PsalmVerse Psalm 118: 133 Trisagion Our Father Kontakion Kyrie eleison (40x) Prayer Dismissal Vzbrannoy Voevode [O, champion leader] ANV Taft, Mount Athos, 188.

35 34 The Byzantine Dark Ages The evolution of liturgical rites in Palestine, both at the Anastasis and nearby monasteries, was radically affected in the seventh century by two dramatic invasions. The Persian army first sacked Jerusalem in 614, and dominated the region until 630. Jerusalem was briefly reclaimed by Emperor Heraclius in 630, but the Arab invasion of 637 definitively ended Byzantine control over the city and region for the next four hundred years. Many monasteries were decimated and monastics either fled their communities or were massacred. Mar Saba faced a similar fate: Forty-four of its monastics were tortured and killed, and the Great Lavra was severely damaged. 72 Mar Saba was rebuilt again, though with drastically reduced numbers of community members. In spite of the difficulties of life under the Arab Muslim occupation, a massive influx of newly composed liturgical poetry (hymnography) came from Mar Saba in the eighth century: As often happens after violent destruction, a remarkably creative period followed, and a new monastic office was produced via a massive infusion of ecclesiastical poetry into the former staid and sober monastic psalmody [of an earlier period]. 73 Many of the service texts considered Proper to the Orthodox liturgical yearly cycle date to this time period, and were written by monastics of Mar Saba: Sophronius (later Patriarch of Jerusalem,) Andrew of Crete, John Damascene, and Cosmas of Maioumas. Their innovative hymnographic texts are characterized by highly complex poetic 72 Patrich, Sabas, Leader of Palestinian Monasticism, Taft, Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, 276.

36 35 structure and style that elucidate the major tenets of the faith within the context of the weekly, festal, and Paschal cycles. Though monastic centers produced a tremendous number of new hymns and even entire new forms of liturgical compositions during the eighth century, the Empire as a whole experienced great upheaval. As a result, today s historians of both the secular and sacred aspects of Byzantine culture have few primary sources regarding the period. These years [ ] can rightly be called the Dark Age of Byzantine history: a time of military reverses, political instability, economic regression, and declining education, which has left but a scanty record for modern historians. The evidence is so poor that we often have trouble not only reconstructing the course of events and evaluating the personalities of leading figures, but even discerning the broadest outlines of development. 74 Jerusalem was not the only city under siege. Constantinople was threatened for nearly two centuries by both external and internal political and religious conflict. In 717, Constantinople had nearly fallen to the Arab army, and the imperial city was riddled with political strife and usurpation. Plague repeatedly decimated the populace. 75 In spite of the upheavals, the Great Church at Constantinople had fully developed an intricate rite, reflective of the grandeur expected of an imperial church. The Daily Office of the Great Church did not include an All-Night Vigil service. Vespers was served in the evening and Matins was served in the morning to their own specific sung office. As late as the ninth century, the Constantinopolitan monasteries continued the twenty-four hour system of perpetual vigil: 74 Warren Treadgold, The Struggle for Survival ( ), in The Oxford History of Byzantium, ed. Cyril Mango, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), Ibid., 149.

37 36 in the organization of their liturgical life, apart from the liturgy of the Eucharist the monasteries of the patriarchate were still marching to the beat of their own, different drum. The monks of the capital, called akoimetoi or sleepless because they celebrated in shifts an uninterrupted cursus of hours, had their distinct office. 76 The overwhelming crisis for the Church in the eigth and ninth centuries was Iconoclasm ( ). Iconoclasm was the rejection and condemnation of venerating sacred pictorial depictions. At its height, Iconoclasm included not only the destruction of sacred images (often including destruction of other sacred items in churches,) but also the persecution, anathematization, and even execution of iconophiles, particularly monastics. Many monastic communities were disbanded by imperial decree and monasteries appropriated by the state. 77 Those that survived became centers of outspoken expression against Iconoclasm, and the emperors that favored it. Studite Typikon One monastic was particularly vocal in his opposition to Iconoclasm. The Abbott of the Sakkudion monastery in Bythinia, Theodore, was brought to Constantinople after the first wave of Iconoclasm ended in 787 to restore the monastery of St. John the Baptist, at Stoudios. He summoned to the capital some monks of St. Sabas [Mar Saba] to help combat iconoclasm, for in the Sabaitic chants Theodore discerned a sure guide of orthodoxy.so it was the office of St. Sabas, not the akolouthia ton akoimeton then currently in use in the monasteries of Constantinople, which the monks of Stoudios would synthesize with material from the asmatike akolouthia or cathedral office of the Great Church to create hybrid Studite office, the ancestor 76 Taft, The Byzantine Rite: A Short History, J. M. Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 42.

38 37 of the one that has come down to us to this day: a Palestinian horologion with its psalmody and hymns grafted onto a skeleton of litanies and their collects from the evchology of the Great Church. 78 The monasteries of Constantinople adopted this hybridized practice in the last quarter of the eighth century, and continued to add to its hymnography. 79 The practice of a twentyfour hour office of sleepless ones was eliminated. However, the Studite Typikon functioned over a coenobitic monastic community of approximately one thousand monks. 80 Though the community adopted the Palestinian lavrite practice, coenobitics had no need for an All-Night Vigil service, and none appears in the Studite Typikon. 81 So the difference between Studite and Sabaitic usage concerns mainly the order of night prayer Psalmody and vigils were the core of the prayer of the Palestinian anchorites, and this agrypnia will be one of the main charecteristics distinguishing the looser lavriote and hesychast organization from the tight cenobitism of the Studites, who had a lighter pensum of psalmody and fewer offices, as well as the affrontery to sleep at night. 82 The juxtaposition of the newly introduced Palestinian monastic practice of the Daily Office with elements (litanies and collects) of the service style of the Great Church, combined with an influx of new hymnography, initially Sabaitic but increasingly Studite, superimposed upon a weekly, Paschal, and yearly cycle undoubtedly caused confusion. A 78 Taft, Mount Athos, For those interested in the development of Byzantine and Russian hymnography, two fine sources to consult are Alexander Kazhdan s A History of Byzantine Literature ( ) and Sister Ignatya (Puzik s) volume Tserkovnye Pesnotvortsi [Church Hymnographers]. See bibliography for full citations. 80 Taft, Mount Athos, Ibid., Ibid.,

39 38 written rule was needed to avoid liturgical disorder. 83 The first Studite Typika or liturgical ordos to govern their use were composed in the ninth or tenth century. 84 At approximately the same time, Rus accepted Christianity. The All-Night Vigil in Russia Russia was once part of a larger territory known collectively as Rus. During the first millennium of Christianity, the people of Rus were pagan. In 988, Great-Prince Vladimir of Kiev unified the people of Rus through the Orthodox faith as practiced in the Byzantine capital of Constantinople. 85 As described in the Russian Primary Chronicle, a mass baptism in the Dniepr River and conversion of the populace marked the official formal beginning of Christianity in Rus. 86 After his conversion, Great-Prince Vladimir was allowed to marry the Byzantine Emperor s sister, Anna, cementing the political and religious ties between Kievan Rus and Constantinople. Liturgical services and music came to Rus via Byzantine clergy and service books. It is likely that initially after the conversion of Rus, liturgical services were not widespread: there were neither churches nor enough trained clergy to service them. Initally, churches would have been associated with court centers, and later, fledgling 83 Taft, Mount Athos, Taft, Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, Vladimir s grandmother, Great-Princess Olga, had previously converted to Orthodoxy and was baptized in 957 in Constantinople. The Byzantine Emperor, Constantine VII, was her godfather. Great-Princess Olga s son, Svyatoslav (Vladimir s father,) remained a pagan throughout his life, and died in Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire, 119.

40 39 monastic communities. They may have used either the Daily Office of the Great Church of Constantinople or the Studite practice. However, the very nature of the services of the Great Church, formal rites of a sung office with imperial processions, would have been impractical for the newly baptized Rus. By 1067, a copy of the Studite Typikon by Patriarch Alexios had already been brought from Constantinople to the Kievo-Pichersk monastery, where it was translated from its original Greek into Slavonic. 87 The Studite-Aleksiev Typikon was adopted by other Russian monasteries and was spread by bishops and hegumens who came from the Kiev cloister. 88 It is quite possible that the asmatikos [sung] office was followed in secular [cathedral] churches while, from the time of St. Thodosius of the Caves, the Typikon of the Studios was followed in monasteries. 89 Neither the asmatikos of the Great Church of Constantinople, nor the Studite- Aleksiev Typikon included the All-Night Vigil service in its Daily Office. Resurrectional celebrations of the Daily Office included Great Vespers and Matins served separately. There were no Resurrectional All-Night Vigils in Russia before the fourteenth century. 87 A.M. Pentkovsky, Typikon Patriarha Aleksiia Studita v Vizantii i na Rusi [Typikon of Patriarch Alexey the Studite in Byzantium and Rus ] (Moscow: Moscow Patriarchate, 2001), Ibid., Arranz, 87.

41 40 The All-Night Vigil only became possible in Russia during the late fourteenth century with the arrival of the neo-sabaite Jerusalem Typikon, still in use today. 90 The neo-sabaite Typikon in Russia In Constantinople, all church life was severely affected by the Fourth Crusade. In 1204, the capital city of Constantinople fell to the Latin Crusaders. 91 As a result, the Byzantine imperial house, the Patriarch, and most of the Church hierarchy fled to Nicaea, while the capital s cathedral churches and monastic centers alike were devastated. Many Constantinopolitan monasteries, included in their number the Studite [monastery] with its great ustav, 92 were subjucated, abandoned or destroyed. 93 With the shift of imperial and hierarchical leaders to Nicaea, the complex liturgical practices of the Great Church and the Studite monasteries were abandoned in favor of a simpler monastic practice: Starting from this time, the gradual weakening strength of the empire, and connected with it the existing government and economic ties of the Church, even more so enabled the successful spreading of the Jerusalem ustav. The thirteenth century can be considered the time [of] local spreading of the Jerusalem ustav on the Orthodox East The neo in neo-sabaitic typikon refers to the developments primarily in regards to the Matins canon, and the divisions of the Psalter in winter and summer seasons. For more information on the neo-sabaite Typikon, see Taft Mount Athos, Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire, Ustav is a Russian variant of the Greek word Typikon. 93 Nikolai Uspensky, Pravoslavnaia vechernia: istoriko-liturgicheskii ocherk. Chin vsenoshchnogo bdeniia (agrypnia) na pravoslavnom Vostoke i v Russkoi TSerkvi, [Orthodox vespers: a historical-liturgical guide. The All-Night Vigil rite (vigil) in the Orthodox East and the Russian Church] (Moscow: Izdatel skii Sovet Russkoi Pravoslavnoi TSerkvi, 2004), Uspensky, Pravoslavnaia vechernia, 220.

42 41 As the Byzantine Empire weakened, Rus, too, faced grave political concerns from its western neighbors and the ongoing invasion of Mongols from the east: In the fourteenth century, drastic territorial changes were taking place. The old Kievan principality was being absorbed into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. In the center and northeast the Mongols of the Golden Horde were now dominant and under their tolerant overlordship the principality of Moscow was growing in importance. These changes in the balance of power were reflected in ecclesiastical problems of organization. Originally there had been a single metropolitan of Kiev and all Russia. But with political changes and the expansion of Lithuania in the west the metropolitan had moved, first to Vladimir in 1300, and then in 1328 to Moscow, though keeping his title of Kiev and all Russia.Further, from the ecclesiastical angle in the changing patriarchal circles there was some difference of opinion as to whether it was wiser to promote centralization or diversity. 95 It is unclear whether the Jerusalem ustav was adopted 1. in order to bring Rus into line with the Typikon in use by the Patriarchate of Constantinople, or 2. for internal unification to eliminate the use of the other two existant ordos of the time (that of the Great Church and the Studite-Aleksiev Typikon), or 3. if it was simply a natural result to use a simpler monastic tradition during a period of suppressed liturgical life resulting from political upheaval, or 4. if an explanation combining all of these possibilities would be most accurate. For unspecified reasons, Metropolitan Alexei of Moscow introduced a Church Slavonic translation of the Jerusalem Typikon to Moscow during the 1360s. 96 The change in practice was accepted with no dissent. 97 Over the course of the next century, the 95 Hussey, The Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire, A. M. Pentkovsky, Typikon Patriarha Aleksiia Studita v Vizantii i na Rusi. [Typikon of Patriarch Alexey the Studite in Byzantium and Rus ], Paul Meyendorff, Russia, Ritual, and Reform: The Liturgical Reforms of Nikon in the 17th Century (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir s Seminary Press, 1991), 27.

43 42 regulations of the Jerusalem Typikon would come to govern liturgical life in Russia. With the Jerusalem ustav came the celebration of the Resurrectional All-Night Vigil service. 98 As a result of having had several Typikons, the Russian Church of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries was differentiated by a large variety of liturgical practices, genuinely formed on the basis of the merging of her former practices with the new. 99 Church reforms were carried out by Patriarch Nikon during the seventeenth century in response to the wide variety of liturgical practices and texts in use. The basic structure of the All-Night Vigil as served in the Russian Orthodox Church has remained relatively stable since the Nikonian reforms of the seventeenth century. The biggest change over the past three centuries for the All-Night Vigil has been a reduction in the length of time necessary to execute the service. As complex Russian chant systems were abandoned for increasingly simple styles based on Western chordal harmony, the All-Night Vigil became shorter and shorter. A typical All-Night Vigil as served in a parish today lasts approximately two to three hours. By tracing the history of the All-Night Vigil, even broadly, we can see that the service is not at all a homegrown Russian practice. Rather, it is an early Jerusalem service structure heavily influenced by monastic psalmody, combined with prayers from the Constantinopolitan tradition of the Great Church. It is further enhanced with an added layer of both Palestinian and Constantinopolitan (and in later centuries, Russian) poetic 98 Uspensky, Pravoslavnaia vechernya, Ibid., 279.

44 43 hymnography. This is the rich liturgical canvas upon which Rachmaninoff painted his masterpiece.

45 44 CHAPTER THREE RACHMANINOFF AND THE ORTHODOX CHURCH Early Church Experience Rachmaninoff s early exposure to the Orthodox Church was primarily thanks to his grandmother Sofia Aleksandrovna Butakova, a deeply religious woman. Rachmaninoff spent three summers during his St. Petersburg Conservatory years with his grandmother. The first summer they spent together in Novgorod, and the two following summers they stayed in the family holding Borisovo, outside of Novgorod. 100 Butakova was a musical person, and guests in her home often included choir directors of Novgorod. 101 Rachmaninoff s cousin Sofia Satina recalled: Grandmother loved to visit churches, and he [Rachmaninoff] would take her to services, and started listening himself to the sacred singing and enjoying the music. An even greater impression was made on him by the ringing of the bells and services in Novgorod, in the monasteries and cathedrals, where he would drive his grandmother, when he lived with her during the summer outside Novgorod. 102 Another of Rachmaninoff s cousins, Anna Trubnikova, also described these church visits: Often, his grandmother would take him to the monastery, where there was a good choir. The wonderful singing helped young Serezha stand through the long 100 Sofia Satina, Zapiska o S.V. Rakhmaninove, [A note about S.V. Rachmaninoff] in Vospominaniia o Rakhmaninove, [Remembrances of Rachmaninoff] edited by Zarui Apetovna Apetian, (Moscow: Muzyka, 1988), 17. All translations from Russian sources not available in English are by the author of this D.M.A. document. Titles of sources are transliterated and appear with a brief translation in brackets. 101 M.I. Aleynikov, O religii v duhovnom mire S.V. Rakhmaninova (shtrihi k portretu kompozitora), [About religion in the spiritual world of S.V. Rachmaninoff (traits of the composer s portrait)] S.V. Rakhmaninov i mirovaya kul tura [S.V. Rachmaninoff and world culture ] V (2013), Satina, Zapiska o S.V. Rakhmaninove, 18.

46 45 monastic services, and afterward, the soft, warm prosphora 103 relieved one s tiredness. Besides that, listening to the bell ringing gave him great satisfaction. Later on, as an adult, he went to hear the ringing in the Sretensky monastery, in Moscow, where the bell-ringer was a true master of his work. 104 During his years studying with Nikolai Sergeevich Zverev ( ), Rachmaninoff did not travel home to spend vacations with family. Instead, Zverev and the students who lived with him spent the breaks together at Zverev s dacha 105 outside Moscow, with occasional trips to more interesting places, like the Crimea. When he was fifteen years old, Rachmaninoff was allowed a very short visit to Novgorod to see his grandmother. 106 While at the Moscow Conservatory, Rachmaninoff took basic religion classes as prescribed by the national curriculum requirement for all schools. The instructor was Protopresbyter Dmitriy Vasil evich Razumovsky ( ), an expert on church music, author, and teacher of liturgical singing. He was remembered fondly by one of the students that also lived with Zverev, Matfei Presman ( ), as a cultured, lenient, and very kind teacher, liked by all the students. 107 Religion classes were informal 103 Blessed bread 104 Anna Trubnikova, Sergei Rakhmaninov in Vospominaniia o Rakhmaninove [Remembrances of Rachmaninoff] edited by Zarui Apetovna Apetian, (Moscow: Muzyka, 1988), Summer house 106 Satina, Zapiska o S.V. Rakhmaninove, Matfei Presman, Ugolok muzykal noy Moskvi vos midesyatikh godov, [A small corner of musical Moscow in the eighties]. In Vospominaniia o Rakhmaninove, [Remembrances of Rachmaninoff] edited by Zarui Apetovna Apetian, (Moscow: Muzyka, 1988), 172.

47 46 discussion sections, where the students could ask anything. Formal material covered and examination questions were, of course, appropriate to the age of the students: Rachmaninoff was taking the catechesis exam. Zverev, of course, was there also. Rachmaninoff was asked to name the Evangelists. Having named three, Rachmaninoff forgot the name of the fourth. Seated at the table, Zverev quickly hurried to help his student and charge: Do you know, Serezha, where [Matfei 108 ] Presman is right now? he innocently asked Rachmaninoff. It would seem that the completely not-to-the-point question which Zverev asked reminded Rachmaninoff of the name of the fourth Evangelist, and, not answering anything to Zverev s question, he named Evangelist Matfei. 109 The conservatory religion course, geared to its audience of children and young teenagers, was obviously not a particularly rigorous theological education. Between the years 1890 and 1900, Rachmaninoff is known to have attended services at various churches, including visits to the Sretensky monastery and the Andronyev monastery. At Andronyev, he stood in the half-darkness of the huge church for the entire service, listening to the ancient, stern singing from the oktoikh [Book of eight tones] executed by the monks in parallel fifths. This produced a strong impression on him. 110 Rachmaninoff s early experiences with the Church, both with his grandmother Butakova and on his own as a student, were clearly positive. Rachmaninoff s first sacred choral composition was not for the Orthodox Church. His short (only thirty-one measures) Latin motet Deus meus (1890) can be described as simply a student exercise in imitative entrances. Written as part of his final conservatory composition exams, the motet sets only a single line of Psalm text and was not even 108 Matfei is the Russian equivalent of the name Matthew. 109 See footnote 108. Presman, Ugolok muzykal noy Moskvi vos midesyatikh godov, Aleynikov, Zapiska o S.V. Rakhmaninove, 19.

48 47 admired by its composer, who called it trash. 111 However, choral singing was taken seriously at the conservatory, and participation in the choir class was mandatory even for pianists. 112 Therefore, Rachmaninoff was already somewhat familiar with the choral instrument even as a student. Deus meus was probably written with the choir class ensemble in mind. Rachmaninoff s first work on an Orthodox service text would not come until 1893, after he had completed his studies at the conservatory. In 1895, Rachmaninoff began his first major composition using extant sacred thematic material. The Latin plainchant Dies Irae pervades his first symphony. Though this chant is not from or used in Orthodox Church tradition, it did appear in many other works by Rachmaninoff. 113 Unfortunately, this early composition with chant was received poorly at its St. Petersburg premiere on March15, The composer Cesar Cui ( ) wrote in Novosti: If there were a conservatory in Hell, if one of its talented students were instructed to write a programmatic symphony on The Seven Plagues of Egypt, and if he were to compose a symphony like Mr. Rachmaninoff s then he would have fulfilled his task brilliantly and delighted the inmates of Hell. 114 Though the work was called decadent at its premiere, the real reason for its disastrous debut was not in the musical material, but in the failure of the conductor, 111 Morosan, The Sacred Choral Works of Sergei Rachmaninoff, lxvii. 112 Presman, Ugolok muzykal noy Moskvi vos midesyatikh godov, Barry Martyn, Rachmaninoff: Composer, Pianist, Conductor (Brookfield, Vermont: Gower Publishing Company, 1990), Ibid., 97.

49 48 Alexander Glazunov ( ). 115 Following this humiliating public embarrassment, Rachmaninoff immediately left the city and retreated to his grandmother Butakova s home in Novgorod for several days before returning to Moscow. 116 After the summer of 1897, Rachmaninoff returned to Moscow and worked as the second conductor for Mamontov s opera company. Rachmaninoff did not compose for the next three years: I [Rachmaninoff] felt like a man who had suffered a stroke and for a long time had lost the use of his head and hands. 117 Suffering from depression, he focused his energies not on composing, but on teaching piano and conducting opera, appearing only rarely in concert as a performer. 118 His first major encounter as an adult with the Russian Orthodox Church was not a musical one, but rather of a more personal nature. In the spring of 1902, Rachmaninoff married Natalia Satina ( ), also a pianist and graduate of the Moscow Conservatory. 119 Their engagement had created a two-fold problem: both parties to be married had to go to confession, and, the bride-to-be was Rachmaninoff s first cousin (Rachmanoff s father s sister s daughter). Marriage between relatives of such a close degree is forbidden in the Orthodox Church. Rachmaninoff s cousin Anna Trubnikova described the situation, shedding light on his religious mindset: 115 Martyn, Apetian, Literaturnoe nasledie, Evgeniia Nikolaevna Rudakova, S.V. Rakhmaninov (Moscow: Muzyka, 1998), Satina, Zapiska o S.V. Rakhmaninove, Rudakova, S.V. Rakhmaninov, 69.

50 49 And here was the complication to be married, the groom and bride had to have a certificate that they went to confession. Sergei was not a churchgoer, and did not go to confession, and categorically refused to go to confession. My mother knew the priest, Amfiteatrov [of the Archangelsky Cathedral]. He was an exceptional person kind, smart, highly educated. Having heard Mother s request, Fr. Valentin asked for Serezha to be sent to him and promised to resolve this complication. Serezha, loving and respecting my mother, gave in to her convincing and went to Fr. Valentin. He returned satisfied and joyful, and said that if he had known Amfiteatrov earlier, then certainly, he would have long ago gone to him. How he resolved this complicated question, Serezha did not say, and no one asked. 120 However, his cousin Sofia Satina ( ) had quite a different recollection of Rachmaninoff s experience with, and opinions of confession. After reading Trubnikova s observation, Satina wrote on November 30, 1965: Trubnikova s conviction that Serezha never went to confession is completely untrue. Trubnikova came to that conclusion because of the fact that he refused to go to this [pre-marriage] confession under pressure of necessity. S[ergei] V[asilievich] unequivocally, jealously guarded his inner world. But he not only once before marriage asked me to go with him to church when he govel, 121 and he insisted that I should not speak to anyone at home about it. Only our old nanny Feona Dmitrievna and I knew about this (she would wake us early to go to church). His favorite church was the old Dormition church on Mogiltsah 122 near the Vasilevski and Mertvih sidestreets. 123 Trubnikova further elaborates on the complications of obtaining permission for the marriage ceremony: 120 Trubnikova, Sergei Rakhmaninov, Govel can be used to indicate any period of preparation for confession, or confession itself. 122 Translates as on the graves. Several explanations for the name of this church have been proposed, including the uneven hill-like territory upon which the building stands, and the surname of the largest landowners ( Mertviy ) on the street nearest the church. Moskva: Tserkov Uspeniya, [Moscow: Dormition Church] (accessed January 26, 2014). 123 Satina, Zapiska o S.V. Rakhmaninove, 494, endnote 2.

51 50 The last and highest barrier was permission from the Tsar for first cousins to marry if the Tsar should refuse [this petition] no priest would agree to perform the marriage The groom must not have been very worried about the possibility of the wedding not taking place. Writing to Natalia Skalon while traveling from a St. Petersburg concert in April 1902, Rachmaninoff described the situation merely as a financial and logistical annoyance, without specific mention of either the confession or the requirement for formal petition with the Tsar, though noting the complicated clergy involvement: When I get to Moscow, several days will have to be spent dealing with priests, and then I leave at once to the village in order to write at least twelve songs before the wedding, to make enough money to pay the priests and to go abroad [for the honeymoon]. And even afterwards, rest will not come, because I have to write, write, write without putting my hands [down] so as not to go broke. 125 Rachmaninoff married Natalia Satina at an army chapel in the outskirts of Moscow. Army chapels were considered beyond the immediate control of the church Synod and answered directly to the Tsar. Rachmaninoff s grandfather was a general, and this family military connection probably helped the composer obtain the desired church wedding. The bride also noted the peculiar circumstances and location of the church ceremony, and Rachmaninoff s demeanor: We married on April 29, 1902 at the edge of Moscow in the church of some regiment. I was riding in the carriage in my wedding dress, rain poured as out of a bucket, and one could only enter the church walking past [through] very long barracks. The soldiers were lying on their bunks and looking at us in 124 Trubnikova, Sergei Rakhmaninov, Apetian, Literaturnoe nasledie, 315. Letter to N.D. Skalon dated April 1, 1902, written from the train station Chudovo.

52 51 surprise Sergei was in a dress jacket, very serious, and I, of course, was horribly worried. 126 There was reason to be worried: there had still been no official permission for the wedding, which could prove to be ruinous: In memory there had been such an instance [incident]. Having managed to go around the law and lived together already many years, with grown children, someone told [the authorities] and a marriage was nullified, and the husband and wife were sentenced to penitence in monasteries, and their children were declared unlawful. 127 Official notice of the Tsar s permission for the ceremony arrived after the service. 128 Like many of the landed gentry, Rachmaninoff was probably not intimately familiar with church rubrics. But, he did attend festal services when he was at the family estate, Ivanovka, where he would spend the summers composing. On all feastdays, Rachmaninoff with his family would drive to church, to the service. Also, he often drove to church alone. Likewise, the priest would come to Ivanovka, and they would have long discussions, either in Sergei Vasilievich s office, or in the summer-house [gazebo] in the park. 129 His recollection of the Paschal service of 1914 fully details the midnight procession in the Kremlin, where he joined in singing with the bass section of the Synodal Choir at the invitation of its director, Nikolai Danilin ( ). 130 It was the 126 Natalia Rachmaninoff, Vospominaniya o Rakhmaninove, [Remembrance of Rachmaninoff] Trubnikova, Sergei Rakhmaninov, Ibid., Aleynikov, Zapiska o S.V. Rakhmaninove, See Appendix C.

53 52 Synodal choir that premiered his major liturgical compositions, Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Op. 31, in 1910, and his All-Night Vigil, Op. 37, in Sacred Choral Works Overview Rachmaninoff composed only three works on Orthodox texts: V molitvakh neusypaiushchuiu Bogoroditsu [The Mother of God, ever vigilant in prayer] composed in 1893; the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Op. 31 composed in 1910; and the All- Night Vigil, composed in The first of these three works, V molitvakh neusypaiushchuiu Bogoroditsu, was not published during the composer s lifetime but circulated in manuscript copies. 131 Composed during the summer of 1893, the small church concerto, V molitvah neusipayushchuyu Bogoroditsu [The Mother of God, ever-vigilant in prayer] is a setting of one of the Proper texts (the kontakion) for the Feast of the Dormition. The Moscow Synodal Choir, conducted by Vasily Orlov ( ), premiered the short work in concert on December 12, Though the work lacks both in length and depth, this foray by the young composer into sacred composition, coupled with his obvious talent, must have indicated great potential for Rachmaninoff to produce more church music. Rachmaninoff intended to continue exploring the sacred genre with at least one more composition the following spring. He wrote to Stepan Smolensky ( ) on March 16, 1894: 131 Morosan, The Sacred Choral Works of Sergei Rachmaninoff, xlviii. 132 Ibid., xlviii.

54 53 [I] very much regret, dear Stepan Vasil evich, that I must drop for an indefinite amount of time my one uncompleted work, namely: the sacred Concerto. It is likewise very unpleasant for me that with that I am not fulfilling my promise, given to you. I dropped this piece due to the necessity of preparing for a large concert in Kiev. Frankly speaking, I had highly enough time, to finish writing not only one Concerto, but even several. I didn t write even one Either I did not have the patience, or ability to cope with this text. In any case, both the former and the latter are very unfortunate. Ultimately, I think that I will finish writing this composition at some point, and then I, having picked up the small bundle of the score, will run to you, in the hope that you will then take pity to perform this Concerto, by which, undoubtedly, you will grant me great pleasure. 133 Rachmaninoff never wrote the promised sacred concerto. He did not even return to composition of any form of Orthodox music for more than a decade after his 1894 letter to Smolensky. But Smolensky had not given up on a future for Rachmaninoff in church music. He attempted to employ Rachmaninoff at the Synodal Choir School, to which Rachmaninoff replied on June 12, 1896: Dear Stepan Vasilievich! Yesterday, I received your letter, to which I am hurrying to respond, first of all with sincere gratitude for your desire to have me numbered among your instructors. It would, likewise, be for me pleasing to serve at your [institution], but I cannot agree to the salary offered.and secondly, to the date appointed by you for the start of instruction. That is, I cannot take 100 r[ubles] less for a yearly rate and cannot begin instruction earlier than September 20, in that I work only in the summers, when I, in [good] conscience say to you, have the misfortune of being placed in such a position that I have only one purpose that purpose is to earn as much money [as possible] by the autumn for my small works. In conclusion, I ask you, dear Stepan Vasil evich, to forgive me for declining Apetian, Literaturnoe nasledie, Ibid., 251.

55 54 Even after Rachmaninoff declined the job offer, Smolensky tried to prompt Rachmaninoff to further sacred composition by providing him with a copy of the text to the Liturgy service. Unfortunately, the timing of Smolensky s attempts must have coincided with the failed premiere of the First Symphony. Rachmaninoff wrote to Smolensky on June 30, 1897 from Ignatovo, where he was staying for the summer, recuperating: Forgive me, dear Stepan Vasil evich, for this late answer to your dear letter with the text of the Liturgy. Believe me, I did this [i.e. delay in answering] only because of my ill health, otherwise I would have thanked you long ago for your kindness and attention to me. It is not fate for me [you] see, to write a liturgy. I now feel so poorly, that I can only be engaged with treatment. As well, I am tied to entirely outside work, that is, the reduction for piano four-hands of the symphony of A. Glazunov. This work I must certainly do this summer. In much, I have bad luck and unpleasantness! 135 Rachmaninoff did not make another contribution to the sacred repertory until 1910, when his Divine Liturgy, Op. 31 was finally composed, nearly thirteen years after Smolensky s attempt to instigate such a major work. The Divine Liturgy and the All-Night Vigil were the composer s only significant contributions to the genre of sacred music. It is important to note that the documentation and correspondence available relavant to the Divine Liturgy is far greater than that available for the All-Night Vigil. As a result, much of what is understood regarding Rachmaninoff s work process, mindset, and as has been noted, lack of liturgical and 135 Apetian, Literaturnoe nasledie, 263.

56 55 rubrical knowledge and experience, is drawn from the materials available regarding the Liturgy. 136 Faced with liturgical terminology with which he was unfamiliar, Rachmaninoff corresponded with church composer Alexander Kastal sky ( ) in order to better understand the structure of the Divine Liturgy service. Though his unfamiliarity with specific aspects of liturgical knowledge is obviously documented by his correspondence regarding the Divine Liturgy, the fact that the correspondence ever took place at all indicates that Rachmaninoff took composition on sacred texts seriously: what he did not know, he tried to find out, even when the definition of a word or ecclesiastical term would have little bearing on performances of the Divine Liturgy. 137 The Moscow Synodal Choir, directed by Nikolai Danilin, premiered Rachmaninoff s Divine Liturgy. 138 The work did not positively overwhelm critics: Most of those gathered to hear the performance of S.V. Rachmaninoff s newly composed Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom were probably expecting a major event, a real celebration for lovers of Orthodox Church music But the Liturgy did not fulfill those expectations the composer this time did not master the task he set for himself As a work of church music, it struck us as being overly subjective, not at all churchly in its affect Either the composer has not yet sufficiently acquainted himself with the Liturgy as a form, or his emotions cannot find expression in this form Morosan, The Sacred Choral Works of Sergei Rachmaninoff, lii-lviii. 137 Ibid., xlviii. 138 Ibid., li. 139 Ibid.

57 56 Perhaps the composer, indeed, had not yet master[ed] the task he sat for himself. Five years later, he would return to text and music of the Orthodox Church and compose what is considered the culmination of the genre: his All-night Vigil, Op. 37.

58 57 CHAPTER FOUR RACHMANINOFF S ALL-NIGHT VIGIL, OP. 37 Historical Context Musical settings of the All-Night Vigil as a cycle are virtually non-existant before the late ninenteenth century. Rather, individual texts from the All-Night Vigil were set separately by composers without any attempt to comprehensively address the service as a musical genre. Beginning in 1880, the presence of choral cycle settings of the All-Night Vigil service paralleled the rise of the New Russian Choral School. 140 The composers of the New Russian Choral School that wrote All-Night Vigil cycles were in relatively uncharted territory. The only setting of the All-Night Vigil dating from the turn of the [nineteenth] century is by Vedel. Only a handful of individual hymn settings from the Vigil were composed during the course of the nineteenth century; it was not until Tchaikovsky published his All-Night Vigil, Op. 52 in 1882 that composers turned their attention to this cycle. 141 There were a variety of musical settings of the All-Night Vigil that preceded Rachmaninoff s All-Night Vigil. Major church composers who composed All-Night Vigil settings include Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov ( ), Semyon Panchenko ( ), Alexander Nikolsky ( ), Alexander Gretchaninoff ( ), and Pavel 140 For an extensive history of the New Russian Choral School, see Vladimir Morosan s book Choral Performance in Pre-Revolutionary Russia, chapters 3, 6 and Vladimir Morosan, Russian Choral Repertoire, in Nineteenth-Century Choral Music, ed. Doona M. Di Grazia (New York: Routledge, 2013), 440.

59 58 Chesnokov ( ). 142 Their settings of the All-Night Vigil vary in number of movements set, and even in titles chosen for the collections (see Table 4.1). 143 Table 4.1 Selected All-Night Vigil settings from the New Russian Choral School Composer Mikhail Ippolitov- Ivanov Semyon Panchenko Alexander Nikolsky Alexandre Gretchaninoff Pavel Chesnokov Catalog # Op. 43 Op. 45 Op. 26 Op. 59 Title of work Izbrannye molitvosloviia iz Vsenoshchnogo Bdeniia [Selected prayers from the All- Night Vigil] Penie na Vsenoshchnoi [Hymns of the All-Night] Neizmeniaemye pesnopeniia iz Vsenoshchnogo bdeniia, [Unchanging Hymns from the All- Night Vigil] Vsenoshchnoe bdenie, [All-Night Year Number of published movements Vigil] Op. 21 Vsenoshchnaia [All-Night] Op. 44 Vsenoshchnaia [All-Night] Texts included in the Ordinary of musical settings of the All-Night Vigil service varied from composer to composer, and cycle settings of the All-Night Vigil service did not necessarily include all the ordinary texts needed for liturgical performance. Composers of the period had far greater success with setting the Divine Liturgy, the main Eucharistic service of the Orthodox Church. The Divine Liturgy more closely resembles 142 For a list of sacred output from composers of the New Russian School, see Vladimir Morosan s Performance in Pre-Revolutionary Russia, table 3.2, pages Morosan, The Sacred Choral Works of Sergei Rachmaninoff, lxxi, footnotes Bdenie is sometimes dropped from the term Vsenoshchnoe bdenie in common parlance. This is a problematic issue, as the meaning of the term, keeping watch, is thereby lost. Therefore, the resultant Vsenoshchnoe only refers to time, all-night, without referring to the action of occurrence itself. 145 Ibid.

60 59 a libretto: the vast majority of the service is relatively unchanging, 146 providing a clear Ordinary to set, as almost all of the text is Ordinary. In 1878, the Tchaikovsky setting of the Divine Liturgy captured the attention of composers and church officials alike regarding the process for officially recognizing liturgical music. Late nineteenth century Russian liturgical music censorship functioned with an administrative byzantine beauracracy. Pieces that did not meet liturgical approval of Imperial censors were not published or performed. After the 1878 Jurgenson case regarding Pyotr Tchaikovsky s ( ) Divine Liturgy, composers were freed from many restrictions of the official church censorship bodies. Publication could bypass the liturgical censors and composers did not have to specifically express the intended function of their works on sacred texts. Composers of the period simply did not address whether their works were to be used liturgically or were solely intended for concert performance: no composer is known to have expressly articulated a clear-cut distinction between works intended for use in church and works best suited for performance outside the liturgical context; the matter was left largely to the critics and to the discretion of each individual church precentor. 147 Without a formal declaration of intent necessary for liturgical publication, choral works on sacred texts could easily be premiered. This created an open avenue for composers to create works on sacred texts without having to define whether the works were for 146 Morosan, The Sacred Choral Works of Sergei Rachmaninoff, lix. 147 Ibid., xlviii.

61 60 liturgical use. Rachmaninoff never indicated what his intentions or preferences were for his All-Night Vigil. 148 Composition Rachmaninoff s All-Night Vigil was composed in less than two weeks in January and February His Divine Liturgy of 1910 had similarly come together quickly, in three weeks. 149 It was common for the composer to work in intense spurts, as described by his wife, Natalia: When he would work, it would proceed very quickly, especially when he was composing on some sort of text. It was this way not only with the romances. His opera Miserly Knight, for example, was composed in nearly just four weeks, strolling among the fields of Ivanovka. Just as quickly went the work with The Bells. When he composed, he did not exist for those around him. Day and night he only thought about composition, completely going into his work. It was this way in his youth, and I observed the same in August 1940, when he composed his last work Symphonic Dances. 150 Rachmaninoff had approached composing his Divine Liturgy with caution. From his correspondence with Kastal sky, it is clear that he was seeking guidance from the preeminent church composer in Moscow on questions of basic liturgical understanding while he worked: I looked up the 102 nd Psalm. It is very long. Is it really necessary to set it completely? At the same time to omit it entirely (as did Tchaiikovsky) I regard as undesirable. To me it seems essential to insert a number at this particular place, so as to separate the initial Lord have mercys from the ones that follow. Is it 148 Morosan, The Sacred Choral Works of Sergei Rachmaninoff, xlviii. 149 Ibid., li. 150 Natalia Rachmaninoff, Vospominaniya o Rakhmaninove, 48.

62 61 possible to use some other, shorter text here? (Incidentally, please tell me what does this word antiphon mean?) 151 Despite the documentation available for the Divine Liturgy, there are no existing letters to trace the mindset of the composer while he worked on the All-Night Vigil. 152 There is no evidence that he consulted anyone regarding any liturgical questions he might have had concerning the All-Night Vigil service. This is peculiar, because the All-Night Vigil is a far more complicated service than the Divine Liturgy. 153 Not only is it much longer in duration, but also there are far more variable portions to the All-Night Vigil service than the Divine Liturgy. It is extremely unlikely that in the five years between the composition of his Divine Liturgy and All-Night Vigil Rachmaninoff became fluent in church rubrics and terminology. Either Rachmaninoff consulted no one and had a thorough understanding of the task at hand (highly improbable) or more likely, he sought advice from church composers for which there is no extant documentation. The most likely person that Rachmaninoff would have turned to for guidance would have been Kastal sky, with whom he corresponded regarding the Divine Liturgy. Kastal sky himself later recalled: His [Rachmaninoff s] sensitivity to the church style of music made me very happy, and the sbornik 154 of Obikhod melodies, which I gave to S.V. Rachmaninoff when he announced his intention to write the All-Night Vigil, turned out to be useful, because [I] put into his artistic hands that material, which 151 Morosan, The Sacred Choral Works of Sergei Rachmaninoff, lii. 152 Ibid., lviii. 153 Ibid., lix. 154 Compilation, meaning a compiled book of music, as in this case, an Obikhod.

63 62 working on he entered upon a true path and achieved in many instances [ways] great results. 155 The lack of correspondence regarding the All-Night Vigil may possibly be explained by the fact that Rachmaninoff s two major sacred works were composed in different places. The Divine Liturgy was composed during the summer of 1910 at the Ivanovka estate, where Rachmaninoff was relatively isolated, surrounded primarily by family. To consult other Moscow church musicians, he would have had to be in contact via post. The All-Night Vigil, composed during the winter months of 1915, would have been created while Rachmaninoff was in Moscow where he would have easily been able to consult in person with experienced church composers without writing letters to request clarification of liturgical points. Performing in a Liturgical Style Addressing the issue of how to perform Rachmaninoff s All-Night Vigil liturgically is a much easier task than addressing how to perform the work as a concert piece in a liturgical style. A contemporary Orthodox Church choir director today functions in much the same way as one might have a century ago, with a knowledge of rubrics and repertory to piece together an aesthetically pleasing, and hopefully spiritually edifying, program in much the same way as putting together a puzzle, selecting movements of settings from different composers, eras, and styles. 156 This type of 155 Svetlana Zvereva, Aleksandr Kastal'skii: idei, tvorchestvo, sud'ba [Alexander Kastalsky: ideas, works, fate] (Moscow: Vuzovskaia Kniga, 1999), See Morosan, The Sacred Choral Works of Sergei Rachmaninoff, xlviii.

64 63 programming skill has not significantly changed in the last century, for either secular or sacred context. Choosing to perform the entire Rachmaninoff All-Night Vigil (or any of the cycle settings of the service by other composers) would actually simplify the process for a church choir director: to execute the work liturgically one only needs to select music for the texts needed for the service that were not set by the composer. For secular performance by those unfamiliar with the liturgical cycle of the Orthodox Church, the task at hand is far more complicated and daunting. This document intends to demonstrate one approach to this challenge that can be used by others as an example of how to address programming this work in a secular performance context in the future. Firstly, conductors choosing to program this work must assess the capability of their ensemble to perform seventy minutes of continuous, unaccompanied music. For most choral directors, that is a very difficult goal to actually achieve with even the finest of ensembles. Secondly, choral directors need to accommodate their goals for an ensemble s development. The All-Night Vigil would consume either the vast majority of a concert, or be an event in its entirety. A professional ensemble can afford to program such a large cycle without addressing pedagogical needs, but a university ensemble cannot: Students may need a more representative variety of repertoire for educational progress than this work can provide. Thirdly, conductors must address their own Church Slavonic fluency and how effectively their ensemble can learn to deliver such a large amount of text in a language with which they are probably unfamiliar, that is written in an alphabet (even in Russian translation) that they likely do not know.

65 64 An effective approach to this situation is to program an excerpt of the work, considering the liturgical context of individual movements. There is already an efficient delineator within the liturgical structure of the All-Night Vigil itself: Great Vespers and Matins are cohesive units unto themselves. For the viva voce performance of this document, the Great Vespers portion of the work (movements 1-6) was selected with the addition of the first two movements from the Matins portion. Other movements of Matins were excluded from consideration for the viva voce presentation simply because of the large amount of text that they include (particularly movement nine, Blagosloven esi, Gospodi [Blessed art Thou, O Lord] and movement twelve Velikoe Slavoslovie [Great Doxology]. Teaching the Slavonic text to non-native Russian speakers of those two movements alone would have taken more rehearsal time than was available in totality. The goal of the performance was to present a liturgically informed secular performance, not a church service. To perform Rachmaninoff s All-Night Vigil using strict liturgical guidelines in a secular context would both exlude entire movements (1, 5, 7, and 13 or 14) and border on farce. Rather, conductors should evaluate how best to strike a balance between the liturgical predisposition of a work on a sacred text and actual secular performance. Though the first movement was never performed by the group that premiered the piece, and would not be performed in a liturgical context (this invitation to worship is traditionally sung by the clergy and not the choir,) it was used in the viva voce performance. Rachmaninoff did include notated litanies for his Divine Liturgy, but not for

66 65 the All-Night Vigil. Because no litanies or exclamations were used in this performance, the opening Amen of movement 1 (see Musical Example 4.1) was excluded.

67 66 Musical Example 4.1 All-Night Vigil Movement I, measures Sergei Rachmaninoff, Vsenoshchnoe Bdenie, Op. 37 (Madison, CT: Musica Russica, 1992), 1. Examples printed with the authorization of Musica Russica. See Appendix F.

68 67 There is no liturgical action between the texts of movement 1 and movement 2 in a sacred setting. In liturgical use, Priidite, poklonimsya, whether sung by clergy or the choir, is always immediately followed by Psalm 103 Blagoslovi, dushe moya, Gospoda without any litany or use of an Amen. 158 Therefore, the Amen at the beginning of movement 2 (see Musical Example 4.2) was omitted. 158 This is explained in detail by Vladimir Morosan in The Sacred Choral Works of Sergei Rachmaninoff.

69 68 Musical Example 4.2 All-Night Vigil Movement II, measures Sergei Rachmaninoff, Vsenoshchnoe Bdenie, 5.

70 69 In the viva voce performance, the second movement was performed featuring a female soloist. Though a soloist was not used at the work s premiere in 1915, this was due to the fact that use of soloists in the Dormition Cathedral by the Synodal Choir would have generally been an anomaly (though not an impossibility). Rachmaninoff scored the vast majority of the text in movement 2 for mezzo-soprano soloist, with the choir primarily providing the refrains of the psalmody. A native Russian speaking mezzosoprano was available for the viva voce presentation. This not only saved rehearsal time by not having to teach the altos of the choir the diction necessary for the psalm verses, but also reflected the composer s intention to have the movement performed by a soloist. A slight pause was taken between movements 2 and 3, primarily for the practical need to smoothly transition from the final C major chord of the movement 2 (see Musical Example 4.3) into d minor for movement 3 (see Musical Example 4.4). However, in a sacred context there is also liturgical action between these two sections (the Little Litany). The Little Litany helps in the liturgical transition from the psalm of creation (103) to the radically different and evocative psalmody beginning with the text Blazhen muzh izhe ne ide na sovet nechestivikh [Blessed is the man that walks not in the counsel of the wicked].

71 70 Musical Example 4.3 All-Night Vigil Movement II, measures Sergei Rachmaninoff, Vsenoshchnoe Bdenie, 12.

72 71 Musical Example 4.4 All-Night Vigil Movement III, measures Sergei Rachmaninoff, Vsenoshchnoe Bdenie, 13.

73 72 We can see from Chapter Two of this document that the reason the Blazhen muzh text has a permanent place in the Resurrectional All-Night Vigil service at all is the influence of the Jerusalem Typikon and its original monastic continuous psalmody. The first stasis of the first kathisma would have begun with the opening of the first psalm and then proceeded through the entire Psalter. Today, the contemporary standardized usage is an abridgement of the first stasis to only selected verses from the first three psalms with an Alleluia refrain. This considerably shortens services, partly explaining how the so-named all-night service can be executed in contemporary practice in a little over two hours. An element of liturgical style in this movement that was not used for the viva voce performance but could be an effective approach would be having only a small select group of singers learn the verses, with the full choir only singing the Alleluia refrain sections and the conclusion to the psalmody, the Slava [Glory] section (see Musical Example 4.5). One would need to carefully orchestrate the alternation from small group to full choir texture without dynamic bombast. Though Rachmaninoff does not indicate use of a smaller group, it would be an efficient way of learning the repertory quickly by non-native speakers of Russian, and would still reflect an appropriate liturgical style, consistent with the tradition of responsorial psalmody.

74 73 Musical Example 4.5 All-Night Vigil Movement III, measures Sergei Rachmaninoff, Vsenoshchnoe Bdenie,17.

75 74 Between movements 3 and 4, there are many choices for the conductor. Liturgically, there is a proper Ordinary text that occurs at this point in the service, Gospodi, vozzvakh [Lord, I call] (psalm 140 was also experienced by Egeria in the Vespers service of the Anastasis). At a typical Resurrectional All-Night Vigil, this text would be sung in the tone of the week from the Oktoechos. 163 This would be followed by ten stichera, a combination from the Oktoechos, with its prescribed Resurrection texts, and the Menaion, with its prescribed daily Proper texts. 164 For the viva voce presentation, a baritone soloist was used to sing Gospodi, vozzvakh, [Lord, I call] the first psalm verse, and Dogmatik stichera in tone 1 Znamenny chant (see Musical Example 4.6). Other musical settings could be used at this point, including choral settings of a stichera for a saint s day from the Menaion. However, if this is done, it would be best to do two stichera, with the first stichera in the Resurrectional Oktoechos tone, and the second stichera could be in a different tone The Oktoechos is the eight-tone cycle of melodies and texts used throughout the liturgical year. Oktoechos is also used to refer to the book comprised of the liturgical texts used in the eight-tone cycle. 164 Stichera are hymnographic texts composed within the eight-tone system, but not specific only to the eight-tone weekly cycle. The Menaion is the collection of Proper texts for each day of the liturgical year. 165 The tone of the Gospodi vozzvakh, if used, must be in the same tone as the first stichera. The tone of the Resurrection stichera and the tone of the Menaion stichera can vary. A Menaion stichera throughcomposed setting could be performed, but in the Orthodox tradition, this is a relatively new approach.

76 75 Musical Example 4.6 Resurrectional Dogmatik, Tone 1 Znamenny chant B. Kutuzov. Vsenoshchnaya i Liturgiya: Obikhod znamennogo peniya [All-Night Vigil and Liturgy: Collection of Znamenny chant] (Moscow: Izdanie Spaso Nerukotvornogo Obraza Andronikova Monastirya,

77 76 The fourth movement, Svete tihiy, is the entrance hymn associated with the lamplighting ritual. In the fourth century, this lucernarium (as witnessed by Egeria) marked the beginning of the Vespers service. Today, in nearly all parish (non-monastic) practice, candles are already lit from the beginning of the service, but the processional liturgical action of an entrance is still the context surrounding this text. Clergy process with the Gospel book, candles, and censer into the altar. To immediately follow Svete tihiy, [Gladsome light] or the entrance, in which the text mentions, now that we have come to the setting of the sun, with Nine otpushchaeshi, including the text of let thy servant depart in peace, distorts the nature of both texts. The first marks an arrival, the second a departure: coming to worship is thus effectively negated immediately by a departure. Though the Biblical context of Simeon s canticle is obviously the priority over the literal, it is no accident that this text is placed almost immediately before the dismissal of the Great Vespers service.to separate these two movements effectively in concert performance so as to evoke a more liturgical style, in the viva voce presentation, the baritone soloist sang a Proper Aposticha stichera (see Musical Example 4.7).

78 77 Musical example 4.7 Aposticha stichera Tsar nebesniy Tone 1 Znamenny chant Oktoikh notnago peniya, sirech Osmoglasnik [The Eight-tones notated for singing] (Saint Petersburg: Sinodal naya Tipografiya, 1900), 6b.

79 78 Following the Nine otpushchaeshi, instead of singing the sixth movement directly, the troparion was treated as it could be at one of the Resurrectional Vigil services: three times. The baritone soloist sang a setting for solo chant (see Musical Example 4.8) of the Bogoroditse Devo text, followed by the women of the choir singing an A minor setting of the Bogoroditse Devo text in two parts (see Musical Example 4.9), followed by the Rachmaninoff setting of the text (see Musical Example 4.10).

80 79 Musical Example 4.8 Bogoroditse Devo, Tone 4 Znamenny chant B. Kutuzov. Vsenoshchnaya i Liturgiya: Obikhod znamennogo peniya [All-Night Vigil and Liturgy: Collection of Znamenny chant] (Moscow: Izdanie Spaso Nerukotvornogo Obraza Andronikova Monastirya, 25.

81 80 Musical Example 4.9 Bogoroditse Devo, Two-part chant Bogoroditse Devo, paduysya, napeva Voznesenskogo monastirya, [Rejoice, O Virgin Theotokos, Ascension monastery chant] _voznesenskogo_monastyrya_dlya_zhenskogo_hora.pdf (accessed January 15, 2014).

82 81 Musical Example 4.10 All-Night Vigil Movement VI, measures Sergei Rachmaninoff, Vsenoshchnoe Bdenie, 32.