I love slavic choral music (Tchesnokov being my absolute favorite!) but I find it impenetrable due to the language barrier which saddens me. If it were any romantic language I could parse it out, but the differences here are so extreme (right down to alphabet) that I've never been able to touch them
It's worth the plunge. There are various ways approach Church Slavonic, and I had the good luck to first try with a group of first and second generation immigrants who nonetheless had a policy of pronouncing everything as spelled. Having thus taught my own choir, I now find it tricky to eschew the russified vowel reductions that are beginning to be habitual in my expanding operatic/song repertoire.impenetrable
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