Byzantine-Slavonic music
  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,150
    Although I'm a Roman Catholic, I've spent a fair amount of time involved in one way or another with music for the Byzantine-Slavonic churches (in my case, Ukrainian Catholic and Russian Orthodox). I'm curious to find out other people's acquaintance or experience with this music. I'll state here that some of my music has been influenced by Slavonic chant idioms (eg. the Introit for the Nativity "A Light will shine on us" and the isons/drones in my Veni, veni Emmanuel).

    Giffen-A light will shine on us

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    Also, I'd like to mention a contemporary Canadian/Ukrainian composer that people might not be familiar with. He is Roman Hurko, and his sacred music is simply amazing. I stumbled across him when I was looking for settings of the Phos hilaron in various traditions (it's a fixed part of the Eastern rite Vespers). There are many samples on his website to listen to. Probably you'll get the same sense of awe and the divine in his music that I discovered.

    Chuck
  • JamJam
    Posts: 636
    Seeing as I'm Orthodox myself, I'm rather familiar with this music. Spent the last year in a choir singing Serbian polyphony, and have been in tons of Russian churches or OCA churches, which are very Russian in character. I was chrismated Antiochian, though, and have heard my fair share of legit Byzantine chant and Westernised Byzantine chant, in huge churches with choirs and tiny churches with cantors only.

    I'm familiar with a lot of liturgical music resources, and could recommend some cool CDs if anyone wanted. Just lemme know. It's always cool to meet Westerners who have studied Eastern music and love it in the same way that I've studied Gregorian chant and polyphony and love it.

    pax.
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