CHRIST IS RISEN!

Today's episode of "Icons in Sound" features two beautiful CDs, both of which originate in Ekaterinburg, in the Ural mountain region of Russia. Thanks to a very fortuitous collaboration between the two monastic communities responsible for producing the CDs and the academic and artistic community-an extremely rare phenomenon in the Orthodox world-Ekaterinburg has emerged as a place where the liturgical arts, and particularly liturgical music, are cultivated with extraordinary zeal and on a very high level of excellence. The choir of Sisters of the Novo-Tikhvinsky Monastery is coached by one of the faculty members of the conservatory choral department, while the men's choir of the Monastery of the All-Merciful Savior has as its consultant and member, Maestro Valery Kopanev, the Artistic Director and Conductor of the Domestik Municipal Choir of Ekaterinburg, one of the outstanding professional choral ensembles in Russia today.

The two monasteries have produced several CDs, which, for the most part contain chants that date from the late 16^th and 17^th centuries, making Ekaterinburg one of the centers in Russia for the renaissance of chant traditions that had largely been lost in Russia since the late-17th century, when the unison chant tradition received by the Russian tradition from Byzantium was replaced by harmonic part-singing in the Western European style. The sisters in Ekaterinburg sing many different early Russian chants, but their repertoire also includes Byzantine chant, adapted from Greek to Church Slavonic, as well as melodies from the Serbian tradition (see their CD M30, entitled "There, Beyond the Mountains.")

Ever since the 19^th century, which witnessed a revival of scholarly interest in early Russian chants, the assumption has been that Russian chants were sung monophonically, in unison, since that is what the notation indicates. Only some 10 or 15 years ago, some Russian scholars, most notably, Anatoly Konotop, have proposed that Russian chant was sung with an ison, a sustained drone that underpins the melody. Indeed, when sung with an ison, Russian chant takes on a striking resemblance to Byzantine Chant, showing the common roots of the two bodies of chant. The practice of adding the ison is very recent in Russia, and may be still regarded as experimental; groups of singers such as the two monastic choirs featured on today's program, as well as the Russian Patriarchal Choir, under the direction of Anatoly Grindenko, as exploring new territory in their performances and recordings, as they bring to life music that had largely lain silent for some three centuries!

The CDs featured in this episode of Icons in Sound were extremely difficult to procure, and are not currently available. However, selections from the featured CD sung by the Sisters of Novo-Tikhvinsky Monastery are available in mp3 form on their website. They also have a remarkable CD entitled "The Great Multansk Polyeleos" ( E17.) This CD as well as other CDs by the men’s choir of the Monastery of the All-Merciful Savior, (D113 and D126) are available from www.musicarussica.com. If you are interested in reading more about the history and development of liturgical singing in Russia, one of the best and most accessible sources in English is my book, Choral Performance in Pre-Revolutionary Russia, available here.

-Vladimir Morosan

5/2/2008