This episode of "Icons in Sound" continues the exploration of the liturgical music of Orthodox composers of liturgical music in North America. Born and raised in the United States, and a native speaker of English, Greek-American composer Tikey Zes was one of those Orthodox church musicians whose works serve to bridge the musical and linguistic divide between the music brought to this continent by immigrant groups and Orthodox worship music that can be termed "American."
Tikey Zes was born in Long Beach, California, on October 10, 1927, and after musical studies as a child, went on to get a Master of Music degree in violin and composition, and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Southern California. He began to direct choirs in Greek Orthodox churches in 1953, first in Oakland, California, and then at St. Nicholas Church in San Jose, California, a post he has occupied ever since. In 1964, he became a professor of music at San Jose State Universy, a post he held until his retirement in 1991. Throughout his long and distinguished career as a composer and Orthodox church musician, he combined and sythnesized the Greek Orthodox musical ethos of his forebears--the modes and the melodies of Orthodox worship--with the techniques of Western European composition he had studied at USC under Ingolf Dahl. One area of particular interest to him was counterpoint, the art and skill of weaving voices together to form complex polyphonic textures; this art, which matured during the Renaissance in the works such composers as Ockeghem, Josquin des Prez, and Palestrina, is likewise manifest in the transcendent beauty and elegance of Tikey Zes’s choral works. For his lifetime of achievement and service in the field of Orthodox liturgical music, Tikey Zes in 1976 was honored by the Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrios with a letter or offikion naming him “Archon Lampadarios,” a title customarily bestowed on the director of the left choir in the patriarchal chapel.
A number of Tikey Zes’s compositions and chant arrangements for various Orthodox services appear on a CD entitled Tikey Zes: Choral Works (CD J11), recorded in 1999 by Cappella Romana, under the direction of Alexander Lingas. On the program today, the following tracks from that CD are featured:
1. Resurrectional Dismissal Troparion or Apolytikion in the 3rd Plagal mode. The Enlgish translation is as follows:
You abolished death by Your Cross,
You opened Paradise to the Thief;
You transformed the Myrrhbearers’ lamentation,
and ordered Your Apostles
to proclaim that You had risen, O Christ God,
granting the world Your great mercy.
2. The Cherubic Hymn in the Fourth Plagal mode (sung in English)
3. The Hymn to the Theotokos, or Megalynarion from the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, in the Fourth Mode. The text:
It is truly right to bless you, O Theotokos,
ever blessed and most pure, and the Mother of our God;
more honorable than the Cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim,
without corruption you gave birth to God the Word,
we magnify you, the true Theotokos.
4. One is holy, in the First Plagal mode (sung in English)
5. Sunday Communion hymn “Praise the Lord from the Heavens, praise Him in the highest” in the First Plagal mode
6. The Megalynarion, or Hymn to the Theotokos from the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great: The text:
All of creation rejoices in you, O full of grace,
the ranks of Angels and the human race;
hallowed Temple and spiritual Paradise, glory of Virgins;
from you God was incarnate,
and He, who is our God before the ages, became a little child.
for He made your body a throne
and made your womb more spacious than the heavens.
All of creation rejoices in you, O full of grace;
glory to you!
7. The Cherubicon and Communion Hymn from the Liturgy of Great and Holy Thursday, “Receive me today”
Two more selections by Tikey Zes are heard at the beginning and end of the program:
“Come, receive the Light,” from the start of the Paschal Matins service, and
“Receive the Body of Christ” (Soma Christou), in an English adaptation by Vladimir Morosan.
The latter two selections are sung by Archangel Voices on their CD entitled “Resurrection!” (CD I-70) directed by Vladimir Morosan.
Many of Tikey Zes’s works have been published and are available from the composer.
