| Can this really be the same Rachmaninoff? Having composed some of the most lavish of all piano concertos, could he put on the black robes of Russian liturgy? After writing The Bells, a flamboyant symphony for chorus and orchestra, could he be satisfied with writing 66 minutes of music for an unaccompanied chorus? It seems incongruous, but looking back, Rachmaninoff counted Vespers among his finest works.
In the first two months of 1915, when he wrote Vespers, Rachmaninoff was 41 years old and internationally famous. He led the hectic life of a touring piano virtuoso and a composer whose popular piano works were known all over the world. To refresh himself and his musical inspiration he had researched the roots of Russian music in the chants of the Orthodox Church and composed an extended work for unaccompanied choir, Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom (1910).
In September 1914 the German and Russian armies had gone to war with each other. Rachmaninoff and the celebrated bassist Sergei Koussevitzky gave concerts to raise money for the war effort. Restricted in his movements by the war and wanting to do all that he could for his disunited and threatened homeland, Rachmaninoff turned again to Russian liturgy and chant. Like Beethoven and Verdi before him, Rachmaninoff seldom stepped into a church. But in Vespers he created both a devotional masterpiece and a powerful statement of Russian nationalism.
Vespers, as a service of evening prayer, is observed in many Christian churches. The Russian Orthodox church went further and held an “all-night vigil” before major feast days, beginning at 6 p.m. on Saturday and ending at 9 a.m. on Sunday. By Rachmaninoff's time this was done only at major monasteries, and the liturgy of the all-night vigil had been condensed into a three hour service on Saturday evening. Rachmaninoff titled his work All-Night Vigil, but Vespers is also an accurate title.
If Vespers were sung in a liturgical setting, the movements would be interspersed with prayers and chants sung by the priests. The first performance, however, was sung by the Moscow Synodal Choir in a concert hall at a concert presented to raise money for the war.
Rachmaninoff's two great liturgies were the highest achievements in the history of Russian church music. That history came to a brutal end with the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 and the formation of the officially atheist U.S.S.R.
Some singers in tonight's concert recall singing several movements from Vespers on tour in Estonia and Russia in 1992 with the Valley Master Chorale, the predecessor of the Angeles Chorale.
- John Glenn Paton |
