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On a cold night early in March 1915, S.I. Tanayev was
surprised to see his former student Sergei Rachmaninov standing on his
snowy doorstep, holding the piano score of the All Night Vigil under his
arm. Rachmaninov had come seeking his approval, although the ailing Moscow
Conservatory composition professor could be a harsh critic. When Sergei
had finished playing it through for his mentor, Tanayev turned wordlessly
to the window with tears in his eyes, and gazed for some moments out onto
the moonlit snow, Finally he whispered to Rachmaninov: I am overcome."
Public reaction was no less heartfelt. The All Night
Vigil (known in the West somewhat inaccurately as "The Vespers" or even
more inaccurately as "The Vespers Mass") was premiered by the Moscow Synodal
Choir (resident at the Uspensky Cathedral in the Kremlin) under Nikolai
Danifin on March 23, 1915 in a War Charity performance at the Nobility
Hall. The work was such an immediate success that five additional performances
had to be scheduled for later that month; the influential critic Grigori
Prokofiev enthused, "its miracle lies in its fusion of the simple and
the sincere." Rachmaninov's achievement stands at the pinnacle of Slavic
Orthodox church music and seemed to many to point the way to further developments
in Russian liturgical composition-opportunities which, with the Church
itself, were swept away in the Communist Revolution two years later. Fleeing
that cultural disaster Rachmaninov sought refuge on America's shores,
where he was already known from a 1909 concert tour. Portions of the All-Night
Vigil were premiered in the United States in 1919 by the Schola Cantorum
of New York, whose director added his voice to the chorus of critical
acclaim: "Suffice it to say that compared to the full-grown maturity of
this work the older settings of Tchaikovsky and Rimsky [Korsakov] seem
like children's work, beautiful though they be, and that confronted with
such austere grandeur and simplicity all other modern Russian church music
must needs take second place."
Written in less than two weeks (January/February 1915),
the Vigil music is conceived on a vast and spacious scale, a true choral
symphony for the liturgy, full of colors both dazzling and muted, texures
both ratified and overwhelming, scoring that ranges from unison to eleven
parts, and a sensitivity to text-rhythm and repetition that at times becomes
hypnotic and incantatory. As is the case with so many sacred choral compositions
which we experience nowadays primarily as concert works (e.g. the Mozart
Requiem, the Monteverdi Vespers, any Renaissance mass), the movements
of the Vigil were intended to function within a church service, surrounded
by and embedded within prayers and litanies chanted in the normal way.
This liturgy for All Night Vigil has no Western equivalent; it combines
the usual services of Vespers and Matins for use on the eve of holy days
in the Church calendar. (Rachmaninov's setting, because of the prayers
he selected, seems intended for use on Saturday evenings, i.e. in preparation
for the Sunday Eucharist.) Of the fifteen numbers in the work, nine are
based (by constraint of tradition) on traditional Orthodox melodies of
various sorts, while the remaining six employ what Rachmaninov later admitted
were "conscious counterfeits" of Russian church motifs. Of the various
traditions at his disposal, the oldest was the znamenny chant inherited
from Byzantium, which had passed out of favor in the 18th century but
lingered in the liturgies of Old Believers and in the imaginations of
musical nationalists. There was also the more recitational "Greek" chant
which arose in Moscow during the 17th century, and the so-called "Kiev"
chant, which also developed in the 17th century when znamenny chants were
adapted to the Ukrainian taste for alternating recitation with choral
refrains. All these materials, and his original themes as well, are subjected
to wonderful permutations and variations, welded seamlessly into a unified
aesthetic whole.
Although more daring and, in a sense, 'modem' than anything
that had come before, Rachmaninov's harmonic approach stood in a nationalist
line stretching back to the 1830s and Mikhail Glinka, who had rejected
the prevailing Italianate style in church composition in favor of a search
for modal harmonies, for a harmonic language derived from the scales and
modes of Russian church music itself. The dedicatee of the Vigil, Stepan
Smolensky (d. 1909), was a former director of the Synodal Choir and professor
of church music, instrumental in fostering a renewed interest in and study
of the znamenny tradition; his successor at the Holy Synod, Alexander
Kastalsky, was a fine and prolific composer whose efforts to put these
ideas into practice earned him Rachmaninov's praise as "the Rimsky-Korsakov
of choral music." Superintendent of the Synodal Choir at the time of the
Vigil's premiere, Kastalsky generously welcomed the work, declaring "[this]
new composition ... is undoubtedly a contribution of great importance
to our church's musical literature ... One must hear for oneself how simple,
artless chants can be transformed in the hands of a great artist ... Of
unusual value is this artist's loving and conscientious attitude towards
our church chants, for in this lies the promise of a splendid future for
our liturgical music." History delayed this promise 70 years and more,
but with the recent reawakening of the Church in Russia, Kastalsky's prophecy
may yet come true.
-Temmo Korisheli
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