The word liturgy came from the Greek language and means "work of the people." Being an ecclesiastical structure, liturgy is a central ritual in the rules of many of the Christian confessions. Its purpose is to unite the parish through prayer, ceremony and signing. Liturgy took shape in ancient times and is based on three elements – religious rite, reading and signing.
Up to the second half of the 17th century, Orthodox liturgical signing rested upon echoes chant. However, the historical changes and infusion of European culture in particular could not help but influence ecclesiastical music that was acquiring more and more "instrumental" features in the manner of voice direction, in harmonization and, moreover, in its suitability for concert performance, which did not take long to appear in the works of the composers of the time such as N. Titov and N. Kalashnikov. It was even more the case in the 18th century. The first three quarters of the 19th century did not see any pieces written by any notable composers for church, and only the last quarter was marked by works from the great Russian composers Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Sergey Rachmaninoff, and Alexander Grechaninov. Although a number of musicians turned to church genres at the turn of the century, it was Tchaikovsky who played the most pioneering role as he managed to demonstrate the liturgical form through the prism of his own artistic perception and fill the spirit of liturgical chant with a bright and expressive individual melodic pattern. History has demonstrated that Tchaikovsky's Liturgy of St John Chrysostom is able to exist as both music for divine service and a piece performed in concert. Thus, it was his experience of creating a liturgical cycle that stimulated the development of author's spiritual music in all of its diversity of meanings.
I attend mass frequently. The liturgy of St John Chrysostom is in my opinion one of the most exalted works of art. Anyone following the service attentively trying to comprehend the meaning of each ceremony will be stirred with the spirit when attending our orthodox mass…
(from a letter from Tchaikovsky to Nadezhda von Meck)
In early 1878, Pyotr Tchaikovsky was seriously captivated with an idea of writing a cycle of choruses to the liturgy of St John Chrysostom. Despite his mixed views on religion as it is, Tchaikovsky was genuinely interested in the ceremony of orthodox service and ideas of Christianity.
Such a recourse of a secular composer who had composed several operas and quite an impressive number of symphonic and chamber pieces was in the first place conditioned by Tchaikovsky's yearning, as a human, to find reconciliation with himself, to find peace of mind, and not less importantly by his desire to try his talent out in a sphere that had scarcely been discovered in the works of his contemporaries and older composers, and to do it exactly how he viewed it. Tchaikovsky believed that the traditions that were in place in churches at the time were in a vague compliance with both the fundamental principle and general mood of the orthodox service.
While Tchaikovsky's cycle strictly followed the course of service in a temple, repeating intonation phrases that came from ancient songs, the composer enriched the choruses with his own deeply personal perception. Owing to a music and semantic climax as the liturgy of the Catechumens turns into the liturgy of the Faithful (#5 After the Gospel Reading and #6 Cherubic Hymn), it becomes evident that this work was not only a starting point in the development of liturgy as a form, genre and means of realization of artistic aspiration of the composers who inherited Tchaikovsky's experience but also somewhat of a crucial point in Tchaikovsky's own spiritual life.
The events that followed the writing of the piece were both happy – the performance of the cycle in Kiev as Tchakovsky mentioned in a letter – and sad – after Liturgy of St John Chrysostom was published by Petr Jurgenson and performed in a temple without a proper permit of the Director of the Imperial Chapel Choir, it was banned from divine services. The Imperial Chapel Choir that had a right of censor and publisher deemed the composer's conduct contradicted the established rules of circulation of newly created compositions works for the church.
The ban was lifted only after Tchaikovsky died – the Synodal Choir performed Liturgy during the composer's funeral in Moscow and sang it every year since then on the composer's memorial day, as a rule, in the Church of the Great Ascension at Nikitskiye Gates in Moscow. The same tradition was maintained in the Trinity Cathedral of Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg where the requiem service for the composer took place.
In the Church Slavonic language
Recorded in Assumption Cathedral of Smolensk in 1988. Sound recording supervisor – Igor Veprintsev
Performers: the State Chamber Choir of the Ministry of Culture of the USSR, conductor Valery Polyansky
