Posts by Richard Barrett
An All-Night Vigil for St. Richard of Wessex: An Old Saint is Venerated Anew
Overview: On the evening of 6 February 2022, Dormition of the Virgin Mary Greek Orthodox Church in Somerville, Massachusetts celebrated an All-Night Vigil (full festal Vespers, Orthros, and Divine Liturgy served consecutively) for Saint Richard of Wessex (7 February, +722 A.D.). At the altar were three priests: Rev. Fr. Anthony Tandilyan, proistamenos of Dormition Rev.…
Continue reading »Review: Great and Holy Pascha and The Mystic Pascha
In a recent panel discussion on music for the Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University, composer Benedict Sheehan made the observation that the publication of musical anthologies tends to solidify and codify generational snapshots of particular traditions, carrying authoritative weight for those who use it as a resource. These anthologies… put on the page…
Continue reading »Byzantine Music is Choral Music
Some years ago, a singer who was primarily active in Russian Orthodox choral music pulled me aside at a church music event. “Can I be honest with you about something?” this person said to me. “I don’t understand Byzantine music. To me, it looks like it’s either a soloist or a group of mostly men;…
Continue reading »Worship in the Workshop: Providing Opportunities to Raise the Bar
The joke is at times heard that in the chapels of some of our seminaries, they “don’t worship but workshop.” The sense of this witticism is that what happens in their services is experimentation with rubrics, texts, service order, with an impulse towards “reform.” Over the course of this last summer, however, I was blessed…
Continue reading »Coming Soon: The Liturgical Arts Academy, August 18-24 2019
English-speaking Orthodox faithful in the United States who have wanted to learn the liturgical arts of the Orthodox Church — music, iconography, vestments, architecture and furnishings design, etc. — have historically had limited opportunities to study with knowledgeable teachers. Some have had the opportunity to go overseas to countries such as Greece and Russia to…
Continue reading »A New Translation of the Canon of the Akathist by Fr. Seraphim Dedes
The state of affairs for English-language liturgical texts is fundamentally unstable. A core problem is that there is no existing body that has either the mission or the competence to review and approve English-language liturgical texts, so there is no settled path to a text being adopted once it is produced. In addition, differing jurisdictions…
Continue reading »In Defense of Metrical Translations
A liturgical craft that ideally draws very little attention to itself is that of translation — particularly, the translation of hymnography. The English texts that we hear in church were translated by somebody, and that translator also had to make them natural-sounding and singable in English. In addition, there is also the question of whether…
Continue reading »Heaven and Earth: The Psalm 103 Project Comes to Life
It has been over five years since The Saint John of Damascus Society commissioned The Psalm 103 Project, a big idea that brought together the work of six great composers, Matthew Arndt, John Michael Boyer, Alexander Khalil, Kurt Sander, Richard Toensing (+2014), and Tikey Zes, to create a unique, collaborative choral work that would be a model of…
Continue reading »The Typika Psalms and Beatitudes: A Liturgical Opportunity
Editor’s note: This article addresses the Typika Psalms and Beatitudes in the Divine Liturgy, and describes the differences in usage among contemporary North American Orthodox jurisdictions. In particular, the author considers opportunities in which choirs in the Greek and Antiochian Archdioceses might expand their use of these liturgical texts. It is frequently observed that the Psalter is the chief source…
Continue reading »Voice and machine: Technology and Orthodox liturgical music
Recently, iconographer Aidan Hart published the thought-provoking essay “Hand and machine: Making liturgical furnishings”. Mr. Hart’s piece is part of an ongoing exploration by liturgical artists of the question of how technology has changed, and is continuing to change, our relationship to crafts that have up until recently been done by hand. Liturgical designer Andrew Gould has…
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