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Sun of Justice: A Two-Fold Offering – Part Two
With this two-fold offering of traditional Byzantine Music, we seek to give the listener two distinct yet complementary experiences: first, that of being in a traditional Orthodox church somewhere in the Middle East, wherein one choir sings in Greek and the other in Arabic; and second: that of being in a traditional Orthodox church in…
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Sun of Justice: A Two-Fold Offering – Part One
With this two-fold offering of traditional Byzantine Music, we seek to give the listener two distinct yet complementary experiences: first, that of being in a traditional Orthodox church somewhere in the Middle East, wherein one choir sings in Greek and the other in Arabic; and second: that of being in a traditional Orthodox church in…
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Why “Sun of Justice”?
John Michael Boyer explains the meaning behind the name of our Sun of Justice concert series and the new PRÓTO ensemble recording: The ecclesiastical feast day celebrating the Nativity of Jesus Christ—which came to be called simply “Christ’s Mass,” or “Christmas” in English—was added to the calendar in the Eastern Church somewhat later than were…
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Good Friday In Jerusalem Liner Notes
In the year 637 AD the orthodox Christian Patriarch Sophronios (d. 638) surrendered Byzantine Jerusalem to the Arab Caliph Umar, inaugurating a period of Muslim rule in the Holy City that would last until its conquest by Latin Crusaders in 1099. Although subject to tribute, Jerusalem’s Christian inhabitants retained the right to continue celebrating both…
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The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom by Tikey Zes
Dr. Zes first published in 1991 The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom recorded on this disc. In 1996 he reissued it in an expanded edition that he dedicated to Cappella Romana, which had presented the concert premiere of the work in 1992. It is a collection of choral settings intended for Orthodox liturgical use…
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The Divine Liturgy Of St. John Chrysostom — Liner Notes Part Three
A Second Generation of Greek American Church Musicians After the Second World War a second generation of Greek American church musicians emerged, some of whom had received training in Western art music at American universities. The composers among them soon began to recast the legacy of Sakellarides by rescoring his harmonized works idiomatically for mixed…
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The Divine Liturgy Of St. John Chrysostom — Liner Notes Part Two
John Sakellarides and Greek American Choral Music for the Divine Liturgy The first notated examples of polyphonic music for the Byzantine rite—that is, music employing more than one vocal part intended for worship by Eastern Orthodox and Greek Catholic Christians—appeared shortly before 1453 among the works of singers who served at the courts of the…
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“The Green Patriarch,” Cappella Romana, And a Time For life
Before climate change became a pressing item on the global agenda, signs of human abuse of the natural environment had prompted efforts in religious communities throughout the world to recover spiritually grounded notions of human stewardship within creation. For Orthodox Christianity, this process began in earnest during the second half of the tenure of His…
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A Time For Life — Conclusion
The final phase of the journey (Part III: Remembering) moves towards a hopeful future in which humanity serves as a responsible steward of the earth and thus realigns itself with the creative forces of existence. This journey is a spiritual one in which we remember our true responsibility of stewardship for the earth, and through…
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A Time For Life — Structure
The composite text for A Time for Life was adapted from a wide range of sources that explore the relationship of humanity to nature. The work is structured in three large-scale parts, as follows: Part I: Creation In the first part, the nature of creation is celebrated through praise for the Creator and through rejoicing…
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The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom
The Divine Liturgy bearing the name of St. John Chrysostom (d. 407) is the form of the Eucharist celebrated most frequently in the modern Byzantine rite. Like the communion services of most other Christian traditions, it features two large sections: a service of the Word that climaxes with readings from the New Testament and concludes…
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A Time for Life — An Introduction
One of the most urgent issues facing the world today is the ecological crisis caused by humanity’s inability to live in harmony with the natural world. My collaboration with Cappella Romana grew out of our mutual concern about this potentially catastrophic situation. After many discussions, I decided to create an environmental oratorio in order to…
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