Variations on an Orthodox theme


The music of the Orthodox Church contains innumerable riches. Today I’m pushing the envelope a little further and recommending a CD of improvisations based on Orthodox hymns. The ECM album is by the Greek jazz pianist Vassilis Tsabropoulos, and here is his own description of the music:
Inspired by ancient Byzantine Greek music and the hymns sung during the Easter period in the Orthodox churches, the music on this album became a poem of eight pictures. It was the timeless essence of this music as well as its expressive simplicity that drew me to it. I approached this rare musical expression with deep respect and attention to its unique melodic form, careful to remain within this rare musical expression with deep respect and attention to its unique melodic form, careful to remain within the context of a holy tradition that has been passed on from generation to generation.

The music included in this recording is a polychromatic mosaic. The musical text is developed in broad phrases, which are repeated in the manner, one might say, of fixed periods, sometimes in the original form and sometimes pianistic variations. Despite this repetition, characteristic of Byzantine composition, the interweaving of the modes and melodic lines leads to frequent leaps, which are underlined for example, by the conclusion of one musical passage in the fourth mode and the beginning of the next an octave higher. Each piece portrays an appropriate mood or scene. Ideally, this collection should be performed only as a set.
The album is titled Akroasis (Divine Music) and it is available on ECM 1737. Sample the music via this link. Track 3, the hymn Ek nyktos gives a very good taster of this outstanding CD.

Vassilis Tsabropoulos has recorded two other albums with Byzantine connections. In Chants, Hymns and Dances he is joined by cellist Anja Lechner and in the newly released Melos the duo team up with percussionist U.T. Ghandi. Both albums include improvisations on themes from the Greek-Armenian Sufi philosopher and composer G. I. Gurdjieff. And talking of Gurdjieff, there is Keith Jarrett’s grossly underrated ECM album Sacred Hymns of G. I. Gurdjieff.

Now listen to some original Russian Orthodox music.
Header photo by Chris Hellier. His wonderful book Monasteries of Greece (Tauris Parke ISBN 1-85043-264-3) is well worth seeking out, but it is out of print and copies aren't cheap. All CDs mentioned in this article were bought at retail. I also paid my own cleaning bills. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Comments

Pliable said…
The link to the music sample at Sterns Music isn't currently opening the media player.

It has worked without a problem before. So I'll leave the link in the hope that it comes alive again - this music really needs to be heard.
9:39 am
Pliable said…
Edmund Rubbra is the unlikely composer of Meditations on a Byzantine Hymn O Quando in Croce for solo viola -

http://www.duttonvocalion.co.uk/proddetail.asp?prod=CDLX7114
9:42 am
G-# said…
The link to the music samples does not work, but some of these recordings by Vassilis Tsabropoulos are available for streaming from Spotify.

If you are in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France or Spain, you may register to the free service at the following URL:

https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/
9:07 pm
Post a Comment

Recent popular posts

Soundtrack for a porn movie

Image
"No, you have not landed on Slipped Disc by mistake. Respected electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze tells the story himself.  The origins of " Body Love " are quite funny. I received a call from a movie producer named Manfred Menz and I wound up becoming his principal composer for a period of time. Amongst others, I composed the "Barracuda" soundtrack for him [1978, previously unreleased on album]. This led to a friendship which lasts till today. Menz now lives in Malibu, California where I visited him a couple of years ago. Anyway, this guy calls me and asks if I would compose the score to a porn movie. I said: "Porn? Nah, I don't do that kind of thing".  As it turned out, the director of the movie, Lasse Braun, had already shot it and had used my albums " Timewind " [1975] and " Moondawn " [1976] as a kind of "working soundtrack". This was obvious because the couples in the film were moving in time to my gro
Read more

Classical music has a lot to learn

Image
In June and July 1945 Yehudi Menuhin performed at camps for “displaced persons” – Holocaust survivors – including outside where the demolished Bergen-Belsen concentration camp had stood. He was deeply shocked by what he saw; yet in 1947 he returned to Germany to perform with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by the recently de-Nazified Wilhelm Furtwängler. Menuhin was the first Jewish musician to perform in post-World War II Germany, explaining that he did so in order to support the rehabilitation of German music and to help heal the spirit of the German people.  My header photo shows Menuhin playing Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 in 1966 with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by the  now fashionably-reviled Herbert von Karan. The Jerusalem Cinematheque - Israel Film Archive describes that collaboration as an example of how "how music can still contribute to reconciliation today". Coincidentally, or possibly not, both Menuhin and Karajan were yoga practitioners. Menu
Read more

All aboard the Martinu bandwagon

Image
Depressing, but predictable, to see the mainstream media scrambling aboard the Bohuslav Martinů bandwagon as soon as BBC Radio 3 announces a cycle of his superb symphonies . Equally depressing, but a sign of the times, to see the Independent publishing an appreciation of the composer's symphonies by a writer who confesses elsewhere to never having heard a single note of them. As Norman Lebrecht famously wrote in the Evening Standard back in 2006: ‘... until bloggers deliver hard facts … paid for newspapers will continue to set the standard as the only show in town’. Sadly the hard facts now show that Norman is no longer at the Evening Standard , and, as from next Monday, the Evening Standard will no longer be a paid for newspaper . But you can find pre-bandwagon appreciations of Martinů here and here . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of
Read more

Master musician who experienced the pain of genius

Image
On that sleeve for his 1985 recording of the Goldberg Variations , Scott Ross is seen standing in the grounds of Château d'Assas in Languedoc. It was here that many of the harpsichordist's great recordings were made. Then, as today, the château dwelt in the twilight zone between grandeur and dereliction, and thirty years ago the recording sessions were regularly interrupted by the sound of rats scurrying across the floor. Scott Ross was born in Pittsburgh in 1951, and moved to France with his mother following the death of his father in 1964. He studied at the conservatoires in Nice and Paris, and first came to Château d'Assas in 1969 to give music lessons to the grandson of its owner Mme. Simone Demangel . When an early music academy was established at the Château d'Assas, Scott Ross gave masterclasses and became a frequent visitor. At first he stayed in a room in one of the towers, but from 1983 he rented a small house across the road from the château. The photos b
Read more

Tribalism is ruining classical music

Image
Marketing is now an accepted tool for trying to reach classical music's elusive new audience. In the world of marketing there are two separate entities, the product and the brand. Classical music's product is the music itself. Fortunately there is very little that can be done to damage the product. The transcendental genius of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and their peers across the ages will continue to shine for decades and centuries to come. But the classical music brand is a different matter.  One definition is that a brand is the personality of an organisation, communicated through an identifying.....voice and tone. So what is the personality, voice and tone that the classical music brand is communicating today? The self-styled 'world's most-read cultural website' is  Slipped Disc . This high-profile face of the classical music brand enjoys the full support of the classical music industry. Yet for years Slipped Disc has leveraged tribalism through its on-line lync
Read more

Audiences need permission to like unfamiliar music

Image
That photo of Sir Malcolm Arnold and Julian Bream appears on the late composer's website . Ten years ago I was literally very close to Sir Malcolm's music. He spent his final years being tended by his carer Anthony Day in Attleborough just a few miles from where I live in Norfolk. I managed Sir Malcolm's website and one of my first posts  about his music dates from that time. Following Sir Malcolm's death in 2006 I never lost my appreciation of his music, but it featured less frequently in my listening. However, recently I have returned to his symphonies, and listening to them again has raised some important questions. His nine symphonies are the product of a master craftsman. They move forward from Mahler and Shostakovich, yet should be immediately accessible to contemporary audiences saturated in the music of those two composers. But, despite this, Sir Malcolm Arnold's symphonies remain unknown outside a small circle of admirers. Why? Let me make it clear
Read more

Listening to music attentively is meditation

Image
As I grow older and as the world grows more insane - both of which seem to be happening at an accelerating rate - I find more and more wisdom in the thinking of Jiddu Krishnamurti , who is seen above. His teachings are very relevant to our current predicament, particularly his sentiment that "We are human beings, not labels". Writing in the introduction to the anthology of his teachings Freedom from the Known , his biographer and editor Mary Lutyens - mother of the still-neglected composer Elisabeth Lutyens - explains: A major obstacle, [Krishnamurti] says, is when we misapply thought based on past experiences to a completely new challenge that demands to be looked at totally anew. Avoiding action that is wrongly dictated by the past is clearly often a problem for our political leaders. Freedom from the Known was compiled at the request of Krishnamurti and its title was given by him to its editor Mary Lutyens. During its editing Krishnamurti said to her that "If
Read more

The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

Image
Wilhelm Furtwängler was born on 25th January 1886. He was Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1923 to his death in 1954, and held this position for the twelve years that Hitler was in power. In January 1945 he was conducting in Vienna, and fled from there to Switzerland where he remained until the Battle of Berlin ended in the defeat of the Nazis. The musicians of his orchestra remained in Berlin during its darkest hour. Here is their story: On 28th March 1945 the Russian forces commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov were just twenty miles to the east of Berlin. A month previously Albert Speer had been replaced as Nazi armaments minister after trying to persuade Hitler that defeat was inevitable. Speer now turned his energies to preventing the musicians of his adored Berlin Philharmonic from perishing in the inevitable final battle. Reich Commisioner Dr Joseph Goebells, who was in charge of the defence of Berlin, had ordered the entire orchestra to be drafted into the Vol
Read more

How classical music became a pseudo-event

Image
A recent thread On An Overgrown Path that culminated in a reader's assertion that it's OK to program something that isn't perfect , received widespread support. This strand was an extension of my argument that audiences need permission to like unfamiliar music . In turn this reflected the response of "I've always felt that it is and will be strong enthusiasm that will change the world" by the much-missed Jonathan Harvey to my early advocacy of his music. But despite this, I am proposing today rather contrarily that excessive enthusiasm as well as excessive neglect can harm a composer's music. In his 1961 book The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America the historian Daniel J. Boorstin coined the term 'pseudo-event' for events that are staged specifically to attract media coverage. He asserted that pseudo-events are in reality 'synthetic news', and that manipulation to maximise media exposure reduces the spontaneity and intrinsi
Read more

Classical music should exploit its healing power

Image
Classical music cannot stand still; so that means it must find new audiences. Western classical music has evolved into a highly dualist art form with clearly demarcated boundaries around its core offering of the orchestral and operatic repertoire. There is little debate that this repertoire must - and will - remain central to the art form. But it can be argued that to open up new markets the current watertight boundaries around that core offering must become porous. An example of a blurring of these boundaries would be an entry into the mind, body and spirit market; a market which a post here in 2011 pointed out was then worth around $11 billion annually in the US, compared with $200 million for classical album sales. It is tempting to dismiss the mind, body and spirit market opportunity as no more than 'Mozart for meditation' and 'Gregorian Chant for the soul', but that would be a mistake. As my earlier post noted , the spiritual dimension is found in many of cl
Read more