All-Night Vigil (Rachmaninoff)

All-Night Vigil
Sacred choral music by Sergei Rachmaninoff
The composer
Opus37
TextAll-night vigil
LanguageChurch Slavonic
DedicationStepan Smolensky
Performed23 March 1915 (1915-03-23): Moscow
Movements15
ScoringSATB choir

The All-Night Vigil (Pre-reform Russian: Всенощное бдѣніе, Vsénoshchnoye bdéniye; Modern Russian: Всенощное бдение) is an a cappella choral composition by Sergei Rachmaninoff, his Op. 37, premiered on 10/23 March 1915 in Moscow.

The piece consists of settings of texts taken from the Russian Orthodox All-night vigil ceremony. It has been praised as Rachmaninoff's finest achievement[1] and "the greatest musical achievement of the Russian Orthodox Church".[2] It was one of Rachmaninoff's two favorite compositions[3] along with The Bells, and the composer requested that its fifth movement (Нынѣ отпущаеши, Nunc dimittis) be sung at his funeral.[3]

The title of the work is often mis-translated as Vespers. This is both literally and conceptually incorrect as applied to the entire work; only the first six of its fifteen movements set texts from the Russian Orthodox canonical hour of Vespers.

  1. ^ Francis Maes, tr. Arnold J. Pomerans, Erica Pomerans, A History of Russian Music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar, University of California Press, 2002, p. 206
  2. ^ Rachmaninov's All Night Vigil: Vespers Archived 2006-04-29 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ a b Sergei Bertensson, Jay Leyda, Sophia Satina, Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music, Indiana University Press, 2001, p. 191

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · View on Wikipedia

Developed by razib.in