- Mar 11, 2003
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That’s a beautiful rendition of his liturgy. Thank you for sharing!Indeed, I could not find an ebook. I will have to get a print copy, which is okay, but I try to get ebooks of everything these days, as I find i just prefer reading on the backlit screen of my tablet, and there’s no danger of dust or papercuts.
Interestingly, there is a recording of an Anglican adaptation of the Rachmaninoff services, beautifully performed by the Choir of All Saints Margaret Street, a particularly famous, ultra high church Anglo Catholic parish near Oxford Street in the City of Westminster, the most important borough in Greater London*, which is available on iTunes and Apple Music, and through other means I am sure, The English Rachmaninoff. Orthodox music adapts well for Anglican use, because when you think about it, the two major events in both churches are the Eucharistic Liturgy, prefaced by Morning Prayer and a Litany, and a vesperal service, Choral Evensong in the Anglican tradition, and All Night Vigils in the Russian/Ukrainian/Belarussian tradition is . Now, the Anglican adaptation does not sound as good as a good performance of the Rachmaninoff vigils and liturgy in Church Slavonic, but it is still an excellent performance, one which also shows that it is possible to translate those services into English.
All Saints, Margaret Street - Wikipedia
All Saints Margaret Street | CD Shop
I would note that among ordinary Anglican parish churches and chapels, All Saints Margaret Street is one of the best in Greater London in terms of its music program (it had a boys school, and a boys choir, until 1968, and maintains professional standards for its adult choristers on a par with cathedrals; also it has a massive organ the size of a typical cathedral organ, built by the legendary British organ builder Harrison & Harrison in 1910 and restored in 2003). The other really good ones are the Christopher Wren designed St. Martin in the Fields (which has probably the best musical program of any parish church in London, on a par with the musical programs of St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey), with a boys choir, an extensive program of concerts, and other things; it is a particularly prominent parish as it is on Trafalgar Square and is the parish church of Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street, and St. Sepulchre in the City of London*, which is the National Musician’s Church and has a fantastic choir, although sadly their organ is in need of restoration and the funds are lacking.** That said, they do a splendid job singing a capella, and thus their music evokes that of an Orthodox parish.
Lastly, although not technically Anglican parishes in the ordinary sense, there are several royal peculiars in London, such as the Savoy Chapel, which has a superb music program albeit hampered by an annoying rector who likes to hear himself talk, the Chapel Royal at the Tower of London, which function like regular parishes, but are under the jurisdiction of the Queen, and Westminster Abbey is presently of this status, a Royal Peculiar the proper name of which is the Collegiate Church of St. Peter, although before Henry VIII and the dreadful Dissolution of the Monasteries it was a Benedictine monastery, as the name implies, and under Queen Elizabeth I it was elevated to be the Cathedral of St. Peter for a short lived Anglican Diocese of Westminster; these were dissolved I believe during the reign of King James I leaving it in its present status.
*Interestingly, the City of London itself, the Square Mile containing St. Paul’s Cathedral and the major financial hub, is not actually a part of Greater London but instead has its own Lord Mayor, government and a police force distinct from the Metropolitan Police (better known as Scotland Yard), a result of its ancient privileges which were preserved in the Norman Invasion as William the Conqueror did not relish attacking the ancient Roman city, which at the time had well preserved Roman walls and fortifications; these ancient rights were codified in the Magna Carta and persist ever since. Most of the famous tourist attractions in London are in the neighboring City of Westminster, such as Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, and Trafalgar Square, and many people live in Westminster, whereas as a result of the City becoming host to most of London’s skyscrapers and its vast financial sector on a par with Wall Street, Zurich and Singapore, the resdiential population of the “Square Mile” has dwindled to around 9,500, but, even more strangely, businesses in the City are able to vote in elections for the Court of Aldermen, which is like a city council and are granted votes proportionate to their revenues, in an extremely bizarre, ancient and complicated system of government; also, the Queen must request permission to enter the City from the Lord Mayor which she does annually in an elaborate ceremony known as the Lord Mayor’s Show. There js a lot more weirdness, and several interesting videos on YouTube explain it. A friend of mine who is a Londoner, presently living in the Burough of Greenwich, which also has a number of tourist attractions, has, not entirely inaccurately, described the Square Mile as being almost like a separate country from the rest of the UK.
Because the City is the oldest part of London, being the historic Roman provincial capital of Londinium, it has the oldest parishes in addition to the Cathedral of St. Paul’s, but most of these parishes were rebuilt following the notorious fire which devastated London in the 17th century. A great many were designed by Sir Christopher Wren, the masterful architect who also designed St. Paul’s Cathedral, the dome of which, together with that of St. Peter’s Basillica in the Vatican, inspired the design of the domes of the US Capitol and many of our state Capitols, and also St. Isaac’s Cathedral in St. Petersburg (Russia). The collection of churches in the City is one of the most historically important and beautiful in the world, in my opinion, on a par with the Coptic quarter in Old Cairo, the station churches in Rome, the surviving churches in the Kremlin, and the monasteries in the Meteora valley and on Mount Athos in Greece (I also love the historic churches in Boston and the surrounding portions of New England, and my avatar is a photo of Park Street Church, a traditional Congregationalist church in Boston, but these are historic primarily in an American sense, although still important, rivaled by the California Missions and the fine collections of Eastern Orthodox churches in Pennsylvania, Oregon and Alaska).
** I would note with some sadness that these ancient parish churches in the City of London have for the most part struggled to survive due to the mass displacement of residents from the City in favor of office buildings. However, they have managed to hold on by providing, for the most part, short services in the morning, at noon and in the evening for the benefit of the numerous lawyers, office workers, financiers, bankers and others who work in the City, in several cases with multiple parishes sharing a single priest and being open on a single day of the week. Only a few, such as the famed highly traditionalist Anglo Catholic parish St. Magnus the Martyr, and the evangelical low church St. Helen’s Bishopsgate, still draw people into the City for Sunday service; one church, St. Dunstan’s, is shared with the Romanian Orthodox Church which uses it on Sunday, the Anglicans still using it for weekday services; this church is octagonal in shape and features an Orthodox altar behind an iconostasis in addition to two Anglican altars: File:St Dunstan-in-the-West Interior, London, UK - Diliff.jpg - Wikipedia
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