I'd always known Tchaikovsky only for his ballets and the 1812 Overture, and I find it astonishing to think that something as sublime and otherworldly as this could be by the same person. Apparently he had hidden depths!
Saturday, November 30, 2019
Tchaikovsky's Hymn of the Cherubim
After a couple of months of listening to basically nothing but Mozart's Magic Flute, I've recently had another, entirely different piece of music brought to my attention by the strange workings of serendipity: Tchaikovsky's setting of the Cherubikon from the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (Op. 41: No. 6).
I'd always known Tchaikovsky only for his ballets and the 1812 Overture, and I find it astonishing to think that something as sublime and otherworldly as this could be by the same person. Apparently he had hidden depths!
I'd always known Tchaikovsky only for his ballets and the 1812 Overture, and I find it astonishing to think that something as sublime and otherworldly as this could be by the same person. Apparently he had hidden depths!
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10 comments:
Thank you so much...this is beautiful.
I agree with S.K. Sublime.
I confess, I am still a sucker for Tch's The Nutcracker, even though I have seen it and listened to it at least a thousand times.
Frank, I haven’t seen or listened to The Nutcracker since childhood, but the day same day you posted your comment, my wife happened to bring home from our school an old (December 2016) magazine intended for children learning English, and I happened to pick it up out of curiosity and open it to a random page — and the article I opened up to turned out to be a brief summary of the plot of ETA Hoffmann’s The Nutcracker and the Mouse King!
Obviously, the synchronicity fairies are making a special effort to draw my attention to Tchaikovsky and his work.
This is very good music. Every once in a while, a composer who is not a saint is able to write like a saint, and Tchaikovsky did so here, didn't he?
I also like Mendelssohn's "The Lord of Israel slumbers not nor sleeps" from the oratorio Elijah, and even the self-proclaimed atheist Berlioz (who could not have been an atheist, knowing what he knows) wrote heavenly music once in a while, for example his "l'adieu des bergers a la sainte famille"
Stephen, I'll have to check out the pieces you mention.
Speaking of self-proclaimed atheists producing holy music in spite of themselves, I just noticed that the Tchaikovsky piece I posted is performed by the USSR Ministry of Culture Chamber Choir!
"Obviously, the synchronicity fairies are making a special effort to draw my attention to Tchaikovsky and his work."
I have learned not to ignore the synchronicity fairies, regardless of how seemingly trivial the synchronicity they spin happens to be. The odd time I have, I have done so at my own peril. (That's a bit dramatic, but you get what I mean).
Beautiful music....I think you would really enjoy Allegri's Miserere. It's pretty similar to the Cherubic Hymn; but rather than men singing in the low registers you have boys singing up high. It also has a fun apocryphal connection to Mozart, so it fits in nicely with your love of the Magic Flute as well.
Frank, yes, I know better than to ignore the fairies! I've dutifully listened to The Nutcracker (very good music, but nothing revelatory) and am now about halfway through Sleeping Beauty.
Dang (or is it Dan G.?), as it happens, I just recently encountered that apocryphal Mozart story (about how he "stole" the Allegri piece from the Vatican by memorizing it after one hearing) for the first time. It was mentioned in an English textbook as part of a brief biography of Mozart intended to demonstrate the correct usage of the past tense. The synchronicity fairies again!
Ah, you've doxxed me!
dang is indeed a thinly veiled pseudonym for my real name. It allows me to post 'anonymously' because I have a certain level of discomfort to having my name plastered all over the internet; and it feels true to the spirit of the internet from when I was a kid with a dial-up connection and a geocities page. But as it's basically a typo of my real name, it keeps me from commenting on things too recklessly.
It turns out I’ve already heard Allegri’s Miserere, back when Bruce linked to an astonishingly beautiful performance of it earlier this year: http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2019/05/allegris-miserere-sung-by-tenebrae.html
As usual, I have a hard time remembering the names of classical pieces! Anyway, thank you for bringing it to my attention once again. A wonderful piece, though I don’t find it very similar to Tchaikovsky.
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