Saint Charbel

GRAMMY®-nominated conductor and composer Benedict Sheehan leads The Saint Tikhon Choir in his new setting of Eastern Orthodox Vespers in English. Inspired by the great All-Night Vigil setting by Rachmaninoff, Sheehan’s composition expands the genre with full settings of Psalms. Each verse is treated with deep musical pathos to express a full range of human emotion. Vespers also features virtuosic vocal concertos, including the first for basso profundo in English. Encounter this music that projects a vision of hope and light for all. The Saint Tikhon Choir was founded in 2015 by Benedict Sheehan, the group’s artistic director, and Abbot Sergius of St. Tikhon’s Monastery. It is the first professional vocal ensemble connected with an Orthodox monastery in America, founded with a mission to foster and build up the American Orthodox choral tradition at the highest artistic level.

This programme reflects the full flavour and richness of English music and the instrumental and vocal repertory it inspired in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The rhythmic impulse of this repertory sometimes making use of ostinato culminates in the grounds, jigs, contredanses and so on that were all the rage at the time and led to the publication of John Playford's collection The English Dancing Master in 1651. Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, showing their familiarity with early sources from England, Scotland and Ireland, also emphasise the melodic aspect of these dances, which in the course of time became sung airs the soprano Fiona McGown and the baritone Enea Sorini complete a colourful instrumentarium. Finally, the light-hearted dimension of entertainment is present everywhere in this repertory, which was popular in the sense that it was universally practised at the time, achieving a fame that spread far beyond the British Isles.

The laus perennis that the monks every day in their psalmody offer to the Lord, is adorned with hymns, antiphons and responsories; all chants drawn from the ancient gregorian repertory. With this daily practice and custom, the monks become almost the only custodians and specialists of this patrimony of the highest religious, cultural and artistic merit that is gregorian chant. The monks of Montecassino – always faithful cultivators of this venerable chant, proper to the lit- urgy of the Church – with the present CD want to make these melodies, which are an elevated form of prayer, resound also outside of the monastery walls. The recording was completed at the Tomb of St. Benedict and is intended as an affectionate hymn of sons towards their father and master: in fact, a good part of the liturgy of the Solemnity of St.Benedict of the traditional date of March 21 was performed.