Rachmaninoff's Lost Chords

In 1983, choral conductor Anthony Antolini was laid up with a bad knee. While his wife and child hiked the countryside near his Maine summer home, he sat nursing his aches and reading a biography of Sergei Rachmaninoff.

In the back of the book, Antolini perused a catalog of the Russian composer’s works where he found a choral piece listed he had never heard of: The Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom. Antolini, a Russian scholar, knew the Chrysostom liturgy was commonly used in the Russian Orthodox Church. But this particular musical setting was unfamiliar. Could he get a copy?

Music stores in New York City assured him he had the wrong composer. The staff at the Library of Congress had never heard of it either. It seemed like a dead end.

Then some California friends suggested a course that led to the music librarian at Saint Vladimir’s Seminary in Crestwood, New York. There Antolini found photocopies of part books for the Liturgy. Rachmaninoff’s notes were there—but not in usable form. Each book contained the notes for only one of the eight voice parts for which Rachmaninoff had written. There was no complete score and no context to help American singers unfamiliar with the Russian practice of giving each singer only his or her own notes.

Yet every note was there. If he could borrow the part books to photocopy them, he could reconstruct the score.

The answer was no. Saint Vladimir’s music librarian was less than enthusiastic about sharing this treasure. But perhaps, he suggested to Antolini, the librarian at Saint Tikhon’s Monastery in South Canaan, Pennsylvania, would be willing to let him use the original part books from which the Saint Vladimir photocopies had been made.

Antolini rang up Fr. Theodore Heckman at Saint Tikhon’s. Would he allow one of Antolini’s students to photocopy the part books?

Antolini’s heart sank when Heckman told him Saint Tikhon’s was 65 miles from the nearest photocopier. But he arranged for the student to drive to Scranton to copy Rachmaninoff’s lost chords. Heckman proved to be generous indeed—surprising Antolini’s student by driving the 65 miles and copying the books at his own expense.

Meanwhile, back at the Library of Congress, staff had not forgotten the case of the missing Rachmaninoff. Rummaging through uncatalogued music, a librarian discovered an early microfilm of the complete score. Alas, the film was blurry, with both notes and words at many points illegible. Still, the librarian called Antolini about the discovery.

Blurred pages? Send a copy anyway, said Antolini. And the Library of Congress did. For the entire summer of 1985, Antolini labored, copying the score, filling in the blurred sections from the part books, and transliterating the Slavonic words from their Cyrillic characters.

Twenty-Five Kopecks After Church

Sergei Rachmaninoff was the son of an alcoholic wastrel who spent the family’s substance on horse races and other frivolities. When he was 11, Sergei’s grandmother took him in to shield him from evil influences—and took him to church to straighten him out.

Rachmaninoff later recalled: “Being only a young greenhorn, I took less interest in God and religious worship than in the singing, which was of unrivaled beauty.… I usually took pains to find room underneath the gallery and never missed a single note. Thanks to my good memory, I also remembered most of what I heard. This turned into capital—literally—by sitting down at the piano when I came home, and playing all I had heard. For this performance my grandmother never failed to reward me with 25 kopecks.” When Rachmaninoff was 37, he wrote a setting of the most common liturgy used in the Russian Orthodox Church—the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom. But his work was doomed to rejection. Too much modernism, said the hierarchy. By modernism, they meant the music was too daring for a church that prided itself on not changing any part of the worship without compelling reason. The gospel never changes, they reasoned, so why should the music? Their music had been handed down, often by oral tradition, for centuries. What made this fellow think he could compose a setting out of thin air?

That was the second part of Rachmaninoff’s problem. He gave the church a piece of musical impressionism that felt like the original at places, but that did not incorporate any of the traditional melodies Orthodox churchgoers loved. Liturgical music de novo was something unthinkable in the Orthodox world.

Rachmaninoff learned from rejection: His 1915 Vespers quotes significantly from traditional church melodies. And in Moscow, Rachmaninoff’s Liturgy is now accepted. Although designed for concert more than worship, it is sung each year on Saint Sergius’s day (the young greenhorn’s name day) in the Church of the Consolation of All Who Sorrow in Ordynke Road.

On The Road To Moscow

It is June 23, 1987. Antolini and his California-based Cabrillo Slavonic Chorus begin a fund-raising tour of the East coast in Washington, D.C.’s Washington Cathedral. Their goal: $150,000 to send all 160 voices to the Soviet Union for the 1988 celebration of the Russian Orthodox Church’s first thousand years of history.

Amin’. Gospodi, pomiluy. (Amen. Lord, have mercy.) The Old Slavonic prayer begins with the tenor and bass voices. It gradually builds to full chorus in eight-part chords. True to Orthodox church practice, the singers do without the comforts of organ or other accompaniment. Their tones hang naked, sounding long in the stone recesses of the cathedral. The result is ethereal. Otherworldly. Transcendent. Holy.

Rachmaninoff’s effects may be spiritual, but his details are worldly wise. Unexpected cross rhythms, characteristic of Russian popular music, spice the “Glory to the Father.” And the Trisagion (“Holy God, Holy and Mighty”) is in 5/8 time, light, fast, and jazzy.

It is hot in the cathedral. But for one hour and 20 minutes the capacity crowd is rapt. The exquisite tones hang light in the heavy atmosphere. The final words hover in the silence; and then a thunder of applause.

The next evening finds the chorus in New York’s Cathedral of Saint John the Divine. And the following afternoon they sing in Trinity Church, Wall Street. Then on to Boston, Massachusetts, and Brunswick, Maine. But ultimately, as a cultural expression of glasnost, the chorus will travel to Alushta and Kiev and Moscow.

By David Neff.

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