ORTHODOX CHURCH MUSIC - Volume One, Issue Two
In Pursuit of “Churchliness” in Liturgical Singing — Vladimir Morosan
Sing Praises with Understanding — Vladimir Krassovsky
A New Znamenny Chant for the New World — Monk Philaret (Farley)
The “Other” Boris Ledkovsky (1894–1975) — Elizabeth A. Ledkovsky
Boris Ledkovsky’s Years at St. Vladimir’s Seminary — An Interview
The Author’s Foreword from Boris Ledkovsky’s Obikhod
Examples of Liturgical Recitation (Psalmodizing) of Prayers & Hymns — Alexander Kastalsky
Antiochian Orthodox Music in North America — Michael G. Farrow
Creating Liturgical Beauty — Valerie Yova
In Pursuit of “Churchliness” in Liturgical Singing — Vladimir Morosan
What constitutes “churchly” music in the context of Orthodox worship? This is a complex question that every leader of singing in an Orthodox parish has likely grappled with at one point or another. The answer may appear to be simple on the surface: “Churchly” music is, well, whatever we hear when we enter an Orthodox church, particularly a church where one may have grown up or been received into Orthodoxy as a convert. It “sounds like church”!
In reality, however, the matter is not so simple. If, indeed, we have ever visited another church besides our own, particularly if it is of another jurisdiction that has roots in a different ethnic tradition, be it Slavic or Byzantine, the sound of what we are likely to hear may be quite different from what we are accustomed to. Even within a church of the same ethnic background, if one pays closer attention, the repertoire that is sung and the manner in which it is rendered by the choir or chanter may be very different.
One may charitably assume that whoever made the choices of what music to sing and how to interpret it was acting in good faith, motivated by a desire to select “churchly” music and perform it in a “churchly” manner. Yet experience shows that the results of those choices affecting what one hears can vary greatly.
The question thus arises: Are there objective criteria for selecting and interpreting liturgical music, and if so, what are these criteria and by whom are they determined? The hierarchy or synod of a particular jurisdiction? A central repertoire committee of composers and scholars? Or are these choices made subjectively on the basis of personal taste and preference, and if that is the case, whose? The choir director’s? The parish priest’s? The collective mind of a given congregation? Are they dictated simply by habit and tradition, as in, “This is the way it’s ‘always’ been done”?
Questions such as these were easier to answer in earlier times, in countries and societies where Orthodox Christianity was the prevailing faith and where musical and aesthetic norms were relatively homogenous across the culture. Today, complex issues and choices arise that have barely begun to be explored and processed. This is particularly acute in the West—that is to say, in pluralistic cultures where the Orthodox are a minority comprising multiple national and ethnic musical traditions—where, by means of recordings and various internet resources, one has access to an enormous variety of repertoire and musical styles.
However interesting and intriguing a quest to define “churchliness” might be, it is not one that could possibly be fully explored, much less resolved, within a single or even many issues of our journal. Nevertheless, it is a topic that happens to be a common thread running through most if not all of the articles in the present issue.
Sing Praises with Understanding — Vladimir Krassovsky
“As a living and copious fountain, O Theotokos, do thou establish those who hymn thy praises and are joined together in spiritual fellowship for thy service, and in thy divine glory make them worthy of crowns of glory” (Irmos, Ode 3, Canon of the Akathist Hymn to the Theotokos). Thus the Church turns to the Mother of God in fervent prayer for those who sing during the divine services.
There is an episode in the lives of the saints—which saint I don’t remember—as told to me by my spiritual father, Father Nicholas, when I was quite young. There was a priest standing before the holy altar during a divine service, and he asked God to let it be known to him who among His flock will receive the greatest reward in the Heavenly Kingdom. When he turned around he saw a tall, radiant man, an angel, among His faithful, who was placing a feather on everyone’s head. Then he moved to the kliros and was among the singers. On their heads he placed golden crowns.
What an awesome responsibility the choir director and singers have, and a very complicated one it is. Think about it for a moment: the choir isn’t accompanying the service and isn’t just participating in the service. The choir is serving in the divine services together with the bishop, priest, and deacon. It is the choir director’s responsibility to facilitate elevation in prayer during the service through text and music. In order to do so, he or she must not only have a profound knowledge of the order of the service but must also take into consideration the symbolic meaning of the different parts of the service.
The director must deeply understand the place that a service has within the church calendar and, alongside, the “liturgical moments” in each service (of which there are many). It is of the utmost importance that each liturgical moment be understood and felt by the choir director at all times.
A New Znamenny Chant for the New World — An Overview of the Musical Practices of Holy Cross Monastery — Monk Philaret (Farley)
The soundscape of liturgical music at Holy Cross Monastery in Wayne, West Virginia, is varied and distinctive—comprising multiple styles, each sung primarily in English. Here we have a particular fondness for Georgian chant and enjoy singing its suspended chords and non-tertian harmonies to grant solemnity and ethereality to pinnacle liturgical moments. Byzantine chant is likewise sprinkled throughout our services, both punctuating our regular cycle of worship and adorning parts of Holy Week and hymns to certain Greek saints throughout the year. Our average weekday concludes with the singing of Gregorian chant supported by an ison-like drone. We also employ Obikhod and Kievan melodies—as would be typical for a monastery within the Russian church in the twenty-first century—notwithstanding their frequently reduced textures. However, the majority of our hymnody falls under the umbrella of a different Russian church singing tradition: znamenny chant¹.
Although not widely sung today, znamenny chant was the dominant form of liturgical music of the Russian Orthodox Church for five hundred years, from the twelfth through the seventeenth centuries. Its name derives from the word znamia (знамя, the old Russian word for “sign”), as this chant’s earliest notation conveyed musical information through neumatic symbols or “signs” known as znamiona (знамёна²). Fortunately for those not well-versed in deciphering these “signs,” a significant corpus of znamenny melodies was later transcribed into Kievan square note notation (a system similar to modern Western music notation) and published by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, beginning in 1772 and continually republished until the turn of the twentieth century³. The preservation of these chant books has thereby made a large number of melodic examples accessible and, thus, more readily adaptable into English-language settings—an endeavor which our monastery has modestly sought to pursue.
Notes
We also sing a handful of settings of Demestvenny, Strotny, and Valaam chant.
Johann von Gardner, Russian Church Singing, Vol. 1: Orthodox Worship and Hymnography, Vladimir Morosan, trans. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 104.
The relevant volumes within the Notnoe Penie (Notated Chant) series include the Triod’ [Lenten Triodion and Pentecostarion], in a single volume, 1899; the Prazdniki [Festal Menaion], 1900; and the Oktoikh [Octoechos], 1900. PDFs of these chant books can be found at glagol-verbum.com/biblioteka.
The “Other” Boris Ledkovsky (1894–1975) — Research, Recollections, and Reflections Fifty Years after His Repose — Elizabeth A. Ledkovsky
Boris Mikhailovitch Ledkovsky breathed his last in 1975, on August 6 (July 24, his patron saint’s day, on the Julian calendar). On the Gregorian calendar, August 6 is the Feast of Holy Transfiguration, and the Orthodox Church of America (OCA)’s Saint Vladimir’s Seminary noted the coincidence in an article remembering the professor and conductor who played “a key role in changing the style of singing in North American Orthodox churches.”
I was not at my grandfather’s bedside when he died. I was only seven. Most of my memories of the tall, thin, ebony-haired, bespectacled basso profundo with a glass eye and calm demeanor are from his final year: sitting quietly at his piano on “Russian” Christmas Day, watching grandchildren tear into presents; sleeping on a narrow bed in a darkened room, which we were forbidden from disturbing; laid out in a coffin in the center of the ROCOR Cathedral of our Lady of the Sign, thick-lensed glasses inexplicably on his face. So this paper is not a memoir.
Fifty years after his death and burial, Boris Ledkovsky as an influence on Orthodox liturgical music is anything but dead and buried. His creative output as a composer did not merely survive him: It flourished.
Interestingly, the work for which Ledkovsky is best known—his arrangements of Kievan, Russian “Greek,” and znamenny chant, and an emphasis on austere tserkovnost’ (“churchliness”)—turns out to be only part of the story. Likewise, biographical details curated by an adoring widow and filtered through a grieving heart are only partial histories. This article tells more about a giant of post-revolutionary Russian liturgical music—the other Boris Ledkovsky.
In Part I, through photos, letters, scholarship, and even archives of Nazi records, tragic facts about Boris Ledkovsky’s long, interesting life are revealed. Part II, co-authored by Dr. Katya Ermolaeva, discusses the recent discovery of several unpublished manuscripts, exposing a more layered, more dramatic side of Ledkovsky’s musical creativity. Part III reflects on the Ledkovsky legacy, postulating a shared bequest to scholars and musicians and considering what could be done next to cultivate the fruits of this inheritance.
Boris Ledkovsky’s Years at St. Vladimir’s Seminary — Reflections and Reminiscences Fifty Years after His Death — An Interview with Professor David Drillock by Dn. Harrison Russin
August 2025 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Professor Boris Ledkovsky (1894–1975), one of the most influential figures in the development of Orthodox church music in America. Through his work at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary and the Synodal Cathedral (ROCOR) in New York City, Ledkovsky introduced a generation of American Orthodox Christians to the principles of the Moscow School of Church Music, emphasizing a return to traditional Russian chant and the concept of tserkovnost’ (churchliness) in liturgical singing.
This article combines biographical material with the personal recollections of Professor David Drillock, who studied under Ledkovsky at St. Vladimir’s beginning in 1956 and served as his assistant from 1957 onward. The interview provides rare insights into Ledkovsky’s personality, conducting style, and musical philosophy.
Professor Boris Ledkovsky was born on May 9, 1894 (April 26, Old Style), in Agrafenovka, Russia, near Novocherkassk, the capital city of the Don Cossacks. His father was Archpriest Mikhail Ledkovsky, and his mother, Sophia, was a pianist. Music permeated his childhood home—from age fourteen, he was already directing the choir in his father’s parish.
Ledkovsky’s musical education began at the Novocherkassk Theological Seminary. He later wrote that in that high school seminary, “There were many useful courses in music for future choir conductors. Choral singing was taught so well that a musically gifted person graduated as an excellently trained choirmaster.” He then attended the Rostov Real School (a school concentrating on natural and mathematical subjects), where during his final two years he conducted a student orchestra and composed music for it.
Following secondary school, Ledkovsky evidently enrolled in the Moscow Conservatory, studying theory, composition, counterpoint, and voice training. Among his professors were Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov (1859–1935), then director of the Conservatory, and Alexander Kastalsky (1856–1926), the noted composer who would become director of the Moscow Synodal School of Church Music¹, located immediately next door to the Conservatory, whose choir sang in the Uspensky (Dormition) Cathedral in the Kremlin. Even in his early twenties, Ledkovsky possessed a magnificent bass-octavist voice, which did not go unnoticed by the Moscow choirmasters. Later, when David Drillock knew him, he could easily reach a low C (also known as C2) and would frequently add the lower octave at the end of pieces at concerts. In Ledkovsky’s words, Kastalsky and the Moscow Synodal School had a great influence on his musical tastes, his church compositions, and his directing style.
Notes
For more up-to-date biographical information, see Elizabeth Ledkovsky’s article in this issue; she observes that the evidence for his study in Moscow is not abundant.
The Author’s Foreword from Boris Ledkovsky’s Obikhod
In publishing this Obikhod, my aim has been to restore the traditional melodies of Russian church singing to a sound closer to their authentic form, taking as my guide the unison Obikhod—the so-called “square note” edition—published in 1792 by the Most Holy Governing Synod¹.
A glance at the history of our church singing reveals that its foundation was the Byzantine chant, received together with the adoption of the Greek Orthodox faith. This Byzantine chant was not adopted literally, but was gradually adapted and reshaped in accordance with Russian musical sensibilities, giving rise to our native “znamenny” chant (eleventh–twelfth centuries). These chant melodies were recorded by church singers of that time using special signs (variously known as “kriuki” [“hooks”] or “znamiona” [“banners”] or “stolpy” [“pillars”]), since five-line staff notation had not yet been developed. From these signs the chant took its name: znamenny or stolp chant. The chief center of its development was the city of Great Novgorod.
Later, in Kievan Rus’, there emerged another native chant known as Kievan chant. While it bears some resemblance to the znamenny, it is distinguished by greater liveliness and melodic brevity.
Both the znamenny and Kievan chants are the products of the folk creative spirit—not the work of any single composer, but shaped gradually, like folk songs, from unknown origins. They hold immense value, for in them is expressed the very soul and heart of the religious Russian people. Sadly, in our own time few appreciate or truly understand them. Together, these two chants form the essential foundation of Russian Orthodox liturgical singing; they are the true national voice of our sacred chant.
Notes
Editor’s note: This is likely a typographical error, since in the series of Obikhod editions of the Synodal period—from 1772 to 1909—there is no Obikhod published in 1792. See, for example, A. A. Guseva, Katalog izdanii kirillovskoi pechati 1801–1918 gg.: iz sobraniia NIO redkikh knig (Muzeia knigi) Rossiiskoi gosudarstvennoi biblioteki [Catalog of Cyrillic-print editions, 1801–1918, from the Collection of Rare Books (Museum of the Book) of the Russian State Library] (Moscow: Indrik, 2021). Тhe composer may have had in mind one of the editions published closer to his own time, likely the 1892 Obikhod.
Examples of Liturgical Recitation (Psalmodizing) of Prayers & Hymns — Alexander Kastalsky
Next to the singing performed by a choir or a solo chanter, the second most frequently heard musical element in Orthodox liturgical worship is the recitation (psalmodizing) of texts that are intended to be rendered by a designated reader. These texts include prayers, such as the Trisagion prayers; appointed psalms (Psalm 103, the Six Psalms at Matins, Psalm 50, etc.); troparia of a kanon; and readings (paremias) from the Old and New Testaments.
In his foundational work Russian Church Singing, Volume 1: Orthodox Worship and Hymnography¹, Johann von Gardner describes the following characteristics of recitation recto tono (“on a single pitch”) that distinguish it from ordinary speech:
a constant level of pitch upon which the words are pronounced
a slightly extended duration of the vowels, which . . . remain rather constant in their dynamic level instead of being exploded as in ordinary speech
mensurably indeterminate duration of individual syllables
deviations from the basic pitch only at the ends of phrases or texts
a lack of clear rhythm
virtually no variation in dynamic level
It is worthwhile to recall the purpose of such recitation and the reasons that church tradition adopted this manner of rendering many liturgical texts. The purpose may be regarded as twofold: to give the texts read in such a manner an elevated sense of solemnity, dignity, and importance, while projecting the words in a way that makes them audible and comprehensible to everyone present. At the same time, reading a text on essentially a single pitch prevents the reader from injecting a subjective or dramatic interpretation into the delivery of that text.
Notes
Johann von Gardner, Russian Church Singing, Vol. 1: Orthodox Worship and Hymnography, Vladimir Morosan. trans. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 55–57.
Antiochian Orthodox Music in North America: Archive Project — Michael G. Farrow
The choral music presently used in the Antiochian Archdiocese in North America is somewhat unusual among the Orthodox jurisdictions of the world in that it is a blend of music from many ethnic Orthodox traditions. Now it even includes aspects of American musical tradition, as expressed in new native compositions, while still adhering to an Orthodox ethos.
This music originated with the first Orthodox service book in English, published in 1906, barely one generation after the first immigration of Middle Eastern Orthodox Christians to North America. This was the Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church by Isabel Hapgood¹, a compilation of Church Slavonic service books and those of the Greek Orthodox Church. It was quickly adopted by Syro-Levantine Orthodox Christians in the United States and Canada. After World War I, these Christians, originally under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church in North America, formed their own archdiocese, now known as the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America.
The first published music of the Antiochian Archdiocese was the Divine Liturgy in English in a book entitled The Paradise². This book was published by Metropolitan Archbishop Germanos (Shehadi) in 1920. In 1939 Michael Gelsinger, who later was ordained a priest, published Orthodox Hymns in English³, a collection of both Russian and Byzantine melodies in English. Throughout the twentieth century, the churches of the Antiochian Archdiocese utilized mainly Russian and Ukrainian hymns. These had been adapted and translated into English, most notably by priests Vladimir and Igor Soroka and by Michael Hilko, who also used Carpatho-Russian sources.
Notes
Isabel Florence Hapgood, Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic (Greco-Russian) Church (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1906).
Metropolitan Germanos (Shehadi), The Paradise: Parts of Mass Services from the Byzintian Orthodox Church Music (New York: author, 1920).
Michael G. H. Gelsinger, Orthodox Hymns in English: Melodies Adapted from the Russian and Greek Traditions and their Texts Translated from the Greek (Brooklyn, NY: Syrian Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of New York and All North America, 1939).
Creating Liturgical Beauty — Valerie Yova
As we move further down the road of revitalizing and reimagining PSALM, my aim is to tap into the wisdom of individuals who have been at the forefront of building Orthodox liturgical music ministry at the parish level. My prayer is that by learning what has worked well for them, as well as how they think, we can all be inspired with new ideas, actionable suggestions, and ways of thinking about what we do as we strive to create beautiful worship.
I decided to start by sharing some wisdom from two of my own mentors and colleagues—professional musicians from whom I have learned a great deal about leading music in the Church. They are both accomplished classical musicians who have extensive performing and teaching experience. Additionally, they have invested a great deal of time, energy, and heart into training other Orthodox musicians and in leading music in liturgical services.
Inspiration
Photini Downie Robinson is a tonsured cantor in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese and the Protopsáltria (First Cantor) at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Portland, Oregon. She is a specialist in Byzantine chant and is in international demand as a cantor, ensemble artist, teacher, writer, speaker, and workshop leader. <…>
To read the full article, please log in or subscribe
Practical Advice
Alice Hughes is one of the founders of PSALM and an active musical theater performer, voice teacher, and conductor who moved recently to Loudun County in Northern Virginia from Santa Cruz, California. She was music codirector for over three decades at St. Lawrence Orthodox Church in Felton, California. In October 2025, Alice was invited to present her one-woman show called Snapshots in New York City as part of the 19th Annual United Solo Theatre Festival.