The Catalog of Good Deeds

The Church in honour of the Reigning icon of the Mother of God in St Elisabeth Convent was filled with a very special devotional atmosphere on October 20. We enjoyed heartfelt singing by choirs from various countries. It was on that day that the 18^th Royal Voice International Festival of Orthodox Church Music was held.

How did this unique festival emerge? What has changed in the Royal Voice format over the years? What’s unique about the festival this year and what were the surprises that it brought to its guests? We interviewed Nun Juliania (Denisova), the precentor of the Festive Choir of St Elisabeth Convent and the organiser of the Festival.

How did the Royal Voice Festival come to be?

This year, it was the eighteenth Royal Voice already, and I can say that it hasn’t changed even a little bit in the course of its history.

How did it come to be?.. It was suddenly and unexpectedly, in fact. One day, a choir from St Sophia of Slutsk Church (Minsk) visited our Church in honour of the Reigning icon of the Mother of God and started singing. A sister of ours heard their singing and thought, “So nice! I’d like to hear other choirs in our church! We never hear them, only our own choirs.” She shared her idea with Father Andrew and the senior sisters, and they said, “Why not?” They called me, because I’m responsible for all choirs of the Convent, and told me, “Let’s try!” The Most Reverend Philaret gave his blessing, and… that was how The Royal Voice was born.

How often is the festival held?

At first, we held it three times a year: on Christmas, on Easter, and on the Holy Protection Day. That was how it happened in 2010. Later, we realised that it was too much: people hardly manage to recover from one festival when they already have to start preparations for a new one. So we left out the Christmas festival. During the last three years, we have this festival only on the Holy Protection Day because there has been a big Easter concert of a different format, which also appeared spontaneously. These two events shared the same dates, and it was too burdensome: we had to choose and focus on one or the other. That is why the Royal Voice Festival is held only on the Holy Protection Day.

What does the Festival consist of?

The Festival consists of a concert of five choirs, each with a 20-30 minute programme. It’s the traditional format since the very beginning.

How do we select the music? It has to be godly, I mean, it should have God as its source. The rest of musical culture, which you can listen to in your homes, cars, or rock and pop concerts, is okay but not here.

Our format is restrictive, of course. We are open about it and we don’t claim to be an all-encompassing festival. Choirs in Orthodox churches sing a cappella, that is, without instrumental accompaniment. People sometimes ask, “Why not?” Here is my answer to this: I’m not opposed to instrumental music per se but there are other festivals and other collectives for it. Ours is for a cappella singing. With that said, we indeed invited some priests and other people who sing and play the guitar to participate in several festivals. The audience was totally sure that this singing is godly and suitable for the church.

Of course, we never choose blindly, we listen to the tracks in advance and approve the repertoire. Sometimes we reject certain songs that the choir directors suggest because we don’t want them to contrast with the atmosphere of the concert. It’s a church, there are saints who look at us. All icons in our church contain reliquaries with the holy relics, so this presence of sacred objects must not conflict with the music that is being sung. You can’t sing “Korobeiniki” (aka Tetris theme Type A) here! It’s a well-known Russian folk song but when someone suggested it, I said, “No, that’s not the spirit that we would like to have here. Let’s replace it with another song.” There are songs about the human soul, repentance, and inner life of a human being among the rich repertoire of folk music.

I have to say that we have a very home-like format. If a precentor or a singer wants to say something, they get to say it. Sometimes participants want to present a gift to the Convent, sometimes they sing encore, and sometimes a priest takes the floor. Generally, our concert is opened by a priest who comes with one of the choirs, or a priest from our Convent, if no one comes. This opening turns everything in the right direction. People feel relaxed and at home, and that’s great.

What is the chief purpose of the Festival?

We find it important to emphasise that God penetrates our lives. He is with us at all times and He acts not only during worship, when we come to the church, pray and light up some candles. Things worked differently in Russia in old times: God penetrated every moment of the life of a human, his daily routines, and his labour. Baptisms, weddings, and funerals were always accompanied by singing. People wanted to continue singing about God outside of the church, in their daily lives. That is why we have a rich folklore heritage related to the saints, the Mother of God, feasts, ruminations of a Russian person about his soul, about his connection to the Heavenly Kingdom, the spiritual domain. Nowadays, it continues, and that is why our concert features not only church chants but also songs with the lyrics written by Russian poets, folk songs that are in harmony with the Orthodox faith, works by contemporary authors with lyrics by Orthodox poets, e.g., Father Andrei Logvinov or Hieromonk Roman (Matyushin). Not long ago, a choir from Novgorod performed a song composed by Alexandra Pakhmutova with lyrics by Dobronravov. They were famous Soviet songwriters but if you look at their songs, you’ll guess that they were believers even in those times, and now we find the topics of spirituality, morality, kindness, and love in their songs. That is why pieces like those can also be performed at our Royal Voice concerts.

What kinds of choirs can participate in the Festival?

There are various choirs among our participants: professional and amateur ones; secular and church choirs; male, female, and children’s choirs. All kinds of choirs. We select our participants and build the programme of the Festival to be as diverse as possible. As I’ve already mentioned, there have been several individual singers who appeared in the programme in the last three years. It often depends on subjective factors, e.g., who happens to be close to the Convent at the moment. For instance, Father Anatoly Pershin from Saint Petersburg visited our Convent, and we were so excited! He sang his brilliant songs and played the guitar. Or take for example Father Sergius Kisel, or Father Seraphim from Serbia: we invited them to participate in the Royal Voice as soon as we met them and heard their songs. All that to say that the selection process is often spontaneous. Nonetheless, there are many collectives who send us their applications first. They write to us, we — and I mean the organising committee that consists of professional church musicians — listen to them to verify that they sing well and their repertoire suits us well, and we invite them.

As a rule, there are choirs that don’t sing in church among our participants. It can be a children’s choir, a student choir or a government-funded collective. We had Belarusian Broadcasting Company Choir, National Chamber Choir of the Republic of Belarus, Academy of Music Students’ Choir, Belarusian State University Students’ Choir, and choirs from other universities. They don’t sing in church as a choir but they have church music in their repertoire. As far as I can tell, church music is a formidable part of the repertoire of many secular choirs, sometimes to the extent that they can do a full concert of church chants. Why does it happen? Because it’s beautiful, and people are drawn to the beauty, and young people are fond of this spiritual component where it isn’t the earthly and physical emotion that is stressed but something more exalted, something that lies deep within… Profoundness and sublimity: that’s what our audiences and our performers are interested in. That’s what attracts them to church vocal music.

How did your Festival go international?

It became clear that the Festival was about to attain international scope (though it’s not exactly the case with us, honestly). Choirs from Russia and Serbia started coming. We welcomed Valaam Monastery Choir, Divna Ljubojevic, a big Serbian choir from Belgrade, and some choirs from Ukraine. That’s how we gather all the Holy Russia — Russia, Ukraine, Belarus — and our sister country of Serbia. That’s where our participants come from. This Festival was no exception.

How are this year’s participants different from the previous years?

It turned out that all our participants this year were active church choirs. There weren’t children’s, students’, or secular choirs among them. All the choirs sing in churches. Imagine how pleasant it was to listen to them!

Each choir is unique.

First, there is the choir of clergy of the Diocese of Hrodna. It’s an amazing achievement to bring this choir together! To cut the long story short, this choir consists of priests and deacons. There isn’t anyone else, as it is often the case in our churches. There isn’t any altar server in this choir: all singers wear pectoral crosses! It’s impressive!

A similar choir came from Ukraine: the Choir of Kharkov Theological Seminary, which also includes its alumni who have become priests by now but who continue to sing in this choir. Add to it some girls who study to be precentors in church choirs, and you’ll get the impression of their mixed choir. It’s great and interesting. When church chants are performed by people whose life is filled with worship, whose life actually is worship, permanently and not from time to time — when everybody knows what they’re singing about and what part of the divine office this or that chant belongs to, and what its deep meaning is — you can really hear that they’re being serious. In fact, all church choirs take everything seriously. For example, there was a choir from Saint Petersburg, from a remarkable huge St Theodore Cathedral, which was rebuilt after having been demolished in Soviet times. There are several choirs in that cathedral. They submitted an application, and we invited the so-called amateur choir, although there are professional musicians in that choir, too. It is a mixed choir, which consists of the parishioners of the cathedral and frequently takes part in divine offices. Their rector, Father Alexander Sorokin, came to Minsk with them, too. It’s their ministry, and they find it very important. Well, and we were excited to listen to a cathedral choir from Saint Petersburg!

It turned out that there is the so-called Belarusian Byzantine Choir here in Minsk, and that it sings in the Church in honour of the Resurrection of Christ. Why is it called “Belarusian”? Because it’s from Minsk. Why is it called “Byzantine”? Because they always use Byzantine chant, and that’s hard to come by nowadays. As far as our Convent is concerned, the Monastic Choir, the Festive Choir, and the Male Choir all include Byzantine chants in their repertoire but don’t sing them exclusively. Our services in their entirety don’t consist of Byzantine chant, while theirs do, and that is why the atmosphere is well-defined and interesting to listen to.

Well, our Festive Choir also decided to participate in the Festival (smiles). We took part in the very first Royal Voice Festival. We didn’t participate in the Festival until this year, and that’s not accidental: our parishioners have the chance to hear our singing every week, on Sundays and feasts, whilst this Festival allows our guests to perform in the Church in honour of the Reigning icon of the Mother of God, so that our parishioners could enjoy the singing of other choirs from other cities and countries.

Why did the Festive Choir decide to take part in the Festival this year, then?

People were always asking us: When are you going to sing at the Festival at last? I dealt with their requests for several years, and I tried to explain it as well as I could but this year, I made up my mind that we’d have to participate in the Festival. The members of our choir were also eager to perform in the Church in honour of the Reigning icon in front of our listeners. Of course, you could listen to a record on your PC or a multimedia player but here you could listen to us live! Furthermore, it’s different from how we sing during worship: there’s a difference between the sound of a choir during worship and during a concert. This difference is important and it doesn’t imply any opposition: rather, it’s mutual enrichment.

Why do people need concerts of church music, after all? Isn’t church worship enough? What do you think?

Why people need concerts of church music… Why do people need concerts of classical music? Why do people need concerts of any kind? All kinds of concerts and performers find their audience. They help people to explore the hidden parts of their souls. There are concerts that are intended to be a background noise for relaxation and recreation, like concerts of pop music. Perhaps, they are not bad, it’s just that their purpose is different: the background noise, entertainment, and fun. This kind of pastime can and should exist, if it’s morally appropriate. As far as a concert of church music is concerned… It changes a person’s soul, like concerts of classical music: people come to these concerts not just to listen to some music but also to think and feel. People have tears in their eyes. They listen to the music with such unwavering attention! They are fully engulfed by the music. That’s a mutual process that goes on between the performer and the listener. When there’s no such process, the concert goes in vain. When the audience makes noise, when people move from one place to another, when they turn their heads, cough, or look at their smartphones… I’ve noticed that people don’t dare move during our concerts because they are afraid of breaking the pious atmosphere. The intensification of this pious atmosphere is one of the reasons why we hold our concert in the church. We have a small hall in the Sunday School (you can seat 200 people there), where we held concerts of solo performers who sang and played the guitar. However, the nave of the Church in honour of the Reigning icon of the Mother of God is our primary venue. That is where the name Royal Voice came from: it’s the voice of the Royal church. This voice is transmitted outside with the help of loudspeakers: wherever you go, you will hear the singing.

What were the differences between the 18^th Royal Voice Festival and the previous festivals?

Usually, one of the choirs sings the liturgy in the Church in honour of the Reigning icon of the Mother of God on the following day after the concert. This year, it was even better. We have three liturgies every Sunday, one for each of our three choirs (the Monastic Choir, the Male Choir, and the Festive Choir). This year, our guests sang during all three Sunday liturgies: the Byzantine Choir sang in the Reigning church during the first liturgy; the choir from St. Petersburg sang the second liturgy in St Elisabeth Church; and the Choir of Kharkov Seminary together with our Festive Choir sang the third liturgy in the Church in honour of the Reigning icon of the Mother of God.

Interview by Alexandra Ursalova

St. Elisabeth Convent, 2018

People often ask a lot of questions concerning the icons created by the icon-painters of St. Elisabeth Convent and iconography in general. Why does it take so much time to make an icon? Why is the process so complex? What are the materials used? Finally, why have handpainted icons always been so expensive to create?

We have prepared an article for you, which will show you all the stages of painting icons in St. Elisabeth Convent’s studio and will help you to understand why this process is so labor-intensive.

An icon is a visible image of the Holy Savior, the Mother of God, or the saints whom we venerate, whose example we are inspired by, and whom we try to emulate. As we ask our heavenly patrons for help and intercession, we instinctively want to pray in front of their icons. We look at the images, and it makes our prayer more personal, profound, and heartfelt.

When we were building our first church in St. Elisabeth Convent, we naturally needed some icons for that church. With the blessing of the spiritual father of the Convent, we decided to open our own Icon Painting Studio. Our nuns and lay brothers and sisters, who had had artistic training, acquired icon painting skills, and their first task was painting icons for the iconostasis of the lower church in honor of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. The more icons they painted, the greater their skill and expertise was. Little by little, the icon painters mastered the ancient methods and traditions. Soon enough, the Convent was filled with the icons painted by our own painters, and at that point they began taking orders to paint icons for churches in Belarus and abroad.

Icons have been a symbol of wealth since ancient times because all icons were painted and therefore were quite costly. Icon painting is a special process that takes quite a lot of time and requires certain skills. Beside that, an icon painter has to follow a distinct set of rules that has been shaped over many centuries. Our Icon Painting Studio mostly draws the inspiration for their icons from the 12th-14th century Byzantine and Russian samples.

It must be noted that icon painting is not just the art of putting paints on a wooden surface but a church mystery of some kind, which influences the icon painter, captivates his or her own life, and transforms it. There is a prayerful connection that appears between the icon painter and the saint whose face is being painted on wood.

There are several stages of painting an icon:

1. You will need a wooden board to paint an icon on. That board is made of several planks glued together using a special method. Once the wide board dries up, it is polished. The wooden base made of several planks isn’t deformed with time, unlike a single piece of wood. Then, a special indent, known as kovcheg, is carved out in the center of the wooden board.

2. A linen canvas is glued to the front side of the board.

3. The board is covered with five or six layers of gesso – a mixture of hide glue and chalk.

4. Once the gesso dries up, the surface is polished.

5. The next stage engages the icon painter directly: it’s the choice of the right sample.

6. The icon painter draws a pencil sketch of the icon.

7. The contour is embossed.

8. The surface is plated with gold leaf. Gold leaf is the name of thin sheets of gold that are attached to the surface covered with an oily substance. Gold-plating is mainly used for halos and backgrounds.

9. The gold halos are covered with shellac. Shellac is a resin secreted by the female lac bug, which lives on trees in the forests of India and Thailand. It is used to protect the gold-plated surfaces.

10. The icon painter picks up the colors and prepares a special paint called tempera, which is made by hand from powdered minerals and semi-precious gemstones mixed with egg yolk.

11. Finally, the icon painter starts to paint the icon in full color. First, he paints the vestments, the landscape, and the buildings if necessary.

12. Then, the icon painter paints the face, the hands, and the feet of the saint.

13. When the icon is almost finished, the vestments of the saints are highlighted by the so-called assist, i.e., thin strokes of liquid gold.

14. The icon painter makes the inscriptions of the name and the heavenly rank of the saint.

15. Finally, the icon is coated with linseed oil and varnish.

Thus, as you can see, the icon is made by several people, each of whom specializes in a certain stage of the process. It’s the only way to achieve the highest quality.

Icon painting is one of the most ancient church arts that make the Orthodox Church the bearer of an authentic tradition. When you acquire a painted icon, you touch a mystery and become a participant and a keeper of the sacred tradition. Painted icons are preserved for centuries and passed on from generation to generation as a family heritage and a symbol of blessing and connection.

By Vladislav Gurin,

the Master of Theology,

a PG student of the Minsk Theological Academy

The Catalog of Good Deeds, 2018

The Encounter

If you haven’t had an encounter with God, you might have wasted your day.

We’ve got to be looking for Him and finding Him throughout the day in prayer, in our actions, and in conversations with other people. It is that encounter that shapes the utmost reality called life.

It is only our encounter with God that reveals and unveils the profound meanings of everything that we come in contact with. First of all, this encounters opens the depth within our souls. It is God’s calling that our hearts respond to. Our hearts are like oceans that hide unknown depths. Only if we dive deep into our own souls, we can discover God.

“Find the door of your own heart, and you shall see that it is the door that leads to the Kingdom of Heaven” (Saint John Chrysostom).

The Lord descends to the bottom of our souls, penetrates their darkest and deepest layers, and enlightens them with the light of his eternal love — and darkness disappears.

The Other

You haven’t wasted your day if you live and let other people live. If you acknowledge the right of the Other to exist. If you don’t distort the Other person’s words, if you don’t libel nor betray the Other, if you aren’t jealous of them. If you are courageous enough to shift the focus of the Universe from yourself to the Other.

You will have to die, to deny yourself, to overgrow your selfishness if you want to achieve it. This growth is painful but it’s the only way that you can give place to the Other with all his or her demands and his or her world.

Only if we break free from ourselves and our passions, will we be able to perceive the light that radiates from other people and the presence of God in them.

We should learn to hear the Other and to yield to his words, to accept the silence and the beauty of his soul and see the whole world in that person. We’ve got to learn from others, to appreciate and thank them, to enjoy mutual creative work and joint efforts. We should allow the Other to be better than we are and not to depreciate his efforts and actions.

Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh wrote the following: “Our every encounter with humans and with God does not only call for special conditions. When we seek God, we have to love humans; when we interact with humans, we have to love God.”

Witness

Without daily witness, our faith is futile.

God is Love, and His sacrifice on the Cross is the triumph of love. Therefore, the power of His Church and the sacrifice of her ministry also consists of love.

Nothing can explain the martyrs’ attitude to their ordeals and the apostles’ attitude to their lives, filled with dissemination of the faith in Christ, like genuine love.

What else, except love, can explain the suffering that the apostles had to endure while preaching the Gospel?

This is vividly pointed out by Apostle Paul who writes to the Christians of Corinth, “Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwellingplace; and labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it: being defamed, we intreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day.” (1 Cor. 4:11–13).

If the apostles hadn’t known what they endured that suffering for, would’ve they put their lives at stake?

The virtue of the holy apostles lies not only in their preaching but first of all in their witness.

One can transfer another person’s idea only if he is inspired and captivated by the idea.

The apostles renounced everything in the world for Jesus’s sake. He became the most valuable and the inalienable treasure for them. He filled their whole lives with Himself.

We must remember that if we deny God, we will deny the eternal life, too. Our steadfast adherence to the faith and the Church of Christ is the pledge of our salvation. Salvation is possible only if we profess Christ and bear our witness.

Our witness consists not only of mere words but of our actions, too.

Our witness occurs on every day that God gives us.

Metropolitan Anthony (Pakanic)

Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds

On October 9 (old style) the Orthodox Church commemorated a great saint and prophet – Abraham, the Old Testament patriarch and forefather. We all know pretty much about this unique saint. However, I would like to recall the 3 main feats of faith of Abraham, although there were much more of them, and his whole life can be compared with one significant feat of faith.

1. “And Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot, the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, his son Abram’s wife, and they went out with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan; and they came to Haran and dwelt there” (Genesis 11:31). By God’s calling, Abraham left one of the most comfortable and civilized cities of that time – Ur of the Chaldees. Only in the 20^th century, the scientists managed to learn what a great city it was before. More than 65,000 of people lived there, so it turned out that it was a large metropolis with a highly developed culture and economic life. Having left that city and gone barely to nowhere, Abraham and his father Pharra shew their courage and firm faith. Abraham trusted God, Who called him into another life full of wanderings, dangers and fear.

2. At first, Abraham was called Abram, which meant “the great father”. After God had made a Covenant with him, God changed his name and called him Abraham, which meant “the father of many”, since according to God’s promise, numerous tribes and peoples will come through Abraham into this world: “As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you” (Genesis 17:4-6). Abraham had no doubt in that promise, although his wife Sarah was barren.

3. Finally, the greatest feat of Abraham's faith was to sacrifice his own son Isaac. God said: “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you” (Genesis 22:2). And so Abraham obeyed, he took his son Isaac and went to Moriah. It is impossible to imagine what Abraham felt and how difficult for him it was to follow God’s commandment. Here is what St. John Chrysostom says about it: “When the patriarch heard that address: “Abraham!” (Genesis 22:1), he readily listened to the calling, since he was waiting for another manifestation of God’s mercy. In his mind, Abraham thought about the marriage of his son and the organization of a wedding feast, so that the Divine covenant about the seed and offsprings became true. But let us examine the words of the order itself: “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love”.

You see how these words work, you see how they sting the father and foster the flame of our nature, how they acute the father’s love towards his son by calling him beloved and only at the same time? Go to the land of Moriah and then burn him as a sacrifice on one of the mountains to which I would point. What would you feel after you heard such words? Who of the people, who have children and know how strong our natural love towards them could be, would not be horrified by such an order? Just think about how the father felt, who got the order to sacrifice his only son. Who would not be stunned by that order? Who would not say that he was ready to die himself rather than to fulfill such an order? […] What are You asking me for? What the terrible words I hear from You? Could it be so that You have made me be a father in order to make me be a filicide later? Could it be truth that I have been honored with that wonderful gift of fatherhood in order to become a parable for the whole world? I should kill my son with my own hands? Should desecrate my hands with his blood and become the murderer of my child? So, this is what You want? This is what sacrifices are pleasing for You? You are ordering me to kill my only son, about whom me and Sarah thought that he would bury us? With this marriage I should please him? To light burial fire instead of joyful wedding lights? […] How could I become the father of many peoples by Your word, if You ask me to kill my only son?” (The Homily on Abraham and Isaac)

However, Abraham loved God more than anything and trusted Him as much as children trust their parents. God stopped Abraham’s hand and did not let the worst thing happen. Some time later, hundreds of years later, the event would happen, for which Abraham’s sacrifice became a foretype. Jesus Christ, being the Word of God, trusted His Father and accepted terrible tortures, dishonor and shameful death, so that the ancient condemnation would be washed with His holy blood. The Son trusted His Father, and the Father resurrected His Messiah from the dead: “for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2).

So let us remember about the faith of our Forefather Abraham and let us teach from him how we should trust our God and stay loyal to Him: “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us” (Hebrews 12:1).

By John Nichiporuk,

a Bachelor of Theology,
specialized in Biblical Studies.

The Catalog Of Good Deeds

Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )

Search This Blog

featured Slider

"Listening Is One Thing. You’ve Got to Think and Feel": Nun Juliania (Denisova) on "The Royal Voice" Festival

How Icons Are Born in the Icon-painting Studio of St. Elisabeth Convent

A Wasted Day: Three Main Symptoms

3 Great Feats of Faith of Patriarch Abraham

Partners