Cappella Romana
Buy TicketsSeptember 29, 2024 | 4:00pm
There will be a pre-concert talk with Dr. Lingas from 3pm to 3:30pm in Wallace Hall. This talk is presented together with the Ignatian Interfaith Ministry.
LOST VOICES OF HAGIA SOPHIA
Medieval Byzantine Chant
from Hagia Sophia, the Great Church of Christ, Constantinople
Alexander Leonidas Lingas, Music Director and Founder
For a thousand years, Hagia Sophia was the largest domed interior in the world. Its stunning reverberation—of over 11 seconds—informs the way this music is performed in the live acoustics of St. Ignatius, perhaps only slightly less reverberant than Hagia Sophia! Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia will transport you back in time to medieval sound and ritual in Constantinople. The program features medieval Byzantine chant in Greek for the Elevation of the Holy Cross, celebrated on 14 September every year in both East and West.
Cappella Romana transforms hearts and minds through encounters with the sacred musical inheritance of the Christian East and West, bringing to life these transcendent ancient and diverse traditions, especially of Byzantium, and their interactions with other cultures. Cappella Romana is devoted to the stewardship of this precious jewel of world culture through performances, recordings and publications, scholarship and education, engagement with heritage communities, and new artistic creation. cappellaromana.org
Photo courtesy of Stanford University
ALEXANDER LINGAS
Alexander Lingas, Music Director and founder of Cappella Romana, is Professor of Music at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies (Cambridge, UK), and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Performing Arts at City St George’s, University of London. Having hosted him as the Spring 2023 Artist in Residence, St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Yonkers, New York subsequently appointed him Professor of Music and Associate Director of its Institute of Sacred Arts. For the Fall Term of 2024 Dr. Lingas is based at UCLA as Visiting Professor in the Department of Music and Artist in Residence of Gefyra, a collaboration of the UCLA Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture and the SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada.
Dr. Lingas completed his doctorate on Sunday matins in the rite of Hagia Sophia at the University of British Columbia and then, with the support of a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship, moved to Oxfordshire to study theology with Metropolitan Kallistos Ware. From 1997 to 2021 he was a Fellow of the University of Oxford’s European Humanities Research Centre. His present work embraces not only historical study but also ethnography and performance. His awards include Fulbright and Onassis grants for musical studies in Greece with cantor Lycourgos Angelopoulos, the British Academy’s Thank-Offering to Britain Fellowship, research leave supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and the St. Romanos the Melodist medallion of the National Forum for Greek Orthodox Church Musicians (USA). In 2018 His All Holiness, Bartholomew I, Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch, bestowed on him the title of Archon Mousikodidáskalos. In 2023 he formed and directed the Byzantine Chant Ensemble for the Coronation of Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla.
The professional vocal ensemble Cappella Romana and its GRAMMY-nominated recording label Cappella Records are dedicated to combining passion with scholarship in its exploration of the musical traditions of the Christian East and West, with emphasis on early and contemporary music. Its performances “like jeweled light flooding the space” (Los Angeles Times), Cappella Romana is known especially for its presentations and recordings of medieval Byzantine chant, Greek and Russian Orthodox choral works, and other sacred music that expresses the historic traditions of a unified Christian inheritance. Founded in 1991, Cappella Romana has a special commitment to mastering the Slavic and Byzantine musical repertories in their original languages, thereby making accessible to the general public two great musical traditions that are little known in the West. Critics have consistently praised Cappella Romana for its unusual and innovative programming, including numerous world and American premieres. The ensemble has presented annual concert series in Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, and San Francisco, California, in addition to touring nationally and internationally, most recently to the Utrecht Early Music Festival, Netherlands, the largest early music festival in the world, where it performed its Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia program before a sold-out house of 1,500 vaccinated audience members. Other recent appearances abroad have included venues in Hungary, Serbia, Germany, Belgium, Greece, and the UK.
Cappella Records has released more than 25 recordings, including its chart-topping Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia (44 weeks on Billboard), Hymns of Kassianí, featuring the earliest music in the world we have by a female composer, and most recently A Ukrainian Wedding, folk songs and sacred works sung by an all-female ensemble led by Nadia Tarnawsky.
Repertoire
Selections from the Offices
From the Office of Sung Vespers
Final (Teleutaion) Antiphon before the Entrance, [MS Athens 2062]
(Ps. 98:9), Mode Plagal 2
Psalm 140 with Refrain (Kekragarion) [MS Athens 2062]
From the Office of Sung Matins
Antiphon 7
Small litany and Old Kalophonic Antiphon, Mode Plagal 4 [MSS Athens 2601]
Choral stichologia (selected verses of Ps. 109–112, “Palaion”) [After MS Athens 2061]
Ode 4 of the Kanon [Mt Athos Iveron 470]
From the Ceremony of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Troparion: “Lord, save your people”
(Syllabic melody) [After MS Athens 2062]
(Asmatikon melody) [MSS Lavra Γ 3 & Kastoria 8]
INTERMISSION
Kontakion: “Lifted Up on the Cross,” short melody, Mode 4 [MS St. Petersburg 674]
Sticheron, for the Adoration of the Cross [MSS Vienna Theol Gr 181]
by Emperor Leo VI ‘The Wise’: ‘Come believers,
let us worship the live-giving Cross’, Mode 2
Selections from the Divine Liturgy
Troparion instead of the Trisagion “Your Cross we Worship” [MSS Athens 2061, 2062, and 2458;
Mt. Athos Lavra Γ 3;
and Vienna Theol. gr. 18]
Prokeimenon: (Gradual, Ps. 98:9, 1-2), Barys Mode [MSS Patmos 221
and Sinai gr. 1280]
Asmatikon Cherubic Hymn
Part 1: Choir [MS Grott. Γ.γ.1]
(Solo parts 2 and 3 omitted)
Part 4: Solo (Asma tradition, excerpt) [MS Messina gr. 161]
Part 5: Choir [MS Grott. Γ.γ.1]