Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Op.41

By 1877, PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY was already an established composer, particularly following the success of the opera Eugene Onegin (1877) and his Fourth Symphony. That same year, he married his student Antonina Milyukova, but his expectations were not met; the marriage proved unsuccessful and led the composer to a nervous breakdown. He left for treatment abroad, thanks to the assistance of Nadezhda von Meck, the widow of a railroad magnate, a longtime friend, and patron of the composer. Among the works written abroad or at von Meck’s estates is the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. In February, Tchaikovsky was in Florence and searching for the liturgical text. He wrote to his publisher, Jürgenson, asking him to find a copy of “the liturgy by the composer from Lviv.” Later, from Claran, Tchaikovsky wrote again: “I need the full text of the liturgy, with or without music—it doesn’t matter. I beg you to send it to me or, if that is not possible, to tell me whom to contact.” Tchaikovsky chose the church‑choral genre for several reasons: personal, religious, and creative. He viewed church singing as a field of possibilities in need of development: “I want to try to do something for church music… I acknowledge certain merits of Bortniansky and Berezovsky, but their music has little in common with the Byzantine style of architecture and icons and the entire order of the Orthodox service.” His attitude toward faith can be judged from his correspondence with Nadezhda von Meck. “We are both sailing on the boundless sea of skepticism,” he writes, speaking of “the greatest happiness of believing rationally, having managed to reconcile all the misunderstandings and contradictions suggested by the critical mind.” In another letter, he says: “My attitude toward the church is quite different from yours. For me, it has retained much of its poetic charm. I attend the noon service very often; the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is, in my opinion, one of the greatest works of art.” The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom is one of the most significant liturgical services in the Eastern Christian tradition, gradually supplanting that of St. Basil the Great. Scholars argue that the text was compiled and edited rather than authored by St. John Chrysostom. Researchers such as Nikolai Uspensky and Robert Taft trace its origins to ancient sources from the Antiochene tradition. The first complete musical interpretation of the service was composed by Tchaikovsky in 1878. He chose music that expresses simplicity, clarity, restraint, reverent sincerity, heartfelt warmth, devotion, contemplation, repentance, and spiritual joy. Therefore, the musical style is homophonic‑harmonic in C major, with occasional imitative polyphony. The chants are choral and devoid of timbral opulence. He introduces both original themes and his own compositions in the style of ancient melismatic chants. The Liturgy was fully completed in July. It was first performed in the church of Kyiv University in June 1879, then in one of Moscow’s churches in November 1880, at a closed sacred‑music concert at the Moscow Conservatory on December 18^th , 1880, at an extraordinary meeting of the Russian Musical Union in Moscow, and at an open concert in 1881, after which it was temporarily banned due to the Court Choir’s monopoly on sacred music and permitted after the composer’s death. The audience’s reaction to the opening concert was mixed. An anonymous letter published in one of the newspapers pointed out that performing a liturgy in a public hall for a fee could have detrimental consequences for morality. The composer’s brother, Modest Tchaikovsky, summarized: “Some disliked the ‘non‑ecclesiastical’ nature of the music, in contrast to the works of Bortniansky, Sarti, Lviv, and Berezovsky; others—‘secularity’ in the sense of a lack of the ancient church style; a third group—the paucity of interesting musical combinations; a fourth—on the contrary, called for ‘austerity’ in the style of Palestrina. Fifth, mainly clergymen, resented the audacity of a ‘secular’ composer to ‘meddle in church music’ instead of writing polkas, waltzes, and operas!” Tchaikovsky’s Liturgy, like all liturgical music, is intended to facilitate a spiritual experience and mediation between man and God, to express personal faith and the need for union with God, and to serve as praise.