Joann (J�nos) BoksayOn the turn of the 20th century Greek Catholic sacred music held sway over much of the music scene of Sub-Carpathia, in the north-eastern part of Hungary. A great many members of the Byzantine-rite Rusyn clergy, as well as Hungarians, were well versed in music which was put to use in maintaining high artistic standards in the daily liturgy. One significant master of this period was Joann (J�nos) Boksay (1874�1940), a Greek Catholic celebrant, composer and church choir master.
Boksay was born in Huszt (Today Hust, Ukraine) on 6 July 1874 into a deeply religious Greek Catholic family. He received a musical education from private tutors, and his devotion to music would accompany him throughout his life. He was an active chorister during his years at the Greek Catholic Secondary School and the Singing School in Ungv�r (today Uzhgorod, Ukraine), and, one of the most gifted pupils, he attended courses in chorus direction. For a few terms he was a student at the Budapest University of Sciences and completed his studies at the Ungv�r Seminary. He was ordained as a priest in 1898 by Bishop Gyula Fircz�k.
He began his service as a priest at Lipcsa (Today Krayne, Ukraine), a village near his native Huszt, as an assistant minister. A year later he was offered the post of principal music teacher at the Ungv�r Teacher Training and Theological College which included the job of choir master of the Harmony Chorus. In ten years the group rose to regional fame under Boksay. He was equally successful with the Ungv�r City Mixed Choir, too, which he took over in 1904 (scooping the Golden Chalice Prize at the Kecskem�t Choral Competition in 1909, among others).
In 1899 Bishop Gyula Fircz�k put Boksay in charge of the highly challenging and important project of collecting, noting down, and classifying the liturgical songs in oral tradition in the Munk�cs (today Munkacevo, Ukraine) Eparchy (diocese). J�nos Boksay completed the task with the help of the cathedral cantor J�zsef Malinics. The two of them brought out in 1906 the standard works Tserkovnoye Prostopinie and Egyh�zi K�z�nekek [Sacred Chants]. These Church-Slavonic and Hungarian-language collections, or irmologia, are to this day the only officially published music books containing the Greek Catholic melodic dialect of the Sub-Carpathian region.
Between 1909 and 1912 Boksay worked in Budapest as an inspector of religious instruction in secondary schools, and he was also charged with managing the musical life and chorus of the Greek Catholic Parish that had been established a few years before. During his Budapest years he was able to develop his knowledge in liturgical music and skills as a composer, too.
In 1912 he was retransferred to Sub-Carpathia, and became parish priest in the village of Szinevir (Today Sinevir, Ukraine). During World War I he was interned for his �Russophile� convictions and later locked up in M�ramaros (Marmarosh) Prison. In the last twenty years of his life he was active in Greek Catholic religious and musical life as a parish priest in his native Huszt. In addition to his work as a priest and artist, Boksay maintained a powerful Rusyn political profile. He was a member of the Rusyn National Council which advocated efforts to establish a Rusyn autonomy within Hungary. From 21 June 1939 until his death he was an invited member of the Hungarian Parliament. J�nos Boksay�s active and rich life in this world�one that created a significant musical oeuvre�ended on 24 April 1940.
Boksay�s musical idiom emerged on the back of the curious Carpathian Greek Catholic melodies, as well as Viennese Romanticism and fin-de-si�cle Italian operatic style. His works bear the imprint of an accomplished and inspired master of a fine and solid Slavic sonority, but his melodies are rooted not in the Russian-Ukrainian tradition, but the Central European�primarily the musical environment of his multinational homeland�and in particular the fountainheads of Rusyn sacred music.
His output includes pieces for piano, dramatic incidental music and children�s operas, but his most important works are considered to be his ten Divine Liturgies of St John Chrysostom, four of which have survived. The most widely known one is the Mass in C major, composed in 1900, whose simple and pure melodies have earned it folk-hymn status among the Greek Catholics in the Munk�cs (Munkacevo, Ukraine), Eperjes (Presov, Slovakia), and Hajd�dorog eparchies. (The work was published by the R�zsav�lgyi Music Publisher in 1901.)
The challenge in vocal technique posed by the masses�and in particular the male chorus on this recording�bears witness to the musical life of the cathedral (the choir was founded in 1823) and the high musical standards of its well-trained cantors and singers. Boksay completed this liturgy in Huszt in 1921 and dedicated it to Antal Papp, then Bishop of Munk�cs who was later promoted to Archbishop and headed the Miskolc Greek Catholic Apostolic Government.
The music of the liturgy for male chorus fully complies with the Greek Catholic rite. Not surprisingly, since Boksay was a priest who had celebrated the Holy Liturgy many thousands of times before writing this work. The form and duration of the longer movements and the shorter responses (acclamations) follows the liturgical-dramaturgical functions of the proper mass, which explains the choice of tone and structure. It was necessary to include on this recording the priestly intonations, owing to the fact that the majority of the movements is a response to them. These intonations were never noted down and have to this day preserved their improvised character in the traditions of the Byzantine churches. This recording features the musical tradition and priestly intonation style of the Munk�cs Eparchy (and the Eperjes and Hajd�dorog Eparchies that developed from it). Boksay adhered less to the tradition in melody, harmonic shifts and rhythm, than he did in form. In this respect there is a distinction between parts conceived in the tradition of Slavic liturgical art-music (Cherubimic chant�8, The Creed�10), the significantly different Italian dramatic music-like parts (Holy, Holy, Holy�12; Dismissal�19, For many years�20), and those evoking the style of German male choruses (1st antiphon�2, The Lord�s prayer�15, Thanksgiving hymn�18). A blend of different traditions creates a very special musical style and texture that is unaffected by the path-seeking trends of the early 20th century. Boksay�s male-chorus liturgy looks toward the past and is rooted in a post-Romantic and Eclectic world; in spite of this and its heterogeneity, however, it is a highly agreeable liturgical work.
Nothing is known about the premi�re of Boksay�s liturgy, whether or not it was ever performed even. The manuscript turned up at Uzhgorod in the late 1990s, over 75 years after it was written. That is no surprise, since the ban of the Greek Catholic Church in the Soviet Union (1949) entailed the disbanding of the Uzhgorod Cathedral Choir, and it will be a long time before life returns to normal in religious life and on the sacred art/music scene in Sub-Carpathia.
Tam�s Bubn�
English Translation by Mikl�s Bod�czky
taken from:
http://www.orpheia.hu/artists/st_ephraim/album/bio_boksayA CD with Bokshaj's Liturgy can be viewed at this site:
http://www.orpheia.hu/artists/st_ephraim/album/janos_boksay
