www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology recording of Divine Liturgy

Hello,

I recently bought a recording of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom for male choir. Details: by St. Ephraim Byzantine Male Choir conducted by Tam�s Bubn�, Hungaroton Classic HCD 32315. Recorded May 2004 from a ms in private collection. Sung in Slavonic, sponsored by among others what appear to be two Hungarian govt offices that deal with the "Rusyn Minority."

My question is this. I have seen many references on these fora to "Bokshaj Prostopinije." I am curious to know if there is a connection to the composer of this liturgy, J�nos Boksay (1874-1940), who is described as a Greek Catholic priest, composer, and choir master in the liner notes.

It's quite an interesting recording, but I am curious to learn more about its relationship to our prostopinijie. According to the notes, the priest's parts were improvised according to traditions of the Munk�cs eparchy. The notes also report that Boksay and the Munk�cs cathedral cantor J�zsef Malinics published in 1906 the "standard works" Tserkovnoye Prostopinie and Egyh�zi K�z�nekek (Sacred Chants). The notes go on further: "These Church-Slavonic and Hungarian language collections, or imologia, are to this day the only officieally published music books containing the Greek Catholic melodic dialect of the Sub-Carpathian region." True?

To my ears this setting sounds neither as "popular" as our usual (or at least, former) setting, nor as sophisticated as the settings by Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky. So I am curious to know if this setting was intended for use or concert performance or something else again.

Thanks!

I'm sorry I can't answer most of your questions, but I do think the Bokshaj you are referring to is the same one that has been mentioned for a while now in these posts. I asked a similiar question on another thread. I'm sorry, but I don't know how to post a link that would take you directly to the pertinent posts, and I don't want to copy and paste the posts, since it would turn this post into a Tolstoy novel. But if you go to Forum # 8 (The Revised Divine Liturgy) and look for a thread labeled "History of the RDL" at least some of your questions will be answered. It's on page 2, by the way, so you can skip reading page 1 unless you want to. It's the third post on page 2--#245519 - Wed Jul 18 2007 03:41 PM that starts off the thread that might answer your questions.

Good luck! Keep asking questions if you don't understand!

Tim

Thanks Tim!

I ended up reading through the archives of CANTOR-L thanks to the link provided by Jeff/Byzkat. Very interesting indeed. The references all seem to be to the same Fr Boksai/Boksaj/Boksay.

I would still appreciate any commentary on this setting of the Liturgy.

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Dear Mr. Murray:

The setting of the Divine Liturgy for male voices by Fr. Ivan Bokshaj is a "through-composed" setting (i.e., it contains no chant melody from the Prostopinije used as a "cantus firmus") which is melodically and harmonically very typical of what was being composed in the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the turn of the century. Apart from the pronunciation of the Church Slavonic (which is done with the normal Rusyn pronunciation), the most telling "identifying feature" is the accentuation of the text, which follows Rusyn rather than Great Russian usage.

I hope this helps. The recording is most certainly an excellent one and I am glad it is available for purchase.

Prof. J. Michael Thompson
Byzantine Catholic Seminary
Pittsburgh, PA

Prof Thompson,

Thanks very much--that is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to learn.

Slava Isusu CHristu!

Mr. Murray--may I ask where you purchased the recording? It sounds interesting and I may pick up a copy if I can. I have several different versions of the Divine Liturgy recorded in different places--The Sisters of St. Basil in Uniontown and a bunch of others I can't remember right now.

Thanks.

Tim

Tim,

I am pretty sure I got it at ArkivMusic.com, although I might have bought it from Amazon. Here is the Arkiv URL:

http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Namedrill?&name_id=111777&name_role=1

One of the sweetest recordings I have heard was a CD our priest gave our kids--it is a children's choir from Pennsylvania singing the former chant. They did a great job. Don't have the CD next to me so I forget the name of the church, but for an amateur performance I find it quite affecting spiritually.

John