Saturday, May 30, 2009

Byzantine and Orthodox Chants for Pentecost

The (Byzantine Catholic) Metropolitan Cantor Institute is a treasure-trove of liturgical and musical resources.

For instance: Here is an mp3 of the hymn "O Heavenly King", for the Pentecost Divine Liturgy; here is the "Communion Hymn." Other chant items for the Pentecost Divine Liturgy can be found on this page.

Also from the Metropolitan Cantor Institute: here is a PDF of Vespers of the Day of the Holy Spirit (Kneeling Vespers). From the same source, here is a PDF called "Vespers - music in the Order of Vespers for Sundays after Pentecost," along with many music samples:



Goarch.org (the website of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in America) offers its own version of the Pentecost Vespers liturgy, a web page of "The Office of the Great Vespers of Pentecost (THE KNEELING)." Here's the Goarch.org page about Pentecost.

There is a detailed article about Vespers at OrthodoxWiki.org, with a section covering the "General Structure of Great Vespers" and another called "Vesperal Services," which outlines various divergent forms. It all seems quite complicated, but of course that's because I really know very little about it and am only learning.

Here's the main orthodoxWiki page about Pentecost.

There is also some really interesting (Eastern) Pentecost art out there.

First, from the "Rabula Gospels," a "6th century illuminated Syriac Gospel Book":




Google Translate tells me that this - described as "Собор 12-ти апостолов с Константином Великим" on this Wikimedia page - is an "Icon: Cathedral of 12 Apostles of Constantine the Great." Don't know from what time period:





Here's an icon described as "from the latter half of the 18th Century":




Then, an interesting painting from around 1902 called "To the Pentecost," by Sergey Korovin. I assume this is a painting of farmers on their way to Pentecost services, but don't really know; I'm looking more in to it.


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