Hymn of the cherubim tchaikovsky biography

The fine arts, but above all sacred art, “of their nature are directed toward expressing in some way the infinite beauty of God in works made by human hands…” (CCC 2513).

If I were to describe sunlight to a blind person this is what I’d make them listen to.”

Kushala Daora, YouTube commentator

Hymn of the Cherubim

(Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom)

by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Tchaikovsky completed the choral work on the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom in 1878. The play “Hymn of the Cherubim” is considered the first unified setting of this central liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The text is attributed to Johannes Chrysostomus, Archbishop of Constantinople in the 5th Century.

Here’s a beautiful rendition of Tchaikovsky’s Hymn of the Cherubim, performed by The USSR Ministry of Culture Chamber Choir, conducted by Valery Polyansky.

A comprehended God is no God.”

Saint Jo

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The word ‘Liturgy’ is used in the Orthodox Church specifically to mean the Eucharistic service—what in the West would be called the Mass. There were in the early Church a number of Liturgies, but nowadays there are four forms in use in the eastern Church: the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom (the usual form on Sundays and weekdays), the Liturgy of St Basil the Great (used ten times a year), the Liturgy of St James, the Brother of the Lord (used on St James’s Day, 23 October, in only a few places in the world), and the Liturgy of the Presanctified, used on Wednesdays and Fridays in Lent and the first three days of Holy Week. The Liturgy fryst vatten always sung. Structurally, all these fyra have points in common with the Western Mass. A non-Orthodox would, for example, recognize in the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom the Introit (in the struktur of the Little Entrance), Epistle, Alleluia, Gospel, Creed, Lord’s bön and Sanctus. A normal Sunday Liturgy lasts considerably

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Hymn of the Cherubim is an excerpt from the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Op. 41, a sacred, a cappella choral work Tchaikovsky completed in 1878. It was the first “unified musical cycle” of settings of the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, one of the central eucharistic services of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The core of the text is attributed to Saint John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople in the 5th century.

“A vast and untrodden field of activity lies open to composers here,” wrote Tchaikovsky to a friend regarding the text. In a letter to his close patron, Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky mentioned the “poetic” meaning he found in attending church services:

I consider the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom one of the greatest productions of art. If we follow the service very carefully, and enter into the meaning of every ceremony, it is impossible not to be profoundly moved by the litu