Hurko’s
Vespers Reflects Our Times
By
Olena Wawryshyn
On Saturday evenings, a few years back,
composer Roman Hurko could usually be found at the Vechirnia (Vespers) at St.
Elias Ukrainian Catholic Church just outside of
At the time, Hurko was
composing his own Vespers, and much of the inspiration for his new
liturgical work, which was recorded on a recently released CD, came from those
evening services.
“It is so beautiful at
St. Elias in the evening,” says Hurko describing the mood in the wooden church
designed in the traditional Boyko style found in western
Unlike the bilingual
Vespers services at St. Elias, which are sung in English and Ukrainian, Hurko’s
Vespers is written in Old Church Slavonic. It’s a departure for the
composer, who has written three other liturgical compositions–two Divine
Liturgies and a Requiem–set to Ukrainian texts. Hurko says he decided to set Vespers
to Old Church Slavonic “so that it is open to the whole church of the
Eastern rite.” Also, Church Slavonic liturgies have “hundreds of years of
tradition,” says Hurko.
Though Vespers is
sung in an ancient language, it has elements that reflect our times. “There are
certain modern harmonies [in it],” he says.
Music, like all art
forms, says Hurko, draws on dominant elements from the period in which it was
created. “There’s a relationship between music and architecture and even
furniture and clothes,” he says. “You
listen to baroque music and you can, by the music, see that the people were
wearing powdered wigs, and lace and their furniture was very ornate...
We live in a very undecorated age,” he says. And so, “there’s a certain
spareness and cleanness to [my] music,” says Hurko.
Ours is also an age in
which few composers write new music for liturgical use in church. Historically this was not the case.
Liturgical music has a 1,000-year history and, in the classical, romantic and
even in the early 20th century, many composers wrote sacred music.
Hurko is drawn to sacred
music because he feels it is a tradition that should be continued. “Liturgical
music is a very important part of our rite, and it’s important that there not
be a break in the chain. Then the next generation can say, ‘this was happening
in this period,’ and then take it from there,” he says.
“I find it interesting to
listen to the various composers through the last few hundred years. I can tell how they felt about these texts,
and even about the time they were living in by the music, and this is something
necessary, for future generations to look back on.”
How does one get into the
right frame of mind to compose music that is meant to glorify God, that will
hopefully find its place in a canon of a 1000-year tradition and is meant to be
sung for generations to come? “It is definitely a process of quieting the mind
and filling the soul and being in a place of contemplation and mediation,” says
Hurko.
Just as Hurko found
inspiration at St. Elias, he found the right conditions for such meditation in
his downtown
Location also played an
important role in creating the right mood and sound for the recording of Hurko’s
Vespers. Recording sessions took place last May at the historic
Vydubychi Monastery, which was founded in 1070 by Grand Prince Vsevolod
Yaroslavych on the southern edge of Kyiv by the
For the recording, Hurko
worked with the Kyiv-based Vydubychi Chorus under artistic director and
conductor Volodymyr Viniar. Founded in 1990,
its members are professional singers and graduates of music
conservatories and institutes in
The composer says he
commissioned the chorus to record Vespers because being a church choir
“they not only sing it, they pray it. They know these texts. They sing them all
the time.”
The chorus sang the world
premiere performance of Vespers in September 2005 at the opening concert
of the 16th International Kyiv Music Fest.
A Canadian premiere of Vespers
is still in the works. However,
Hurko says he is working on getting the Vydubichi Chorus to come to
Hurko's Vespers will be available in