All-Night Vigil (Rachmaninoff)

Rachmaninoff composed the All-Night Vigil in less than two weeks in January and February 1915.^[4] The All-Night Vigil is perhaps notable as one of two liturgical settings (the other being the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom) by a composer who had stopped attending church services. As required by the Russian Orthodox Church, Rachmaninoff based ten of the fifteen sections on chant. However, the five original sections (numbers 1, 3, 6, 10, & 11) were so heavily influenced by chant that the composer called them "conscious counterfeits".

Rachmaninoff's work is a culmination of the preceding two decades of interest in Russian sacred music, as initiated by Tchaikovsky's setting of the all-night vigil.^[5][6] The similarities between the works, such as the extensive use of traditional chants, demonstrates the extent of Tchaikovsky's influence; however, Rachmaninoff's setting is much more complex in its use of harmony, textual variety and polyphony.^[7]

The first performance was given in Moscow on 10/23 March 1915, partly to benefit the Russian war effort. Nikolai Danilin conducted the all-male Moscow Synodal Choir at the premiere. It was received warmly by critics and audiences alike, and was so successful that it was performed five more times within a month.^[8] However the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the rise of the Soviet Union led to the government condemnation of religious music,^[9] and on 22 July 1918 the Synodal Choir was replaced by a non-religious "People's Choir Academy".^[10] It has been written that "no composition represents the end of an era so clearly as this liturgical work".^[11]

Individual movements of Rachmaninoff’s Vigil are incorporated by conductors into the actual sacred performance, or celebration (to use the proper Orthodox term), of the All-Night Vigil. On the night of April 2, 2022, Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, celebrated a hierarchical All-Night Vigil that included all of the movements of Rachmaninoff’s work, incorporated with the complete order of the service.^[12]

The Vigil includes three styles of chant: znamenny (in numbers 8, 9, 12, 13 and 14), a more recitational Greek style (numbers 2 and 15), and "Kiev" chant — a chant developed in Kiev in the 16th and 17th centuries (numbers 4 and 5). Before writing, Rachmaninoff had studied ancient chant under Stepan Smolensky, to whom he dedicated the piece. It is written for a four-part choir, complete with basso profondo. However, in many parts there is three-, five-, six-, or eight-part harmony; at one point in the seventh movement, the choir is divided into eleven parts. Movements 4 and 9 each contain a brief tenor solo, while movements 2 and 5 feature lengthy solos respectively for alto and tenor. The fifth movement, Nunc dimittis (Nyne otpushchayeshi), has gained notoriety for its ending in which the low basses must negotiate a descending scale that ends with a low B-flat (the third B-flat below middle C). When Rachmaninoff initially played this passage through to Kastalsky and Danilin in preparation for the first performance, Rachmaninoff recalled that:

Danilin shook his head, saying, "Now where on earth are we to find such basses? They are as rare as asparagus at Christmas!" Nevertheless, he did find them. I knew the voices of my countrymen...^[3]

Note: Numbers 1–6 contain settings from the Russian Orthodox Vespers service (Russian: Вечерня, Večérnja), numbers 7–14 settings from Matins (Утреня, Útrenja), and number 15 from The First Hour (Первый час, Pérvyj čas).

The first recording of the Vigil was made by Aleksandr Sveshnikov with the State Academic Russian Choir of the USSR for the Soviet Melodiya label in 1965 – exactly half a century after the work's first performance. Because of Soviet anti-religious policies, this record was never available for sale within the USSR, but was only made for the export market and private study. This recording still has a legendary reputation, in part because of its extremely strong low basses, but also because of the solos by Klara Korkan and Konstantin Ognevoi.^[13] The recording was first released in the United States in 1973 on the Melodiya-Angel label. The March 1974 edition of Stereo Review noted that Angel's general manager Robert E. Myers had "tracked down the recording" and "had to prevail rather heavily on the Soviet powers that be to make it part of their trade agreement with Angel".^[14]

The Russian feminist protest punk rock group Pussy Riot used the sixth movement as the basis for its protest song "Mother of God, Chase Putin Away".^[15]

• Rachmaninoff Vespers: Transliteration and translation (archived 2012)
• All-Night Vigil: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
• Rhodes College Mastersingers, directed by Tony Lee Garner, live recording from February,1998 at St. Mary's Cathedral, Memphis Tennessee. Free mp3s of complete performance
• All-Night Vigil of Rachmaninoff in Russian at Predanie.ru archive