With the blessing of His Eminence John, Metropolitan of Dubna, Archbishop of the Orthodox Churches of Russian tradition in Western Europe, the Second International Gathering of Cantors and Choir Directors was held at the St Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris from 31 October to 2 November. Thirty-two participants came from the United States, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Hungary and France.
The programme of the gathering included daily services and rehearsals. A round table was also organised on the adaptation of the customary Russian melodies into different languages. Choir directors and cantors shared their experiences of working in English, Hungarian, German and French. The main difficulty lay in the large number of translations of variable quality and the absence within the Church of a central body of revision to validate them. Another difficulty stems from the adaptation of the melodies owing to the prosody specific to each language. The customary Russian melodies often have to be simplified when sung in other languages.
The cathedral’s chief bell-ringer, Reader Michel Drobot, gave a lecture on the art of bell-ringing in Russia and its place in the Tradition of the Church.
On Sunday, after the Divine Liturgy, a concert was given in the cathedral. The first part was sung by the cathedral choir under the direction of Protodeacon Alexandre Kedroff. The second part was performed by the choir made up of all the participants in the conference, joined by the cathedral choir. It was conducted in turn by Father Alexandre Kedroff, Mr Vadim Serafimovich Gan, choir director of the Synodal Choir of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia in New York, Mr Pierre Alexeevich Fekula, choir director of the Church of the Protection of the Mother of God in Glen Cove (USA), and Mr Arseny Yurievich Kruglov, choir director of the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Mother of God in London. The concert was a moment of great spiritual intensity, the church being full to overflowing.
The services and the concert can be viewed on the cathedral’s website (cathedrale-orthodoxe.com) thanks to the technical team led by Mr André Sirbu.
