Cappella Romana has created an extraordinary and rare program on the theme of the endurance of Byzantine chant traditions near the end of the Ottoman Empire that were preserved by the diaspora of Greek-speaking refugees from the city once known as Smyrna (now İzmir). Performances will be in Seattle (10 November at 7.30pm at St. Demetrios Greek Cathedral) and Portland (11 November at 8pm at St. Mary’s Cathedral and 12 November at 3pm at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral). You can also access the performance online a week after the premiere.
In 1922, one of the worst episodes of “ethnic cleansing” reached its climax with the Burning of Smyrna and the massacre of Greeks and Armenians in this multicultural center. Cappella Romana’s John Michael Boyer writes in his program essay of the violence, all too familiar from current events, which overtook this “most important commercial port in the Eastern Mediterranean … the image of an international cosmopolitan city with the Greek element paramount in a modernized economy and an urbane society”:
According to American eye-witnesses, on the 13th of September at noon, the Kemalists set fires in the Greek and Armenian districts of the city, forcing its 400,000 Greeks to run toward the wharf. At night, on the narrow strip of the Quai, the inhospitable night sea ahead and flames approaching behind, the Greeks were in a living Hell. Ships of the allied fleet in the open sea, following orders which they had received from their countries, observed “systematic political neutrality.”
The program presents chants from psalmody and hymnography from the Smyrnean tradition, including chants associated with the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman (St. Photeiní) and from the Divine Liturgy from Smyrna, Asia Minor, and the diaspora. Among the composers are Kosmás Evmorphópoulos of Madytos (1869-1901), Nikólaos Georgíou, Protopsáltis of Smyrna (ca. 1790-1887), Pétros Philanthídis (1840-1915), Christóoulos Georgiádis of Kessáni (19th c.), Triandáphyllos Georgiádis (1865-1934), Michael Perpiniás (1903-1975), and Pétros Manéas (1870-1950), and Panyiótis Gerogiádis Kiltzanídis of Prousa (1815-1896).
Filed under: Cappella Romana, music news
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 