Leitourgeia kai Qurbana: Contra den Zeitgeist

Cappella Romana’s The Divine Liturgy in English arrived in the mail today. I will have more extensive comments about it later, but the bottom line is that once everybody in my choir has a copy, I can just tell them, for the most part anyway, “Sing it like that.” Let me assure you that I am not getting any incentive to advertise this disc in the slightest — it is no more and and no less that I firmly believe that this is a very important work which can serve as a model from here on out of what the ideal should be for Byzantine chant in English. There are some caveats there, but they have to do with circumstances which are going to change from parish to parish, and don’t really impact the general point.

Which is — buy it, listen to it, learn from it. Please don’t rip copies and give them out. This wasn’t cheap or easy for Cappella Romana to produce and it will impact the ability of ensembles such as CR to produce future such works if people just steal it. Cappella Romana ain’t Radiohead, folks.