AECMC

Same as last year this Conference was held online via Zoom platform from January 27 to 29, 2022.

The topic of this conference was "Liturgical Culture and Church Style" and webinars were held via Zoom across three days from Thursday to Saturday.

The majority of people were able to take part in all three days. However there was a small amount of people who joined only for one or two days, or for particular sessions.
The event was open to all choir directors, singers, readers and all people interested in Russian Orthodox liturgical music. As a result there were more than 30 participants. This amount included the invited speakers and interpreters. Despite main working language of the conference was Russian, the main feature of this conference was synchronous translation to three languages (Russian, English and French). Our trial of offering French language as one of the working languages of the conference was a success. This showed that music and church singing education is in high demand across all orthodox communities.

Participants were from the UK, Germany, France, USA, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Russia, Norway and Italy. Among them there were the representatives of the Russian Church Abroad, Moscow Patriarchate, French Archdiocese and some parishes which are currently still under the Konstantinopol.

The following lectures were delivered:
«Attempts to restore order in the performing practice of church choirs at the beginning of the 20th century» (Dr. S. Zvereva);
«The question of churchliness through the prism of the works of deacon Sergiy Trubachev» (fr. Michael Asmus);
«Choir conductor’s work and objectives» (fr. Alexandre Kedrov);
«I.A. Gardner, N.N. Kedrov-jr., F.I. Rudikov. Three views on church singing» (fr. Ioann Drobot);
«How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? The mission of Orthodox worship in Britain» (fr. Stephen Platt);
«Church services in Peter the Great’s time: Between prayer and literature» (Dr. A. Pletneva);
«Spiritual aspects of choir conductor’s service» (V. Krassovsky);
«Synodal editions of the Obyhod of church music singing of various chants and their use in modern singing practice of the Moscow region» (Dr. N. Potemkina);
«Systematising the history of Russian liturgical creativity: 20th century» (Dr. A. Kravetsky);
«Styles of liturgical reading of the Holy Gospel» (Dr. A. Andreev).
 

Several workshops and roundtable discussions were organised:
Roundtable #1 «Choosing music in accordance with the liturgical moment: meaningful interpretation of music and text» (moderators: M. Malinine, fr. Alexandre Kedrov);
Roundtable #2 «Liturgical culture in the 21st century. Problems and prospects of development» (moderators: V. Krassovsky, I. du Quenoy);
Workshop «Summing up the results of the conference, discussions, questions, feedback from participants» (moderators: I. du Quenoy, V. Kashlyaev).
 

During these activities big amount of comments and questions were asked by participants.
The fact that there were representatives of different jurisdictions it was very useful to share
practices and experience of how parishes were coping with the current situation across the
globe.

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This third liturgical music conference turned out to be an extremely important event, both in terms of improving church singing in European parishes and in the field of strengthening spiritual ties between singers / choir conductors, both within European dioceses and between “foreigners” and our brothers in the parishes of other jurisdictions of the Russian tradition.

Especially in crisis conditions, our work remains critical to the flourishing and even survival of church music life in Europe, and as such the Committee is committed to continuing its work online until such time as live events/gatherings become possible.