Date/Time
Date(s) - November 28, 2024
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Location
Room 1500, Segal Building, SFU Vancouver
Categories No Categories
This presentation will be moderated by Dr. Dimitris Krallis, Director of SFU’s SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies.
Attendance is free. The event is open to the public and in-person only.
This programming is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).
ABSTRACT
In this musically illustrated lecture, Alexander Lingas will discuss the ways in which fourteenth-and fifteenth-century inhabitants of Thessaloniki celebrated in song the annual feast of their heavenly patron: the fourth-century martyr Demetrios. They did so the basilicas and streets of the city they did so by drawing on two musical repertories. The first was that of the archaic “Sung Office” of the Constantinopolitan Great Church of Hagia Sophia, which their Thessalonian cathedral was the last church in the world to employ for the daily cycle of common prayer. The other was hymnody drawn from the traditions of the Holy City of Jerusalem, which local composers and hymnographers had been enriching with their own compositions to create a “Holy Week of St Demetrios.” In addition to archival sources, Dr Lingas will draw upon his recent experience with Cappella Romana and the UCLA Chamber Singers editing, rehearsing, performing, and recording medieval chants for the festal vespers of St Demetrios.
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY
Alexander Lingas, Music Director and founder of Cappella Romana, formed and directed the Byzantine Chant Ensemble for the Coronation of Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla in 2023. He is a Professor Emeritus of Music at City, University of London, and a Research Fellow of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies (Cambridge, UK). Dr. Lingas completed his doctorate on Sunday matins in the rite of Hagia Sophia at the University of British Columbia and then, with the support of a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship, moved to Oxfordshire to study theology with Metropolitan Kallistos Ware. From 1997 to 2021 he was a Fellow of the University of Oxford’s European Humanities Research Centre. His present work embraces not only historical study but also ethnography and performance. His awards include Fulbright and Onassis grants for musical studies in Greece with cantor Lycourgos Angelopoulos, the British Academy’s Thank-Offering to Britain Fellowship, research leave supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, and the St. Romanos the Melodist medallion of the National Forum for Greek Orthodox Church Musicians (USA). In 2018 His All Holiness, Bartholomew I, Archbishop of Constantinople-New Rome and Ecumenical Patriarch, bestowed on him the title of Archon Mousikodidáskalos. Having been Spring 2023 Artist in Residence at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Yonkers, New York, he will return there in 2023–24 as Professor of Music and Associate Director of its Institute of Sacred Arts