Rachmaninoff: All-Night Vigil

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Image courtesy of L'auditori

All-Night Vigil took Rachmaninoff less than two weeks to compose, yet it’s one of the great choral compositions of Orthodox liturgical music. The work premiered in March 1915, in the midst of World War I. Unlike The Bells, The Vigil is an a cappella work, which moves away from the symphonic arrangements that usually characterize the composer’s work. 

Dedicated to the night vigil, an all-night Orthodox Christian ceremony, the work covers three canonical hours: evenings, dawn and sunset. The first six movements correspond to evening, and give the work its name; the next eight, to dawn; and the last, to sunset. In line with Orthodox doctrine, the composer had a special fondness for the fifth movement of the work, the "Nunc dimittis,” even requesting that it be played at his funeral.

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