Cappella Romana

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Capella Romana (https://cappellaromana.org/) is a professional vocal ensemble that performs early and contemporary sacred classical music in the Christian traditions of East and West. The ensemble is known especially for its presentations and recordings of medieval Byzantine chant (the Eastern sibling of Gregorian chant), Greek and Russian Orthodox choral works, and other sacred music that expresses the historic traditions of a unified Christian inheritance. Since 2011, they have brought their repertoire on Byzantine chant, which they have performed and recorded with the Icons of Sound project. Their collaborations include two Stanford Live concerts in the Bing Concert Hall in 2013 and 2016 and the resultant recording, Lost Voices of Hagia Sophia: the first vocal album to be recorded entirely in virtual acoustics.

 

Capella Romana Contributors

Professor Alexander Lingas is the founder and Music Director of the vocal ensemble Cappella Romana and a Fellow of the University of Oxford’s European Humanities Research Centre.His present work embraces historical study, ethnography, and performance. Lingas offered his rich expertise on the chant of the cathedral rite of Hagia Sophia and developed the repertoire sung by Cappella Romana for all the recordings, concerts and live auralizations done as part of “Icons of Sound” project at Stanford.

 
Lingas, Alexander. 2013. “From Earth to Heaven: The Changing Soundscape of Byzantine Liturgy.” In Experiencing Byzantium: Papers from the 44th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, Newcastle and Durham, April 2011, edited by Claire Nesbitt and Mark Jackson, 311–58. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Lingas, “Late Byzantine Cathedra Liturgy and the Service of the Furnace,” in Approaching the Holy Mountain: Art and Liturgy at St Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai, edited by Sharon Gerstel and Robert Nelson (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 179–230.

Lingas, Performance Practice and the Politics of Transcribing Byzantine chant,” Acta musicae Byzantinae6 (2003): 56–76.

Lingas, Sunday Matins in the Byzantine Cathedral Rite: Music and Liturgy(Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of British Columbia, 1996).

 

City, University of London is an independent member institution of the University of London. Established by Royal Charter in 1836, the University of London consists of 18 independent member institutions with outstanding global reputations and several prestigious central academic bodies and activities. Antonopoulos contributed to the research and transcription of the Byzantine repertoire for the 2016 concert and recording.

 
Gerstel, Sharon E. J., Chris Kyriakakis, Konstantinos T. Raptis, Spyridon Antonopoulos, and James Donahue, “Soundscapes of Byzantium: The Acheiropoietos Basilica and the Cathedral of Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki,” Hesperia: Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 87/1 (2018): 177–213.

Antonopoulos, Spyridon, Sharon Gerstel, Chris Kyriakakis, James Donahue, “Soundscapes of Byzantium,” Speculum 92/S1 (2017): S321-35, https://doi.org/10.1086/693378

 

Ioannis Arvanitis, National Library of Greece, Manuscripts Dpt. Department, Faculty Member. Studies Byzantine Liturgy, Byzantine Music, and Greek Palaeography. Arvanitis contributed to the research and transcrition of Byzantine chant repertoire for the 2011 recordings and the 2013 concert.

 
 

Cappella Romana, 2016 Concert and Recording
Spyridon Antonopoulos
John Michael Boyer
Kristen Buhler
Aaron Cain
Photini Downie Robinson
Constantine Kokenes
Stelios Kontakiotis
David Krueger
Emily Lau
Kerry McCarthy
Mark Powell
Catherine van der Salm
David Stutz