Modern Hymnography and Assessment

The story of Orthodox hymnography carried into the modern age: the new akathists, above all the Akathist of Thanksgiving, “Glory to God for All Things” — and its genuinely contested authorship — and the translation of the whole hymnographic inheritance into the modern languages of a worldwide Church, closing with a sober assessment.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Byzantine hymnography)

Overview

Orthodox hymnography is not a closed museum but a living tradition that still composes and, above all, still translates. The first file of this section treats the most remarkable modern hymn in the akathist form, the Akathist of Thanksgiving, “Glory to God for All Things,” born of the Russian Church’s twentieth-century agony — and it researches carefully the disputed question of its authorship, between Metropolitan Tryphon (Turkestanov) and the popular ascription to Fr. Gregory Petrov. The second file treats the great modern labour of translation — the rendering of the Byzantine hymnographic corpus into English and the other languages of the diaspora and the mission — and offers a sober, closing assessment of Orthodox hymnography as theology, as poetry, and as a living tradition, honest about both its glory and its difficulties.

Files

File Description
glory-to-god-for-all-things.md The Akathist of Thanksgiving; its origin in the Soviet persecution; the contested authorship (Tryphon Turkestanov vs. Gregory Petrov), treated as Corrected/Disputed with sources
translation-and-assessment.md The modern translation of the hymnographic corpus; the challenges of rendering Byzantine poetry; a sober assessment of the tradition

See Also