This site is made with the blessing of the Dean of St. Nicholas Brotherly Church,         town Brest,  Archpriest   Piotr Romanovich.

The Church Choir

“The significance of the church singing during public worships belongs to the kind of the most important questions like the role of the breathing or the sense of the circulatory system for a human’s life. The answer seems to be clear – the singing is a prayer, a bleeding, a soul of the worship, it supplies the hearts and minds of the believers with the prayer “oxygen”. Piercing through harmony of the church worship, it washes all its components. But anyway… taking in account human’s abilities for changing, and not only to the better side, but to the worse one, as well, unfortunately, the current of the whole world history shows a man’s nature, that is losing the sights of leading lights and the criteria of the right movement forward. As for a Christian, the latter is to keep strictly the faithful-St.Father’s-penitential-joyful-prayer-cordial disposition, and the church singing assists the Christian in acting so”. Dmitriy Bolgarskiy.

For reading: “The significance of the Church Singing in the Orthodox Public Worship” after Dmitriy Bolgarskiy.

Sing to Our Lord!! In 1990 at Christmas, when the St. Nicholas Church was revived, by the Cheese Week, the choir under the direction of the precentor Iraida Antonovna Ivanchenkova started its singing. She was a daughter of a priest, and sacred music had been feeding her since her early childhood. After finishing the secondary school the natural choice for her was the musical education. First it was a music specialized school, and then – conductor-choral department of the conservatoir, three courses with V.V. Rovdo. Iraida Antonovna obliged choir infinitely. In the first place she created a rich repertoir finding the compositions at the archives and writing what she had heard after her colleagues during the festival tours over Belarus, Russia, Poland. At the very beginning the choir sang in a narrow harmony, and in due course – in the more complicated and the wider one. It had been increasing the professional and the spiritual development of the members of the choir; and from their outward appearance, from the cloth design to the culture of behaviour – everything was in the field of vision of the pecentor who in the first place was utmostly exigent to herself. Under her management the choir had more than once its performances as over Belarus so outside of the country, it had been 4 times in Germany, more often – in Poland: Belostok, Lublin, Belsk, cloister in Grabarka, Gainovka (the third place), Terespol (Grand-Prix). On 11th February 2007, after the prolonged illness, at the age of 67, the precentor Iraida Antonovna passed away to Our Lord. The choristers and the parishioners are deeply mourning for the great loss and are praying for the peace of her soul.. Now  the choir is directed by a new precentor Aleksey Seryi. For the diligence in the       church services Aleksey Alekseevich was decorated with the order of the St. Equiapostolic Prince Vladimir. Now there are 25 members in the choir, most of them are professional musicians. According to Aleksey Seryi’s opinion, none of the temporal choirs is able to convey the prayerness in the singing so, as the church choir does. ”In the first place the church music serves for glorification of Our Lord, Our Lady, and all the Saints, serves for the pacification of the soul, raising of the heart high up to Our lord, cutting off all the earth temptations”, explains he. The choristers of the St. Nicholas Church choir do not wait for applauses after their performances, the main reward for them is the reward from God. The parishioners often thank the choristers after the worships, and some of the parishioners confess that they come to the St. Nichols Church from the remote districts of the town just for praying during public worships and to listening to the singing of the choir.

The peal is a divine music!

There are two kinds of the bell chime: ringing of church bells (the parishioners are called for the worship by it) and the peal as it is.

Ringing of church bells is measured strokes at one big bell. It realizes in the following way: first come three rare slow and long-drawn-out strokes, then measured strokes follow. Ringing of church bells can be divided into two kinds: common (private) that is realized by the biggest bell; and Lenten (occasional) that is realized by the least bell (according to its size) on the seventh days of the Lent.

The peal proper is the peal when all the bells ring at the same time. It is divided into three kinds:

Three-peal is the all bells’ ringing that repeats three times after a small break (the ringing in three motions). It sounds at the night-service watch and liturgy;

Two-peal is the all bells’ ringing twice (the ringing in two motions). It realizes at the night-service watch;

The ringing is the chime by turns (one or few strokes) every bell starting with the biggest up to the least repeated several times. It realizes at the liturgies and on the special occasions: during the Crucibow Week, at the Vespers of the Friday the Great before the Carrying out of the Shroud of Christ, at the matins of the Saturday the Great, on the day of the Exaltation of the Cross. The ringing also realizes during the Sacrament of the Consecrating;

Running over is the slow ringing each bell in turns, from the least to the biggest; after the stroke of the biggest bell, strike all the bells at the same time, and it repeats many times. Running over with other words is called funeral knell, it expresses melancholy and grief about the deceased. But the running over chime always ends with the three-peal - as a symbol of the Christian joyful news about the Resurrection of the dead.

Also there is alarm peal, very fast, that happens during alarm, uneasiness.