Orthodox Christmas Music
St. Elias Church Nativity Hymns (English) High Speed	Vatopaidi Monastery on Mt. Athos Christmas Vespers (Greek) High Speed	Metropolitan Choir of the Russian Cathedral in Paris Christmas Vespers (Slavonic) High Speed	Monastery Christmas Hymns of the 16th-17th Century (Slavonic) High Speed

1st Album
I looked for days for Orthodox Christmas music. All I could find was a low quality recording from a Ukrainian Catholic church in Canada. Over four hundred years ago, when part of Ukraine was dominated by the Roman Catholic Poland, some Ukrainian churches separated from the Orthodox Church and entered communion with the Catholics. They still retained their eastern liturgical and musical tradition, so these hymns are much the same as what you'd here in an English speaking church of Slavic background. This church uses Ukrainian and English, I have edited the audio files to include only the English.
Downloaded from St. Elias Church.

2nd Album
Vatopaidi Monastery, Mt. Athos
Christmas Vespers
An album from the Greek Vatopaidi Monastery on Mt. Athos.

3rd Album
Russians have had a long standing cultural connection with France. In Paris stands a cathedral built by the Tzar of Russia. This album is a recording of the Choir of the Metropolitan of Moscow in the Paris cathedral singing Christmas Vespers. The album can be bought from RussianDVD online.
Downloaded from predanie.ru.

4th Album
Monastery Christmas Hymns of the 16th-17th Century
A collection of Christmas hymns written or composed in Russian monasteries in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Downloaded from predanie.ru.

Listen to Orthodox music while you surf. Click High Speed for Broadband or Low Speed for slower connections.
St. John of the Ladder Pasca Service (English) High Speed or Low Speed	Holy Trinity Orthodox Church Hymns from Holy Week (English) High Speed or Low Speed	Western Rite Orthodox Music Sarum Chant (English) High Speed
Choir of Valaam Monastery Taste the Fountain of Immortality (English) High Speed	Various Byzantine Hymns (English) High Speed	Easter on Mt. Athos (Greek) High Speed
Chorus under Konstantinos Fotopoulos - (Greek) High Speed	The Divine Liturgy Composed by S. Rachmaninoff (Church Slavonic) High Speed or Low Speed	All Night Vigil Composed by S. Rachmaninoff (Church Slavonic) High Speed
Praise to the Lord of Heaven Hymns of 19th-20th Century Russian Composers (Church Slavonic) High Speed	Choir of Valaam Monastery Northern Athos (Church Slavonic) High Speed	Lacu Skete, Mt. Athos Canonul Invierii (Romanian) High Speed
Choir of St. Romanos the Melodist St. George Monastery, Syria (Arabic) Low Speed	A Variety of Orthodox Hymns in a Variety of Languages. High Speed	Kiev-Pechersky Lavra Bell Ringing High Speed

All music here has been downloaded from the internet and, as far as I have been able to find, are copyright free or distributable. If you are or represent the copyright holder and wish this files removed e-mail me and I will do so as fast as I can. The original mp3 files can be found at the sites listed below.

1st Album:
Orthodox Pasca (Easter) Resurrection Service
Preformed by the combined choirs of St. John of the Ladder (Greenville SC), Holy Apostles (Columbia, SC), and Holy Ascension (Charleston, SC).
This was some of the first Orthodox music I ever heard.
Downloaded from Orthotracks.org

2nd Album:
Hymns of Holy Week
Preformed by the Choir of Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral (San Francisco, CA).
Downloaded from Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral

3rd Album
Sarum Chant
Western Rite Orthodox Music
It is little known even among many Orthodox that in addition to the eastern forms of chant, Russian, Kievan, Byzantine, or other monastery forms, there is also a western form. While Eastern Rite churches use the ancient Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Western Rite churches use a different liturgy. In the ancient church, many different Divine Liturgies were used. In the east, the Chrysostom liturgy became dominant, and the older liturgies fell into disuse, with the exception of the also eastern Liturgy of St. Basil. When the Catholic and Orthodox Churches split, the western liturgies became little known to the Orthodox world. The Western Rite was re-introduced into Orthodoxy as Anglican-Episcopalian and Old Catholic individuals and sometimes whole parishes entered the Orthodox Church. Liturgies used include the ancient Galician Rite, the Sarum Rite, the Liturgy of St. Gregory, and the most recent addition the Liturgy of St. Tikon which is based on the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Most Western Rite parishes are located in western Europe, especially France, and in English speaking countries, and are spread out among Orthodox jurisdictions. The Antiochian Orthodox Church of America seems to have the largest number, using the Liturgy of St. Gregory which is the ancient Roman rite, or the Liturgy of St. Tikon. The music I've collected here is of the Sarum Rite , which is used mostly in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, and pre-dates the Anglican Church. The Western Rite is only in limited use compared with the Eastern Rite, but it does add yet another flavor to world Orthodoxy.
"Never, never, never let anyone tell you that, in order to be Orthodox, you must also be eastern. The West was Orthodox for a thousand years, and her venerable liturgy is far older than any of her heresies." -- St. John the Wonderworker of Shanghai and San Francisco.
Downloaded from Occidentalis.

4th Album
Official Website of Valaam Monastery
Founded somewhere between the 10th and 15th centuries, Valaam is one of the most well known monasteries in the world. This is a rare album of an all Russian choir chanting in English.
Downloaded from Three Saints Orthodox Church.

5th Album
Various Byzantine Hymns in English
Downloaded from Byzantine Chant Studies Audio Page.

6th Album
Easter on Mt. Athos
I found this on a public FTP site and don't know much about it. On Mt. Athos there are 20 monasteries and many small sketes. I don't know if this music is from a single monastery or a combination of several. Most are Greek, so I am assuming the language used here is Greek.
Downloaded from svetoslavlje.org FTP site .

7th Album
Various Hymns
Chorus under Konstantinos Fotopoulos
I got this from a Russian web site. There are many other albums available for free download, most are in Russian, some in Greek. Copy the link and paste it into Google's search box. It will give you the option to translate it so you can make some sense out of what is listed. Click on the music note for the list of albums. I couldn't tell exactly but this seems to be hymns from the liturgy and other services. The language used is Greek.
Downloaded from predanie.ru.

8th Album
The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom
as composed by Sergi Rachmaninoff
Performers unknown.
The language used is Old Church Slavonic, a language related to Russian used in liturgical services in Slavic nations.
Downloaded from what is, as far as I can tell, a web site of the Serbian Orthodox Church of the Netherlands , in Serbian.

9th Album
All Night Vigil
as composed by Sergi Rachmaninoff
Performers unknown. (Church Slavonic)
Downloaded from a web site of the Serbian Orthodox Church of the Netherlands , in Serbian.

10th Album
Praise to the Lord of Heaven.
Spiritual Hymns of 19th and 20th Century Russian Composers
I only recognize one of these hymns, the Lord's Prayer. The others may be traditional Orthodox hymns that were composed by modern Russians, or maybe even written by them.
Downloaded from predanie.ru.

11th Album
Choir of the Valaam Monastery
Northern Athos
This album takes its name from a nickname for the monastery. It is called the northern Athos because the spirituality of Valaam equals that of the monasteries of Mt. Athos. I found a web site where this album is sold, Musica Russica , and I was able to get the track list in English. There are two main types of hymns, traditional Byzantine and Znamenny, which is a Russian form of church singing that developed as the Byzantine musical tradition developed in Russia. There are also three other hymns, one each from Kiev, St. Elijah Skete on Mt. Athos, and the Lavra of the Holy Trinity and St.Sergius. All hymns are in Slavonic.
Downloaded from predanie.ru. There are several Valaam albums on this site, this one is the second.

12th Album
Lacu Skete, Mt. Athos
Canonul Invierii
After Slavonic and before Greek, Romanian is probably the second most used liturgical language. Because Romanians have not immigrated in such large numbers as Greeks and Russians. Romanian is also the only Latin language in which the Divine Liturgy was celebrated before modern times as most other western Roman provinces became Roman Catholic. I don't know much about this album, the Pascal "Christ is Risen" hymn is at the beginning and end, so it is either from an Easter service or a collection. I downloaded it from a site with many more Romanian albums and singles.
Downloaded from ortodoxmedia.com.

13th Album
Choir of St. Romanos the Melodist.
St. George Monastery, Syria.
When most people think of Arabs they think of Islam, but Orthodoxy reached the Arab people long before it spread to the Slavs. The Gospel had spread to the Semitic Syriac people within the Eastern Roman Empire, and from there to the also Semitic Arabs on the fringes of the empire. There are many records of Arab Christians before and after Islam. As Muslims spread across Christian lands, more Arabs came into contact with Christianity. Conversions would have been few, likely more Christians converted to the dominant Islam, but some stayed dedicated enough to continue their faith into modern times. Most Arab Christians today are found in Syria and the Palestinian territories. There are also large immigrant communities in western countries. Many of our saints were Arabs, most famously the 8th Century theologian St. John of Damascus and the 20th Century missionary St. Raphael of Brookland.
Unfortunately the only Arabic music I could find was a low bit rate encoding of a CD of an Arab choir.
Downloaded from Orthodoxia Radio .

14th Album
A Variety of Hymns in a Variety of Languages
A collection I made of Orthodox hymns from the internet.
1. Chinese - Taken from my church's choir director's web site.
2. Japanese - Lord's Prayer, taken from Ancient Faith Radio's web site.
3. Japanese - Pascal Troparion
4. Korean - From a Christmas service, taken from Youtube.
5. Korean - Cherubic Hymn.
6. Kenyan - Unknown hymn, a sample from an album sold at St. Ramanos Records, a great place to buy Orthodox Music.
7. Spanish - An unknown hymn in Tone 1.
8. Multilingual - Christ is Risen in Greek, Latin, Slavonic, French, and Portuguese.

15th Album
Kiev-Pechersky Lavra
Bell Ringing
The ringing of church bells is a musical tradition all it's own in the Orthodox Church. There is a variety of different instrumentals here, I found the track list online in English and used them to replace the Russian names.
Downloaded from predanie.org .