The Russian Choral Heritage Foundation is pleased to announce the official launch of the Orthodox Sacred Music Reference Library (www.orthodoxchoral.org), a unique online resource that makes more than 15,000 pages of Orthodox musical sources accessible to users worldwide. In its current state, the library contains over 3,000 titles by 42 composers, making it the largest free online library of authentic, published sources.

Four years in the making, the Library represents the culmination of more than 40 years’ work by Dr. Vladimir Morosan, a Russian-American choral conductor and musicologist. With support from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, the William Fulbright Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, Morosan traveled extensively throughout Western Europe and Russia, locating and photocopying rare musical scores that were in danger of being lost. Now this material, scanned, catalogued, and indexed, is available to anyone with an Internet connection.

Orthodox sacred choral music ‒ a highly developed art form featuring singing by unaccompanied voices, which evolved during more than one thousand years of Christianity in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and in the Balkan countries of Bulgaria, Serbia, and Romania ‒ has recently garnered much attention in the musical world: seven recordings of Orthodox music over the last ten years have received or been nominated for GRAMMY™ awards. The website of the Orthodox Sacred Music Reference Library features numerous links to new editions and recordings of the music, as they relate to the Library’s original source material.

The project is being carried out under the auspices of the non-profit Russian Choral Heritage Foundation, with key financial support from the Russian Orthodox Theological Fund, the Orthodox Vision Foundation, and the Russian Nobility Association in America, as well as numerous individual donors. While the initial emphasis has been on the sacred music of Russia, there are plans to add works from the Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Georgian, Greek Byzantine, and other Orthodox traditions. Project Director Morosan points out that the Library receives no government or institutional funding: "We are extremely grateful to the donors who have enabled our efforts thus far, and we look forward to finding individuals and organizations who will help us endow the project so that it can be sustained for future generations."

Tax-deductible contributions in support of the Orthodox Sacred Music Reference Library can be made online by visiting the Library’s website here or Facebook page here. They can also be mailed to:

The Russian Choral Heritage Foundation
527 Gardendale Road
Encinitas, CA 92024 USA

For more information, please contact Dr. Morosan at (619) 917-4789 or orthodoxchoral@gmail.com