The subtitle of Russian-British composer
Alexander Levine's
Prayers for Mankind is "A Symphony of Prayers of Father Alexander Men." In six contrasting movements lasting well over an hour, the designation of symphony is not inappropriate, even though the scoring is for a cappella chorus. The texts are taken from devotional writings by
Father Alexander Men, an Orthodox priest, theologian, and biblical scholar who was assassinated in 1990 and has come to be revered as a saint. They are intensely, almost excruciatingly intimate prayers, the majority written as personal reflections, with only two sections possibly intended for public, collective use. Hearing such private self-exposure declaimed grandly and dramatically by a choral group almost comes across as unseemly, and can cause the kind of squirminess one might feel when overhearing a too-intimate conversation. This might be an issue for English speakers because
Levine uses a translation of the texts rather than the original Russian.