Znamenny Chant, Psalm 136 (By the Waters of Babylon). The Monastic Choir of St. Elisabeth Convent

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✏ The pre-Lenten Matins hymn, “By the waters of Babylon” is performed by the Monastic Choir of St. Elisabeth Convent. This chant is sung just before we enter Great Lent. It is based on Psalm 136, and the psalm is not so much a song as a cry of pain. The psalm is a lament about being in exile after the Babylonian captivity, and yearning for Jerusalem.
Psalm 136 is a part of the Nineteenth Kathisma of Psalter and is read at Matins on Friday mornings throughout the year, except during Bright Week. During most of Great Lent it is read at Matins on Thursday and at the Third Hour on Friday, but during the fifth week of Great Lent it is read at Vespers on Tuesday evening and at the Third Hour on Friday. This psalm is solemnly chanted at Matins after the Polyeleos on the three Sundays preceding the beginning of Great Lent.

✏The TEXT of Psalm 136:
By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and we wept when we remembered Sion. Upon the willows in the midst thereof did we hang our instruments. For there, they that had taken us captive asked us for words of song. And they that had led us away asked us for a hymn, saying: Sing us
one of the songs of Sion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten. Let my tongue cleave to my throat, if I remember thee not, if I set not Jerusalem above all other, as at the head of my joy. Remember, O Lord, the sons of Edom, in the day of Jerusalem, Who said: Lay waste, lay waste to her, even to the foundations thereof. O daughter of Babylon, thou wretched one, blessed shall he be who shall reward thee wherewith thou hast rewarded us. Blessed shall he be who shall seize and dash thine infants against the rock.

The Monastic choir of St. Elisabeth Convent grew out of an amateur choir of the sisters of mercy who visited the patients of the National Psychiatric Hospital in Novinki. When St Elisabeth Convent was officially established in 1999, many of the choir members became nuns. That was how the monastic choir formed in the Convent. Currently, there are as many as 20-25 members of this choir, who sing during feasts. The Choir usually uses Znamenny and Byzantine chants, Valamo chant, and adds Byzantine and Greek chants on feasts, alongside Old Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Georgian chants.

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