#The nocturn series

3.2 Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandriaįrom the time of the early Church, the practice of seven fixed prayer times have been taught in Apostolic Tradition, Hippolytus instructed Christians to pray seven times a day 'on rising, at the lighting of the evening lamp, at bedtime, at midnight' and 'the third, sixth and ninth hours of the day, being hours associated with Christ's Passion.' With respect to midnight prayer and the ablutions preceding it, Hippolytus wrote: Īround midnight rise and wash your hands with water and pray.3.1 Syriac Orthodox Church, Indian Orthodox Church and Mar Thoma Syrian Church.In Oriental Orthodox Christianity and Oriental Protestant Christianity, the office is prayed at 12 am, being known as Lilio in the Syriac and Indian traditions it is prayed facing the eastward direction of prayer by all members in these denominations, both clergy and laity, being one of the seven fixed prayer times. The phrase hora nocturna (night hour) may refer to the canonical hour of vigils or matins, but not to the individual nocturns into which vigils or matins may be divided. The Latin adjective nocturnus corresponds to English 'nocturnal' and is attached to many different nouns, such as nocturnae horae (the hours of the night), nocturna tempora (nocturnal times), which are not necessarily connected with religion and are unrelated to the subject of this article. The plural form, vigiliae (vigils, watches), also came into use. Originating in a prayer service celebrated by early Christians at night, the liturgical office of matins was originally in Latin called vigilia (vigil, watch). Matins was composed of one to three nocturns. Ī nocturn consisted of psalms accompanied by antiphons and followed by readings, which were taken either from Scripture or from the Church Fathers or similar writings. In the liturgy of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, nocturns refer to the sections into which the canonical hour of matins was divided from the fourth or fifth century until after the Second Vatican Council. Apart from some of Field's pupils and acquaintances it seems that very few composers had any immediate inclination to follow his example, and it was only in the 1830s that nocturnes began to appear in any number.Nocturns ( Latin: nocturni or nocturna) is a Christian canonical hour said in the nighttime. Perhaps most striking of all in the early history of the nocturne is how slowly the genre developed. In the meantime, a number of works in ‘nocturne style’ had appeared with other titles. Jeffrey Kallberg has pointed out that the term was only defined in this way from the 1830s onwards.

It would also be a mistake to imagine that the term ‘nocturne’ was quickly accepted to mean a solo piano piece with a particular character. It is in any case questionable whether this style should be so closely identified with the genre, since many subsequent nocturnes fail to use it. The keyboard style normally associated with the genre had already been established in France by the end of the eighteenth century, so that its use by Field in 1812 was nothing new.

Hitherto Field's role as the inventor of the genre has been largely unquestioned, and it has been assumed that Chopin simply inherited a well-established formula but the early history of the nocturne is more complex than it might at first appear.

#The nocturn series

It was the year in which John Field published his 1 er Nocturne, the first in a series of similar works which led directly to the mature nocturnes of Chopin. The year 1812 was significant in the development of the early nocturne.