The Northern Jerusalem

“Ecclesiastical chant leads us toward an encounter, a presence; toward the testimony of what our ancestors experienced through the liturgy, and what we ourselves must transmit to our contemporaries and descendants.”
— Marcel Pérès, “Que pourrait-être une herméneutique du chant ecclésiastique?” in Le chant liturgique aujourd’hui et la tradition grégorienne, 2016.

In Vilnius—a city shaped by shifting borders, intersecting cultures, and diverse religious traditions—Lucernalis creates a space where sacred and early music is not treated as a historical exhibit, but revived as a living, breathing tradition.

This is the city that once held “forty Catholic churches and numerous synagogues,” the city that, in the words of Czesław Miłosz when receiving the Nobel Prize in 1980, “was once called the Jerusalem of the North.”

For centuries, Vilnius has been a threshold city, standing at the crossroads of East and West, Catholic and Orthodox, Latin and Byzantine traditions. A place of passage—between histories, identities, and between forgotten and still-living traditions.

“Quite early, I began to perceive the architecture of Vilnius as a sign. It spoke of something and demanded something. It was a noble past in a strange and unreal present, a tradition in a world that had suddenly lost all tradition, a culture in an acultural world.”
— Tomas Venclova, from Vilnius as a Form of Spiritual Life (1978), a dialogue with Czesław Miłosz.

Reflection

“This music cannot be read without a teacher. One must learn everything by heart—both the words and the chant—because this music is the heart of the whole world (…). The liturgy is solemn worship.”
— Daphtara Afork, the oldest cantor in Lalibela, Ethiopia, in Le Silence des Anges (1999)

At Lucernalis, we believe that sacred music was never meant for concert halls or archives. It belongs to life itself—to the sacred spaces it once filled, to the voices and hands that still carry it today. This is why Lucernalis seeks to bridge historical performance and living tradition.

Scholars and performers, monastic cantors and instrumentalists, bearers of oral tradition and those reconstructing lost repertoires gather here—not merely to perform, but to experience, to question, to participate.

 

Transmission

The festival’s name, Lucernalis, comes from Lucernarium—an early Christian evening rite in which candles were lit to mark the transition from day to night, from the ordinary to the sacred.

Just as this act of illumination stood at a threshold, so does Lucernalis—between past and present, tradition and innovation, performance and prayer.

“The chant creates the place and time of transmission.”
— Marcel Pérès, “Que pourrait-être une herméneutique du chant ecclésiastique?” in Le chant liturgique aujourd’hui et la tradition grégorienne, 2016.

At Lucernalis, music is not just sound—it is a way of understanding who we are. We listen, we chant, we celebrate.

We seek not only beauty, but meaning.

We invite you to join this search—to let sacred music live within you, as it once lived within the ancient stones of Vilnius.

Come to experience, not just to observe.

Come to chant, not just to listen.

Come to rediscover, not merely to remember.

 

See you in Vilnius!