Christian musical tradition in Bulgaria dates back long before Christianity was established as an official state religion (865). According to some records a Christian church convention took place in Serdica (Sofia) in the 4th century. It is believed that the church chants of that time differed from the Byzantium church music. When East Orthodox religion was adopted as a state religion in Bulgaria, King Boris I put an end to this tradition. The Byzantium liturgical services and chants were enforced. Byzantium church music was dominant up to the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, in spite of the recurrent resistance of various groups of society. However, a few sources from that time show that there were attempts to create Bulgarian church music. The works of St. John Koukouzeles date from that time (13-14th c.). This tendency for developing Bulgarian church music was stopped when the country went under Ottoman rule (14th c.). At the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century a new movement for reviving the Bulgarian church tradition began. Some Byzantium chants were translated into Slavonic language, and parallel to that original Bulgarian Orthodox chants were created. After the liberation from the Ottoman rule (1878), the service liturgies of the Russian Orthodox Church became dominant. A large number of Bulgarian composers wrote works for the church. They used elements of Old Bulgarian chants and reached the level of the Russian liturgical music. Dobri Hristov, for example, wrote liturgies dedicated to priests and they are still performed at church services. In his first liturgy of St. John Chrysostom he uses Old Bulgarian intonations.
The liturgical chants of Dobri Hristov, Peter Dinev, Apostol Nikolaev-Stroumsky, etc. are a inherent part of church services, just as the Russian chants by Alexander Grechaninov, Pavel Chesnokov, Nikolai Bakhmetiev …