www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship The Kliros A shortage of cantors

-uc,

I'd say you exercised good judgment.

The chanter, especially the lead chanter, needs to know the chant itself (obviously) and he needs to know the Typicon. This requires some serious explanation and study.

For the chant, it is possible to manage with the aid of good tape recordings (or nowadays good CDs - I'm trying to learn some znammeny chant from CDs at the moment, but that's another discussion). Exploring and learning the Typicon, however, is best done in a more formal setting, requiring some serious time commitment and (dare I say it) money.

Hypothetically, it would be possible to organize classes for present and prospective chanters, to last for a week or so, in one or more of our seminaries at times of the year when the seminarians are not in residence. These should be paid for by the parishes which will benefit from the services of the chanters.

Incognitus

Hypothetically, there would also be enough qualified teachers of chant/liturgics to provide training on a more local level. The craft of the cantor is developed with time and experince as well as intense training on an occasional basis.

I live in an Eparchy where the nearest parish is 60 miles away while others are seperated by hundreds of miles. There are many logistical hurdles to providing basic centralised instruction. It has been done in the past, thankfully.

To those parishes with only one, or with ageing cantors, there must always be consideration for the continued education of able cantors. I know that cantors seem to hold onto control for as long as they can, but the truth is every parish should have at least one primary cantor with alternates and understudys.

Several years ago, I too had visited a parish in PA that had no cantor for a simple weekday Divine Liturgy, so the liturgy was completely recited

From what I gather, many parishes in the Passaic and Pittsburgh Eparchies do pay regular stipends to their cantors. I have yet to get information from Parma cantors regarding regular stipends. From my own experiences in the Van Nuys Eparchy, I find virtually no cantors who are paid a regular stipend. The regular stipends I have heard of are not large, but at least enough to say that the parish does care for the cantor taking appreciable amounts of their time to prepare for the various liturgical services.

If the parishes don't pay cantors a regular stipend, it would seem less likely that they would pay for a cantor's continuing education. Most of my own education as a cantor has been paid for out of pocket primarily in travel expenses that would be prohibitive for any parish to afford. This is also true of some other cantors I know.

I would also like to see more of the "deanery" style of education, focusing on regional areas to help foster cantor vocations. I wouldn't necessarily wait for the priests to organise the music training though. (It would be good to have priests do the Liturgics, both for the priest's sake and the cantor's. Priests and cantors need to communicate and understand each other). I see this as being more of an organic growthwith the more experienced cantors mentoring/teaching students. Even then, somewhere along the way, there is a need for a more universal recognition of what constitutes a "dean" of cantors.

Ultimately, ISTM, the lack of cantors boils down to a lack of understanding of how the cantor fits into parish life. If the parishlacks appreciation for the cantor, they will eventually lack a cantor.

Any cantor should be able to do a Presanctifed, Funeral, Wedding, Baptism as well as Vespers and Divine Liturgy given the proper training and material. Too often student cantors do not gain the experience of doing other liturgical services and only know the basics of the Divine Liturgy. The more the cantor knows of how the other liturgical services are structured it becomes easier to sing them when the time comes.

Respectfully,

Steve

[I didn't include Matins since so few parishes do Matins, even then, there are so many variations in truncation, since none except for monasteries, do full Matins anyway.]

I second the above. What a parish really needs is someone who's willing to volunteer the time to learn the chant on the job, with the eventual goal of being able to lead the parish in the full range of its liturgical life.

In my case, that's going to need around 4-5 years of regular liturgy attendance (plus about two hundred dollars of CDs and books). CDs (which I've used) and training programs (which the deacons go through) are an enormous help, but in the end I don't see any way around years of on-the-job training if someone wants to do this well.

How to encourage this? In my view, the reader/cantor is in some ways like a vocation to the priesthood or diaconate (or even a Sunday school teacher). A parish needs to be spiritually strong to "get" these vocations. It needs to have reverence by all participants in the liturgy (including the laypeople), good spiritual leadership, camraderie at the coffee hour and good non-liturgical functions (e.g. Bible study). The people need to have strong prayer lives. Pray for your cantors (publicly, and more important privately), encourage people who sing well or who volunteer every once in a while.


Christoir-

What we have is basically a senior reader, with the non-serving deacons/subdeacons acting as assistant readers, plus around 5-6 not-formally-trained civilians who gaggle around the cantor's stand. On the other side is generally either the non-serving priests (Vespers, Orthros, most of the Lenten Liturgies) or the children's choir (Sunday Divine Liturgy). If I'm not mistaken, a "cantor" as described this thread is a non-tonsured "civilian" volunteer who is tasked to lead the congregation in singing the Divine Liturgy. We don't have anyone who fits this description.

Next time you're down, let me know ahead of time and I'm sure we'd let you come up and watch how its done. Don't worry about not being able to read music - our western notation is very simple. The big question is, how well can you sing?

Part of the difficulty in the Eparchy of Van Nuys lies with its geography. It is a large area with long distances between the relatively few parishes.( There are more parishes in Western PA than all of the Eparchy of Van Nuys. However, in this modern day, the internet can and does provide the means for connections between cantors even in remote areas. More can be done and ultimately should be done to foster better communication between cantors including events where cantors can gather in person.
The other problem in E of VN is that the few times that a cantor program has been held, it seems to have been advertised just for the local parishes without being more broadly advertised across the Eparchy.
In my own experience the times that I have been with other cantors, there have been a great many notes compared.

just my thoughts,

Steve

Steve said: More can be done and ultimately should be done to foster better communication between cantors including events where cantors can gather in person.

Well, in one thread I suggested sharing local arrangements electronically, but have gotten no response.

Posters have offered websites where they go to look for printed music on another thread.

When I first became a cantor at my parish, I also contacted several different cantors in other parishes, looking for arrangements of music. I received no help there.

When I visited a parish in south Florida a couple of years ago, I discovered that their cantor relied on the parish priest to go over materials for services with him and his choir rather than being pro-active about finding what resources were needed.

Each parish apparently has a different sense of what is needful for this ministry in the parish itself, ranging from a solo cantor all the way to a choir director. Such variety makes it more difficult to share materials and knowledge.

C. McAvoy wrote: I was in much the same position 2 years ago when I began helping to cantor in my parish. I had taken music lessons in grade school and had participated in choir, but my ability to sight-read for voice was almost non-existent. Each week I would play the Tone of the following Sunday on my little battery-operated keyboard until I learned it by heart. Then, of course, they changed the music! However, I have found that since I began cantoring my ability to sight read has improved significantly. It's like developing a muscle: the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets.

I must also say that our priest and the other cantors have given me a LOT of support, and the parishioners who suffered through my first solo cantor attempts were charitable enough to suffer in silence.

Mighty oaks from little acorns grow, Sophia. All of us started from scratch at one time or another, but we keep working at it, and intuitively develop a knowledge that we can carry forward for use.

One of the things we are about to try at St. Thomas is to teach some of the teens how to do a reading. If all goes as planned, once adequately trained, the teens will each do a reading at Vespers on Saturday evening, then a reading at a weeknight Liturgy, and eventually a reading at Sunday liturgy. Hopefully, we can avoid some stage fright by proceeding incrementally. In addition, we can eliminate the need to display skills more closely associated with leading congregational singing itself.

It would be good to know what other efforts are going on that help address the need for cantors without having to make an ongoing committment to singing at the kliros itself for an entire service. Any other witnesses?

A great place to get kids used to hearing their own voices and singing is at home. Have them start chanting psalms or other prayers recto tono in your prayer corner. From there they can gradually learn other melodies.

That's how we started with ours, and as teens they frequently chant the prophecies at Vespers and other texts that only need a single reader. When other kids their age see them doing that, it is not as foreign to them. We have to foster the next generation to take the holy arts up - we are not going to live forever, that is for sure.
FDD

I'm happy to say that I was asked to begin learning the cantor role in my parish, along with another man. Our cantor, Prof. Basil Brody, is turning 90 this summer (many years!) and he told me it's time to start thinking about the future... I think he's still got a lot in him, but I'm happy for the opportunity to learn the Divine Services under him. I look forward to learning more from everyone else in this forum, too.

Marc

Welcome, Marc. If there is any way that the Kliros users can help you, just ask. We come from many different parishes, not all of which are BC, but we often have worthwhile ideas to share and compare.

Just a follow-up regarding teaching teens how to chant a reading.

We had 4 teens volunteer at my parish. Once they understood that they would need to practice before each lesson, 2 of the 4 decided not to proceed with their parent's agreement. Of the 2 remaining, both read music, but one is more proficient than the other.

I advise them that practice is an integral part of making progress as a cantor, just as it is with any other musical undertaking. Prior to a lesson, the student needs to have already practiced whatever reading(s) are to be studied. That way they are not starting the session cold, and can try to apply what they already know about cantoring prior to working with the cantor. It's a matter of doing homework, really.

Others may have different ideas about how to go about local training. To be continued.

Yesterday, 2 of our teens debuted as readers of Old Testament lessons at Vespers. We had had practice sessions together on the readings prior to the service itself. It went beautifully!

The next phase will be to have each teen do a reading at a different Vespers service, not together. A date and typikon readings to choose from were given to each today, and they are to prepare on their own. I will offer to hear them prior to their solo debuts if they like, as opposed to a required practice session, and will definitely be there to reassure, observe, etc. with feedback afterwards. If all goes well, in a few weeks each will do an epistle reading at a weeknight liturgy, ultimately leading to their doing an epistle reading on a Sunday morning.

Father publicly congratulated them both from the ambon today, and was a little teary-eyed, because he has known these teens since they were 2 and 3 years old respectively. This sort of growth is truly beautiful to see.