www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy The Revised Divine Liturgy The rest of the story

Nick, the thing is I don't honestly believe that we are about to give up the Ruthenian Recension. (Gotta get my cantor's copy of the new book as soon as it's available.)

My goodness.

After all that's been said here in the past six or seven weeks, Jim, could you please tell us what that means to you? the Ruthenian Recension?

...and then could you tell us how many of the rest of you out there, cantors, deacons, some priests and our bishops would identify
Ruthenian recension, in precisely the same terms as you are going to use to define that for us here?


Eli

Eli, no to both requests. I don't think that my opinion of the Ruthenian Recension matters. What matters is the worship itself. The second question sort of answers itself, don't you think?

Then how can we assess your assertion that it is not going to be abandoned? If we don't know what you mean by Ruthenian Recension then what value is your statement to us? Or was it not meant to be of any value?

You are a cantor and a moderator here. You obviously have some idea, better than the rest of us, better than most of our clergy, of what is going on in fact and you won't even buttress an assertion with a definition?

That is not credible witness, James.

And as for you and the rest of the deacons and cantors and bishops, the only thing that I see that you have in common, to date, are words that tell us nothing of substance, or simply no words at all.

Eli

It's late in the evening, so I may have missed something. But I think I just found two separate issues which I have read in such a way that I am unable to make sense out of them.

Here's one quote:

This is a cross between polemic writing and sheer baloney. "Prostopinije", as any expert on Church-Slavonic liturgical chant will readily agree, is certainly related to Znammeny chant (books have been written about this). Samoilka is used by a small minority of Ukrainians. "Obikhod" in this context is a meaningless term, until someone explains precisely what Obikhod is meant. Both Russians and Ukrainians readily use quite a variety of liturgical chant, from the early Znammeny kept by the Old-Ritualists (which is breath-takingly beautiful) to the twentieth-century compositions of Maxim Kovalevsky, and on and on.

One does find occasional examples of Byzantine chant (which I think is what the quote means by "Greek" chant) used in the Slav Churches - but since Byzantine chant depends largely on meter, this is difficult to do in Church-Slavonic.

The particular problem with Prostopinije (and this does not deny that every chant tradition has problems of its own) is that it was first published in Hungarian and conformed to the accent rules of Hungarian, and when it was published in Church-Slavonic it evidently did not occur to the editors to follow the rules of Church-Slavonic accents. In some cases, this can drastically alter the meaning (check the last line of the Great Doxology for an example). Another problem - found in most chant traditions, incidentally - is that Prostopinije has also absorbed some folk melodies of different origins (I've heard - in Church-Slavonic, no less - the Cherubic Hymn sung to the melody of Nearer, My God, to Thee).

Prostopinije still awaits a definitive study (which I am certainly not qualified to provide). But the assertion that it is unrelated to the other Church-Slavonic chant systems is what I just called it: baloney.

Another poster writes that "we shall not give up the Ruthenian Recension". I have no idea what the poster means by "the Ruthenian Recension" or who, if anyone, is asking him to give it up. But I would suggest that the Church of which he is presumably a member (the Church, not the local parish) is much older than the books published in the nineteen-forties and it is worth-while discussing the liturgical history of this particular Church - and that I am qualified to do.

Since I don't think that anyone intended to write baloney, or to write an incomprehensible sentence, can someone take pity on me and shed some light on these two matters?

Fr. Serge

Back from the mountains:
Much to catch up on, but, working backwards, this "baloney" caught my eye first. What is baloney of course is the assertion that "it is unrelated...", which is Fr. Serge's alone. FD Lance, simply noted that "Prostopinje is different from ... " which of course it is. The difference between "unrelated" and "different" is enormous, so I don't undestand the confusion. In context, the "difference" merely pertained to the issue of what might be called "branding" raised by others. FD Lance correctly points out that the distinct chant already distinguished our liturgy, long before this recent revision.

I am very intrigued to hear the idea that accents were placed in Slavonic chants on the basis of published Hungarian chants. This idea seems so implausible that I am very interested to hear anything of its basis.

Btw, how is the pattern of accentuation - or pronunciation for that matter - in OS determined?

Came down from the mountain and the first think he thinks of is food.

I assume baloney is a close rellie of Polony. You Americans have so much choice when it comes to foods.

djs writes:

Check with anyone who knows the history of the chant book (Prostopinije) published by Bokshaj and Malinich. It appeared first in Hungarian, then in Church-Slavonic.

Almost all books published in Church-Slavonic have the accent marks on the words - see for yourself.

Fr Serge

Then how can we assess your assertion that it is not going to be abandoned? If we don't know what you mean by Ruthenian Recension then what value is your statement to us? Or was it not meant to be of any value?

I guess the rest of the quote won't post because it has too many words in it for the quote feature. Oh well.

Eli, just because you can think up questions for me, doesn't mean that I ought to give you answers. I am not here to debate you, just to offer a voice of reason and common sense about the pending implementation of the new book. I have been here before in different environments, and know that being demanding, strident, etc. will not make any difference when it comes to implementing a new document. If it is a done deal, then so be it. Once people have a chance to review it, they will decide how they can cope with it (or not). We are past the point of peer review and personal input for the new book.

Now here IS something that our clergy has known for some time.

Now we truly have come full circle.

Eli

I want to keep up with the thread through email alerts and have not figured out how to do so without posting in it. Please disregard.

Fr. Serge,

I said: "The problem with this theory is our music is already different from everybody else, Catholic and Orthodox, except for ACROD."

Starokatolyk said: "I think I'm aghast!!!So the music has *already* been changed to make us so different that nobody else but ACROD would ever consider (what? Using our books? Attending our liturgies?) and differentiate ourselves?"

I said: "No, Prostopinje is different from Samoilka, Obikhod, Romanian, Greek, and all the other chants styles that exist in the Byzantine Christian world. Prostopinje is used by Rusyn, Slovak and Hungarian Greek Catholics and ACROD. Samoilka is used by Ukrainians, Obikhod by Russian, etc."


I am aware of the relation of Prostopinje to Znamenny and other Slavic chant traditions but as it is it stands as a distinct form of chant from that used Ukrainians, Russians, Romanians, Greeks, and others. Starokatolyk seems surprised by this as if one should be able to m ove from Church to Church and hear exactly the same music and be able to join in the singing with no prior experience. Not to mention the fact that in many places ones is expected to keep their mouths shut and let the choir or cantors do the singing. I was not trying to be polemical or misinforming.

Fr. Deacon Lance

Even moving from one parish to another is apt to involve some degree of musical adaptability (not to mention other forms of adaptability). But there is no need to make too much out of this.

One Sunday, for reasons not immediately relevant, I happened to be in Paris with a group of Ukrainian friends from Canada, most of whom were in their mid-twenties to early thirties. I took them all to Holy Trinity Russian Greek-Catholic Church, where I was invited to concelebrate the Divine Liturgy. My companions went and sang with the choir. Afterwards they all spontaneously commented on how easy it was to sing with the Russian choir and how much they had enjoyed it. Since the unabbreviated Divine Liturgy took under 90 minutes, one may safely assume that the choir sang simple music (known in Russian as "prostoje"), which is easy enough for visitors, as my friends discovered.

Even strongly traditional znammeny is not impossible for a visitor - I've more than once been invited to sing with the chanters at an Old-Ritualist parish and had no trouble. The only really complicated piece they were using when I was there was the Cherubic Hymn, and the precentor, very courteously, said to me that this particular Cherubic Hymn required much practicing and, therefore, he would ask me to pray quietly rather than trying to sing with having practiced. Naturally I did - and was thankful, because the precentor was quite right; the Cherubic Hymn was exquisite but if I had tried to sing I would probably have damaged it.

It is also true that Prostopinije is far more important to the self-identity of those who use it than other chant forms tend to be to those who use them (with the exception of the Old-Ritualists, who really do consider znammeny essential). An openness to the rich wealth of music available for the Byzantine Liturgy would do the Ruthenians no harm at all.

Fr. Serge

It is also true that Prostopinije is far more important to the self-identity of those who use it than other chant forms tend to be to those who use them (with the exception of the Old-Ritualists, who really do consider znammeny essential). An openness to the rich wealth of music available for the Byzantine Liturgy would do the Ruthenians no harm at all.

I'm afraid that Fr. Serge's judgment call about no harm in introducing other music uses a sort of logic that Ruthenians have heard many times before. Introducing other traditions would be at the expense of what the Ruthenians now have and use. Are other jurisdictions doing this to any degree? I don't think so. Prostopinije is very much a part of what makes worship among the Ruthenians their own. It is a basic part of what it is to be Ruthenian.

Yes, they are - I refer you to the music books published by Saint Vladimir's Seminary, and I assure you that they are very much used in many parishes.

I've had to modify my understanding of the matter over the past several years - I said several times in the eighties that prostopinije was the key to the identity of the Greek-Catholics from the southern slopes of the Carpathians. But come to find out, such people as have recently arrived in the USA are attending Slovak Roman Catholic Churches, if they are from Slovakia, or Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Churches, if they are from Transcarpathia. So something is evidently more important than prostopinije here. Just what that something is, I don't know

Fr Serge