www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy The Revised Divine Liturgy RDL based on Slavonic?

Father Serge made a useful observation on this point in an article from some years back on the fate of the liturgical movement. He noted that the founders of the movement did not see occasional songs and hymns as the proper music for the Roman rite--they were looking for a restoration of Gregorian chant. And they believed that the Latin Church would do this by adopting much of the word done in setting the Gregorian repertoire in English by the Anglo-Catholics (why reinvent the wheel?). However, the Latin Church insisted on doing the job itself, from scratch, and as a result, it never got done, so that the normative, sung form of the Roman rite is seldom if ever heard today.


This is a critical point: Prostopinje is an oral tradition, passed from one generation of cantors to another, with many regional variation. As with all oral traditions, it continued to evolve. As with all oral traditions, once a "standard" version is promulgated--and worse, made mandatory with no deviations--then it ceases to be a living tradition, a manifestation of the faith of the people inculturated in their particular place and time, and become an artifact, a relic, a museum piece.

I thought it was interesting to listen to the choir from the Theodore Romzha Seminary when they sang at parishes across the Metropolia. While there were some differences due to the peculiarities of the Slavonic text vs. the English text, the chants were much closer to those we sang prior to 2007 than to the music in the Teal Terror. In fact, the music was so familiar that people had no problem whatsoever joining the seminarians in singing not only the Divine Liturgy, but Vespers as well. Can't say that about the new music.

The quest for uniformity across the Metropolia is killing the very thing it was meant to preserve. If the Ruthenian Church is alive and living in the United States, one ought to expect that an American Prostopinje, optimized for the cadences and grammar of the English language, would and should emerge sooner or later, an authentic manifestation of the faith of the Ruthenian Catholics in this country.

And this leaves aside the suitability of the Thompson arrangements for congregational use. ACROD has done a fairly good job of compiling music that is both faithful to the Slavonic original and singable by people without fancy musical training.

I can fully understand why some cantors, from parishes where the people never sang anyway, would be happy singing "authentic" Prostopinje--though of course, it's only authentic, as the Administrator noted, for one particular parish at one particular time. In how many parishes has the new music resulted in an increase in congregational singing? In how many parishes where the people sang their hearts out do they now sit on their hands, or fiddle around with their ribbons as they try to navigate the book?


At this point, their credibility is so low they have very little face to lose. As I said before, I think they are far more concerned with losing their investment in the new books. I'm glad I saved several copies of the old one.


No doubt. But then they would have to admit they made a mistake, and I think most would rather die--or perhaps see the Church die first. Cardinal Gibbons once snipped at John Henry Newman, "The laity, sir? Who are they?", to which Newman responded, "They are those without whom, M'Lord, the Church would look silly".

We're getting there in a hurry.

This is getting off topic, but I generally agree. I’ve lived in Virginia for over 25 years. In the early 1980s the Liturgy in the Roman Catholic Church here (Diocese of Arlington) was abysmal. In the past 10+ years there has been a renewal. “Four songs and a Mass” has slowly been replaced with music for the main parts of the Mass becoming more important than the “four songs”. Done gently and with good success. The parish near where I live does a very good job of balancing a traditional Sanctus with a joyfully sung Gloria (etc.). Hopefully, the corrected translations for the RCC will be introduced pastorally. The potential for good Roman Liturgy is certainly there.

On a related note, I know of a RC parish where I vacation that appears to have one very nice melody it uses for the Prokimenon (Responsorial Psalm). They don’t use the settings found in the missalette. The result is that everyone sings!

Back to Ruthena. I would have left the settings for the fixed portions of the Liturgy mostly unchanged. In 1965 those who set it made purposeful adaptations in order to serve the English text. While they were not exactly as I would have set them, one must respect what has been sung for 40+ years (the comparison here would be like trying to change the memorized Slavonic settings, or on Christmas Eve changing the words and melody for “O Come, All Ye Faithful”). One could make some minor adjustments to improve the settings (for better accentuation) but one should not fiddle with what is memorized and is sung well. [I say this realizing that while I believe that one can adjust chant using the examples from within the tradition that other good people believe it is mortal sin to omit a single note!]

As far as changing, yes, it must be done slowly. Over the 25 years I provided chant to parishes I made great changes in the way the chant was sung. The changes were introduced very slowly over time and, for the most part, were well received.

A note from experience. When I first started setting chant the ‘style’ I used was a very severe style and I tried not to omit any notes found in Bokšaj. I quickly found out that no one liked it, and when I used it I sang alone. So I moderated it, putting the proper accentuation of the English text before anything else (which is in reality the proper way to set chant). And everyone sang along. It was only then that other cantors started asking for it and that ministry grew into what it became.

I agree. That is probably a reasonably good comparison for the new settings. They come across not as Gregorian Chant but in that ‘style’ where one must concentrate on getting the music right and almost ignoring the words. Ruthenian singing has always been more of a sing-along (‘belly on up to the bar’). Or, better yet, the original “Folk Mass”.

With Gregorian Chant (sung in Latin) it kind of didn’t matter. But when we try to sing in English it does matter. I’ll agree that the Anglicans have been successful. I have not studied their chant but must take a look at it to see why they were successful. If byzanTN is familiar with Anglican chant he might start a thread analyzing it for us.

Which is why I would have continued to allow liberty. The Church had uniformity with the fixed settings for the Divine Liturgy in English, and when it gathered everyone could sing together. Liberty for especially anything that is part of the Eight Tones would have allowed cantors to continue to experiment. What is best is ultimately what gets accepted and used. I have no doubt that there would have developed a common ‘style’ but with regional variations.

I suppose, then, that you have been t St. Catherine of Siena in Great Falls? They had a very good schola, and employed Gregorian chant frequently, the people joining in for the common parts of the Mass.

During the early Orientale Lumen Conferences, I pushed for inclusion of a sung Roman Mass, but the idea always foundered because we could not find a priest willing to celebrate it, and a schola able and willing to sing it (without demanding an exorbitant fee). At the request of Roman Catholic attendees at the Conferences, we eventually stopped doing Western services altogether--we were told it was too embarrassing.


The key here, I think, would have been renewal through addition rather than replacement or substitution. Leaving the existing settings in place, parishes could have gradually added new (and presumably more authentic) settings over time. The shock would have been minimized, and, moreover, it would have been possible to see what worked and what didn't.

But above all, I would never mandate one particular musical setting, but would leave the cantors free to find out what works for their parishes.


I remember a few times when your settings of the Troparia or Kontakia, and particularly the Irmoi, just didn't work for us. We got out a pencil and fixed it on the spot. Those became the accepted "Epiphany" settings.


The first rule of liturgical chant is it should follow the cadences of normal speech.


As I mentioned, though, it seems the Latin Church deliberately ignored this wonderful work. "Not Invented Here" (and worse, invented by "heretics").


I suspect it mattered for the people who understood Latin--but by the time Gregorian chant became ubiquitous in the West, only clerics did, so it really didn't matter.

A similar phenomenon pertained to Slavonic chant, particularly Russian chant--the less able the people were to comprehend Slavonic, the more composers and arrangers of liturgical chant felt able to mangle the originally very simple settings, to the point of adding syllables to words and generating endless runs of melismatic mush suitable for singing only by monastics.

This raises a related question - since there is not yet full research on the liturgical texts in the original languages, how appropriate can it be to promulgate "official" English texts?

Fr. Serge

I think that there's more here than in most entire threads.

Then again, I'm Jesuit educated, will defend them absolutely, but acknowledge that their music is as bad as Franciscan art (but, contrary to most here, although I cringe at most Roman Catholic music, I think Eagles Wings and Hosiah are impressive.).

OK, I also can't tell the difference between the new and old tones . . .

hawk

Hear, hear!

When I finally found a copy of Inferno in a used book store, I gleefully took it home. It was so stilted in translation as to be unreadable--multiple nonstandard "contractions" with not one but two apostrophes per line, apparently trying to keep the meter of the Italian (and thus missing the historical significance of the work . . .)


Maybe they'll pick up a chunk from TEC who can insist on something reasonable . . .

hawk

I recommend to everyone my friend, Anthony Esolen's fantastic translation of the Divine Comedy. Sayers wasn't bad in her day, either.

What do you think of John Ciardi's translation?

Haven't read it.