www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship The Kliros FRAMING THE STRUCTURE OF THE DIVINE LITURGY

Well I was finally the lead cantor in my church (as the real lead cantor stood by and monitored the situation)

By doing the DL by myself I noticed something I never knew

The Cherubic Hymn frames the remainging responses

and the Eucharistic Prayer also must be "framed" with the correct melodies

Can anyone tell me how this works in more detail ... how to match up and line up a DL properly.

Can you tell us a little more about what you're looking for?

In the Carpatho-Rusyn tradition, it's been customary to sing the following to related (or the same) melodies:

- the Cherubic Hymn
- the response during the Anaphora, "We praise You, we bless You"
- the (liturgical) Communion Hymn

This is simply a musical custom that gives some continuity to the service (and perhaps ties it in to a current feast associated with the same melody). But I don't think the custom goes back more than a century or so, if that much.

Jeff Mierzejewski

Well, depending on the time of the year (in terms of holidays, periods of solemnity), or whether it's a special liturgy for funerals, weddings, hierarchical DLs (which are rare, but are celebrated under certain circumstances), you will be finding different tones and different melodies to be sung, so be sure to study up on melodies for those.

Yes Jeff ... that kind of info.

I always knew there was a melodic method to the Liturgy ( A or B or C or D in the 2006 Pittsburg DL book) but I always thought that each segment of the Liturgy (Holy God - Cherubic Bymn etc ) was selected at random or according to what the lead cantor wanted.

So in my new enlightenment does the melody (A B C D E ...) also flow from Holy God -> Cherubic Hymn -> We Praise you we ...-> Praise the Lord (communion hymn)

Is it a hard and fast rule or just proper melodic organization? (in other words can you mix and match? should you?

I know this is a simplistic view of the Liturgy and mostly apparent but my training has been by listening and singing - in fact I did not even see a book with music till 1 year ago.

I also sometimes wish we were taught the irmologic hymnody like the Greeks (not the melody but the method)

I got on ancient faith radio and some guy did a chanting training podcast - it was excellent as he tought (by ear) to just sing anthing to the irmological melody (or samohlasen, podeben, etc)

I just cranked out the 8 tones - without knowing this methodology in singing Troparia Kontakion and Irmologic hymns - singing everything like the old country - by listening a few times and then just singing what the church sang.

Anyway - I am still learning

You may want to take a look at the Cantor's Companion that accompanied the new books in 2007; it outlines the different kinds of chant melodies, and what the choices are for each part of the Divine Liturgy.

The Cantor's Companion can be purchased from the Byzantine Seminary Press; it is also available online [metropolitancantorinstitute.org].

Jeff Mierzejewski

P.S. Also be aware that, traditionally, a cantor's education in the old country consisted of several years' apprenticeship to an experienced cantor or member of the clergy - often a relative - followed by 3-4 years at a Cantor's and Teacher's College. You can learn to follow much of it from listening, but to actually sing it well, especially without written-out music, takes a fair amount of training.

I read the Cantors companion once ... and I was either confused or just not paying attention. Now I see it.

I noticed the psalm chant notation inserted in the Cantors Companion.

Are there western musical notation (even just a few lines ) Reading Tones?
Samohlasen?
Podobny?
Irmos?




something like ... this is the way to sing Reading Tones in Ruthenian Churches or this is the way in Ukrainian ....

like the way the pripiv is defined for each tone under VESPERS section of the Cantors Companion.

Also broken down so that you can just practice those melodies to just about anything.

A generalized ... this is how the melody goes ... now set it to words kind of approach.

Does this exist?

John Haydukovich

For the troparion, kontakion, and prokeimenon melodies, what you are looking for can probably be found on the Class handouts [metropolitancantorinstitute.org] page of the MCI website.

On the same page is a tutorial on the samohlasen tones.

Every priest and deacon uses a slightly different tone for readings, and while we do teach a standard one at the MCI Epistle Reader's course, I don't have a handout for it on the MCI website yet.

We also have handouts and recordings for the various podoben melodies. But for irmos - each one has its own specially-composed melody, labelled "samopodoben" in the Divine Liturgies book, while the very simple "irmos tone 6" is typically used as a replacement when the cantor doesn't know the original melody.

Take a look at the handouts page.

Jeff Mierzejewski

Thanks, for this thread, guys. These are items I'll be looking into, during the coming days.

ByzKat is the man!

One more question.

When the Priest chants - are there certain melodies that are differnt? Do they chant their prayers the same way they read the Gospel?

Who teaches them and how?

Well, the priests are pretty consistent when it comes to what tones to use through their prayers and Gospels, and the like. It depends on the time of year, or what week after Pentecost, etc... Because I know that there are sequential tones sung every Sunday after Pentecost, then you have different tones during Advent, during the Great Fast, during Pascha, etc... I know there are different tones used during different times of the year, so you'll have to study the Book of the Divine Liturgy for different Feast Day specific tones, different Sunday tones, etc...