www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy Troparion/Kontakion book with modern musical notation?

Hello everyone,

I have a potentially odd question for you all. I am looking for a way to better incorporate the troparia and/or kontakia (forgive me, I am not an Eastern Catholic so I am not very sure of the differences, but I love their use within the liturgical calendar) into my family's daily life.

I would love to be able to sing the appropriate piece before dinner, but I don't know that I would be able to master the eight great tones and then get my family to do it with me.

Has anyone ever seen a stand alone book that has the troparia/kontakia (in English) with modern musical notation? It would be wonderful if I could find something like that. Thank you.!

You can download as a pdf, The Divine Liturgies of our Holy Fathers John Chrysostom and Basil the Great (2006, 467 pages; PDF (21 mb)); see Publications of the Byzantine Catholic Church [metropolitancantorinstitute.org] for this and other of their publications.

This is the Carpathian-Rus' chant of the Byzantine (Ruthenian) Church. In my opinion it is a pretty good musical rendering of one of this church's chant traditions for English usage; the rendering of the Slavonic (and/or Greek) into English has in certain instances been compromised, sometimes severely.

The Metropolitan Cantor Institute, especially through its website, has done an outstanding job of making this chant available to all.

The text on the Cantor and the role of the Cantor ought to be reprinted in every Eastern Catholic and companion Orthodox parish bulletin. It is a lost art and too many would be chant leaders AND priests do not understand or appreciate the proper role or background of a Cantor.

Agreed.

I don't think there is anything that is really good out there. Certainly avoid the "Teal Terror". It's the greenish colored music book with music for the Revised Divine Liturgy. At the Parma Eparchial Gathering last Saturday the RDL was the unspoken elephant in the room. The powers to be admitted that they've lost almost 50% of the people in the "last 5-7 years" but they just get angry if you ask them about the RDL. Most parishes in the Parma eparchy have less than 50 regular attendants on Sundays. The average age of the parishioners is about 75 and they are only hoping that their parishes stay open long enough to bury them. There is really no reason for the Ruthenian Church to exist anymore. The bishops and priests are embarrassed of our liturgy. Their response is more and more latinization. And they won't even get people who know music and speak English as a first language to work on the music.

Really???

50%???

Look, I've seen some people hit the doors for the Orthodox Church when the Teal Terror (aka Revised Damned Liturgy) came out, but it was nowhere near half the congregation. Is this perhaps something that happened in Ohio?

What other choice would we who love the Eastern Rite have if the Ruthenians decided to pack it in and call it a day? Not every city is blessed with a Melkite, Maronite, or Ukrainian Catholic parish. I do find the condition of the Ruthenian Church in America to be distressing. We need to go out, evangelize, and then bring the ones who are interested back into an authentic Eastern Liturgy.

Tenmaru,

If you're comfortable with PDF's (instead of printed books), you can also find what you need on the MCI website, in the form of the monthly menaion volumes for the Divine Liturgy.

Here's the one for November:

Troparia and kontakia for November [metropolitancantorinstitute.org]

For each day of the month, it has capsule biographies of the saint(s) of the day, together with their troparia, kontakia, prokeimena and alleluia - all with music notation.

The referred to loss must be in Ohio, as well as the age demographics. The description does not fit the Midwest Region.