www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Ruthenian Choirs?

Each of the Greek-Catholic jurisdictions in the United States with its own hierarchy (Ukrainians, Melkites, Romanians, and Carpatho-Rusyn/Byzantine Catholic) has a chant that it treasures as part of its heritage as a church sui juris. The Ukrainian Catholic Church has samoilka; the Melkites have their particular recension of the Greek and Arab Byzantine melodies; the Romanian Catholics cherish the chant of the Transylvanian area around Cluj; and the Carpatho-Ruysns, their prostopinije. Every parish within these various jurisdictions will use the chant of the jurisdicion as the basis for their singing. Those who have parishes set up where the faithful are of more than one tradition will undoubtedly also share different chant traditions, but because the individual parishes BELONG to a specific jurisdiction, it is important that be always kept in mind. We are not "indiscriminiately" Greek Catholics---we are members of specific churches.

In response to Diak's comments, all of the Slavonic versions of the prostopinije (except for the work of Fr. Choma from the St. Nicholas Monastery in the 1890s) are spin-offs from the work of Bokshaj/Malinic; the books written by Ratsin and Sokol in this country and Popp & Petrasevic in Czechoslovakia after the Prague Spring differ from each other very little in melodic content [Ratsin adding many more melodies, espcially for the correct and complete celebration of the service of Matins; Sokol subtracting melodies and replacing the Cyrillic alphabet of the two former chant compendia with text in Latinica; Popp/Petrasevic altering texts due to socialist PC pressure and altering accents to bring Rusyn pronunciation of Church Slavonic more into line with its Ukrainian counterpart].

The reference to the two professional choirs which I direct is, it seems to me, a red herring. Neither one of those ensembles is the choir of a parish. Their work is to sing the music of many churches, so that people of many churches can appreciate and pray with different Catholic traditions. When either the Schola Cantorum of St. Peter the Apostle in Chicago OR the Ambrose-Romanos Singers in Pittsburgh lead the faithful in song at Vespers or the Divine Liturgy, the chant tradition of the church where we are singing is the vehicle we use to sing with the faithful. When we have been in places where we were representing a mixture of Greek Catholic traditions, we did a mixture of those traditions.

And, by the way---when the Council of Hierarchs chose the name "Byzantine Catholic Church" to designate the Rusyn Ruthenian church sui juris in America, they didn't tell me the reason for their choice. I sincerely doubt, however, that they were trying to do for the Greek-Catholic faithful in America what the Orthodox Church in America hoped to do for the Eastern Orthodox faithful. But I wasn't there and can't answer for why they took that name. Nonetheless, it is the legal name of my church.

(Prof.) J. Michael Thompson
Byzantine Catholic Seminary
Pittsburgh, PA

I agree with Professor Thompson that each church should maintain the chant tradition peculiar to that church. While I have no particular objection to an occasional use of a different chant, I fear that too much free reign in this regard will lead to the kind of "primacy of place" that Gregorian chant continues to maintain in the Latin church.

Furthermore, I have seen the downside to the OCA approach to chant. The local parish has a very good choir singing multiple-part music, but the rest of the congregation may be praying with their heart, but their tongues are mute. If, as I have seen happen, key members of the choir are absent, or if (for example) no tenors are available, the music suffers greatly and the congregation is unable to pick up the slack. The end result is that as a practical day-to-day matter, the liturgies become more of a "work of the choir" instead of a "work of the people" as a whole.

-- Ed

If I am not mistaken, the Russian Orthodox Church banned Rachmaninov's Divine Liturgy at the time?

I have certainly heard Rachmaninov's Divine Liturgy sung in Church, and very beautiful it is. I am not omniscient, but I had not previously heard of any attempt to ban it (which would be an odd thing to do, since it's based largely on znammeny chant).

As for the "pride of place" idea - it would be very well to develop a simple setting of the Divine Liturgy in English, for use on occasions when the clergy and faithful of several different Byzantine traditions come together for an English Divine Liturgy. As it is, I've often found that there is an assumption that everyone should sing prostopinije on such an occasion, which is rather an imposition.
Incognitus

Incognitus wrote:

"As for the "pride of place" idea - it would be very well to develop a simple setting of the Divine Liturgy in English, for use on occasions when the clergy and faithful of several different Byzantine traditions come together for an English Divine Liturgy. As it is, I've often found that there is an assumption that everyone should sing prostopinije on such an occasion, which is rather an imposition. "

This is a good suggestion, and one I personally would like to see executed. My primary concern would be that the three large Greek Catholic jurisdictions in the USA and Canada (Ukrainian, Melkite, and Byzantine-Ruthenian) all have different translations of the text of the Divine Liturgy. It has been my experience that the text of the "host" of the event is usually used, which might rather pre-determine the chant sung. Having said that, after the publication of the new Ukrainian and Ruthenian pewbooks, it would be a wonderful thing to have a small anthology made available with congregational responses in all three forms of chant: samoilka, the Byzantine chant as used by the Melkites, and prostopinije.

It would be a good resource.

(Prof.) J. Michael Thompson
Byzantine Catholic Seminary
Pittsburgh, PA

Bergschlawiner worte:

"If I am not mistaken, the Russian Orthodox Church banned Rachmaninov's Divine Liturgy at the time?"

The complete edition of Rachmaninoff's sacred works was published by Musica Russica in 1994. It gives an extensive history of the composition of R.'s setting of the Divine Liturgy, as well as the critical reaction to it.

Dr. Vladimir Morosan's introduction says of the Divine Liturgy, "The British writer Barrie Martyn states that the "freedom of Rachmaninoff's setting met with hostility from the ecclesiastical authorities..." However, the only documented opinion voiced by an "ecclesiastical authority" is found in the memoirs of Rachmaninoff's cousin Anna Trubnikova, quoting the religious education teacher from the school where she taught, who at the premiere of the LITURGY is reported to have said, "The music is indeed wonderful, even too beautiful, but with such music it is difficult to pray. It is not churchly."

The supposed condemnation of this setting of the DL is in fact a canard---it never happened.

(Prof.) J. Michael Thompson
Byzantine Catholic Seminary
Pittsburgh, PA

Prof. Thompson's quoted comment on the Rachmaninov Liturgy raises a very interesting point, i.e. when does composed music "cross the line" between being too "programatic" or "dramatic" for Liturgical use.

Many of us who conduct (either as a vocation or an avocation) are often confronted with issues of tempo, dynamic range, overall sound, etc. when weighing the "prayerfulness" of a piece with markings put in by composers and editors that might make the piece more appropirate for the concert hall.

Musicians in all genres of music struggle with the questions of "what did the composer intend" and "does it matter for my purposes?"

From Vedel to Bortniansky to Rachmaninov to Archangelsky to Lentovich, we must constantly evaluate how to properly weave a piece into its Liturgical setting without turning the choir loft or the kliros into a concert stage.

Personally, I am by nature a "wear your heart on your sleeve" Slav that has to temper his emotions when conducting in Church. I like to use the widest possible dynamic range in a piece for dramatic effect. My training in choral conducting is from a conductor who sang with Shaw when he was in Altanta and it has rubbed off on me.

All this, of course, is on top of hammering out notes and getting the tenors to watch.

What I am saying is, the job is not as easy as it looks.

Yours,

hal

Amen. I an an organist who will conduct only if I HAVE to. But I have done it enough to appreciate the difficulties involved. Now if I could just get conductors to appreciate the difficulties involved in playing the organ. I have seen well-rehearsed pieces fall apart when certain choir members did things they never did in rehearsal. Also, I have heard acoustics in a strange building totally mess up a visiting choir. Everything is not as simple as some would believe in the world of church music. Some folks actually think we just "do it" because it's a gift and there is no work involved.