The topic is obviously a very, very volatile one and is polarizing people. Maybe this has already been done, if so, it would be a good idea to re-cap for us late comers.

Could someone please give us a time line of the RDL? I remember reading in the bulletin about how it was approved by the Holy See and is being implemented, etc. But exactly how did the process work? I have read in one thread about who was consulted on the music--which cantors, when, etc. I have also read in other threads about translations and gender neutral changes. Is there a way to succintly re-cap the events? for instance--exactly WHAT was appproved by the Holy See? As I recall, that was a few years ago. If it was the liturgy that is in the books, why was it not implemented years ago? If the Holy See approved the idea, who said there needs to be a revision? Who set the process in motion? Who decided who was on the commission?

Again, maybe I'm asking too much, but there are lots of people who have not been following the posts since last fall or even before. In one thread there were references to exact example of bad accents and such. And then someone mentioned that examples were given last fall. It is a bit confusing. I'm suggesting it as a new thread because it combines lots of other threads. Clear, concise and conversational. Please--no big academic or theological or musical words and concepts. I teach at the College level but there are lots of new words and concepts that I have never heard of. Can you imagine how the ordinary person feels?

A timeline of the process, who did what, when they did it, how it was done, etc. If it's too much to ask, feel free to say so.

Thanks

Tim

It's been over 24 hours since I posted this message. If this were a Warner Brothers cartoon, we'd be hearing crickets chirping.....

Tim

Tim,

My reading is that the history of the RDL's development is quite opaque. You might be able to piece together a story from the information at Fr. David Petras's website, plus going back to the beginning of this RDL forum and reading forward.

Veterans of the debates may know of sources that you don't have to put together yourself.

Good luck!

May I be so bold as to suggest reading my book on the subject?

Fr. Serge

As a matter of fact, I am. And I'm not just skimming it or "jumping to the conclusion" to make a very bad pun. I'm reading the entire thing, including all the really interesting bits at the bottom! I was just looking for something to help shed light for myself and for some of the other people who don't have the background in theology or music. I can read music to a bit, but don't understand some of the "musical" points some of the posters made. And I'm sure there are lots more people like me out there. It might not be possible to summarize such a big topic, especially when it is so polarizing. But as I said in my original post, someone will say something two or three days ago and then someone else says that was covered already (but never said exactly when it was covered) and then someone finally says
"enough already, we went into that last fall." And there just seem so many unanswered questions that should be very easy to answer.

Thanks. I'll let you know when I finish your book on the subject.

Tim

Sorry not to have mentioned Father Serge's book--I'm waiting for Stauropegion Press to send me a hard copy.

Note also that Patronage of the Mother of God's website has much information on the RDL, including notes and commentary on its development:

http://www.patronagechurch.com/Liturgy_Study/study_the_chrysostom_divine_liturgy.htm

If I may, a repost:

Dear Tim,

My thanks to you - and it's always a pleasure to run across someone who enjoys "the fine art of the footnote"!

Fr. Serge

From a discussion following the presentation of a paper entitled A Survey of the Liturgical Translations of the Byzantine Catholic Metropolia by Fr. David Petras at the �International Symposium on English Translations of Byzantine Liturgical Texts�, held in Stamford, Connecticut, 17-20 June 1998:

(All emphasis mine.)



Am I the only one who is confused?





Father David, you were on the Commission. How can you not know its opinions?




Some questions answered, but even more raised...

_____
Господи Ісусе Хрїсте, Сыне Божїи, помилуй мя грѣшнаго.

Consider this:



And consider this:



(Fr. Taft in "Eastern Presuppositions" and Western Liturgical Renewal")


And put these two together and the problem as analyzed by Cardinal Ratzinger becomes evident:



(Cardinal Ratzinger, 2004)

What was needed in this equation to prevent the "unholy twins" of historicism and pastoralism from distorting the liturgy was the Bishops, listening to the concerns of the faithful, to act as the Church's teachers and guardians of the faith so that the legitimate historical insights and pastoral concerns could be brought together in authentic restoration of the liturgy.

As Cardinal Ratzinger wrote:

Maybe it's just me, but when I read things like the last quote from then Cardinal Ratizinger--"A greater independence on the part of the pastors would have been desirable" it reminds me of the "collegiality" part of Vatican II that was emphasized so much. Less top down beaurocracy and desision making, more communication within dioceses (eparchies) and more communication among dioceses (eparchies.) It was basically--let's get opinions from people other than experts, "who should not have the last word."

These ideas were enthusiastically endorsed and pursued by many, many Bishops. Including Karol Wojty?a and Joseph Ratzinger. Yet when put into a postition where they could promote ecumenism and collegiality as well as actually listening to pastors and laity, they didn't. Especially Pope John Paul II. Maybe things look different when you're the point man. But they both talked the talk, but didn't walk the walk. Just my opinion. Some think Pople John Paul II too liberal, others too conservative. It's all in the perspective, I guess.

Tim

How does Patronage Church in Baltimore get away with posting to its website all the material which is non-complimentary to the RDL? One would think that the steamroller of ecclesiastical administration would rather quickly quash those who would dare be so bold...

This has been going around my head, in the last couple of weeks, as I have heard our cantor struggling with all this awful new music.

Father David said that the Council of Hierarchs felt that not much of the music should be changed (that was in 1988).

I wonder what changed since then, to make the Council of Hierarchs change their minds, and now decided that we had to change all the music ('restore' it, or 'destroy' it, or whatever, it is all changed)?

Two important things happened of course, Metropolitan Judson died, and he was a great supporter of our musical tradition. And J. Michael Thompson was hired to take charge of the music.

Somehow, somewhere, the fact that we 'were accustomed' to singing much of the Liturgy by memory, was no longer to be taken into consideration, and our feelings were no longer thought to be important.

That was a sad day. But the message is loud and clear. Somebody's idea of one interpretation of the music, was more important than our feelings about the matter. A very sad day, and somebody someday will have to own up to that. Metropolitan Judson never would have stood for it, that's for sure.

Nick

My pastor said that the original plan from Archbishop Procyk was to reprint the altar Liturgicon (the red one) and fix the mistakes. And that there only a handful of mistakes that needed to be fixed. He said that Bishop Kuzma was the first head of the liturgical committee and didn�t really oversee it because of health problems. So the original plan at reprinting with fixes was ditched and Father Petras pushed through all the reforms he wanted. As long as the changes don't make us look too Orthodox Bishop Pataki supports them.

My pastor also said that the music was not supposed to be changed. That all changed when Father Petro got Archbishop Procyk to hire Thompson to teach at the seminary and then the Archbishop died. As soon as Archbishop Procyk was buried Thompson�s role went from helping out at the cantor school (the one at the seminary) to being in charge of rewriting the music and all the other cantors who didn't like Thompson's music were forced out. No one saw the new music before the new books showed up. No one seems to care that the music is lousy.

We are not using the new music. We are using the new words. My pastor got a copy of the new text and put that in the pews. So we are singing the new words with the old music. For the tropars the people don�t have them yet. We are pasting in corrections into a copy of the new pew book and will duplicate them each Sunday to kind of match the handouts we used to have.

Even one of the priests on the commission for Passaic knows the whole thing is a farce. He said that we should learn the new music even though it is pretty bad because it doesn�t matter that its bad but because Bishop Andrew mandated it.

Thank you for adding a few more pieces to the puzzle.

This sounds more like my understanding of what Met. Procyk had wanted...What a shame this has been hijacked...

Chris

Indeed, this should have been the plan that was implemented.
That is disturbing.

____________________
Glory be to Thee, O Lover of Mankind

I am, too, specifically interested in the history of changing the music. I wondered if it started when Judson was Metropolitan. From the discussion, it sounds like, "no". I have some recordings of some of his sermons on change, and he never mentioned that being a necessity.

I am trying to figure out how J. Michael Thompson came into the picture. I know he spoke at an ecumenical Catholic and Orthodox �symposium� was held at St. Basil�s College, Stamford, Connecticut from June 17 through 20, 1998. Father Petras was also in attendance. Is this where they met? When was he (Thompson) appointed to our seminary? Was Thompson secretly helping the liturgy commission prior to this? Who discerned he was a subcarpathian music expert? I know Thompson was involved with the National Pastoral Musicians Conferences, maybe starting around 1999.

Finally, why is this all a big secret? The people making these decisions shouldn't be hiding. They should be able to stand up for their decisions and be able to explain them with confidence.

To summarize, I am very curious to find out when Thompson came into the picture, and who decided he was an expert.

Marie F--welcome to the board and thanks for your questions. That's one of the reasons I started this thread--there were so many things that I didn't understand and just didn't make sense.

The problem is that the questions you have asked are the same questions many of us have asked. And we have gotten no response whatsover. People have posted questions on this thread, sent private e-mails and some have mentioned sending return receipt request mail to the Arch Eparch. All have gone ananswered and unacknowledged. Which is rude, if nothing else. At least the courtesy of a form letter means people are aware of your concerns. But we dont get that. If I lived closer to Pittsburgh I would consider camping out at the Seminary or the Eparch's offices. I don't know if it would do any good, but I would have a clean conscious and know I did everything I could.

Good luck and keep asking questions!

Tim

Dear Marie,

The Cantor's Companion has a short history of the work on the music revisions, which it describes as starting before 1995. I do know that in 1998/99 at the revived Cantor School in Pittsburgh we were hearing about upcoming music changes, but without much detail.

Professor Thompson had been working with prostopinije and samoilka for at least fifteen years before that that I know of; he had prepared Vespers books in the mid-1980's for ACROD that were given to me by my (Orthodox) prostopinije teacher, who was on the faculty of the seminary in Johnstown. My teacher pointed out that, unlike most of the music in circulation, in these settings the English text was correctly accented when sung.

In April 1998, Dan Brown (formerly a poster here) mentioned on CANTOR-L some "absolutely beautiful" music that had been recorded by the Schola Cantorum of Chicago, as well as Forgiveness Vespers in Muncie, IND, at which the Schola had led the singing of the entire service and its propers in prostopinije.

Here's my trip report on CANTOR-L from September 21, 1998:



Note the mention of revisions to the text AND music of the Divine Liturgy; on a restoration of the use of sung recitative; on the tension between local variation and use of published versions, etc.

Michael Thompson joined the CANTOR-L list in January 1999, where he was warmly welcomed by occasional byzcath poster Sharon Mech (who had met him in CT the year before, when she had pointed out to the conference attendees the crying need for BOOKS WITH MUSIC) and Brother Maximos of Holy Transfiguration (who had also met him in CT, and who had invited him out to the monastery to give presentations on chant). Shortly thereafter, Michael had convinced the NPM to open an Eastern Catholic Division, with a track at the NPM convention that included Fr. Peter Galadza and Orthodox musicologist and conductor Vladimir Morosan. At the time, he was working in Chicago, conducting a schola that sang a variety of music but specialized in Eastern chant, and was a member of an old calendar Ukrainian parish in Chicago.

Although Michael Thompson was a frequent contributor on the forums (and contributed to the work on Matins music that eventually gained Metropolitan Nicholas' blessing), he was not involved directly with our church until he came to teach at the Seminary just before the untimely death of Metropolitan Judson, who had hired him. He did prove to be an invaluable resource on CANTOR-L, not only for finding obscure melodies or printed sources, but also because of his wide knowledge of liturgics and cantorial practice across the various Rusyn and Ukrainian churches.

After he came to Pittsburgh, we finally received the permission we had been looking for to prepare Vespers and Matins books. (Brother Maximos had been very firm that we should not proceed without a bishop's blessing.) The books prepared under Professor Thompson's guidance were a fantastic improvement over what we had, and could be used by both our cantors and ACROD musicians with little confusion. He certainly served on the Music Commission afterward, but he wasn't the only member, and the others were, as I recall, all "cradle" Rusyns (unlike Professor Thompson, who originally went to a Ukrainian seminary). In fact, I have heard complaints about "Thompson's music" where the version being complained about is NOT what Professor Thompson did in the early MCI settings - and when I asked about it, all he would say was, "The Commission decided to do it this way." Like any committee, this happens; but that alone shows to me that it was nothing like a "private project."

The CANTOR-L archives are still on the MCI website; they are illuminating for cantorial issues in the mid-1990's.

Yours in Christ,
Jeff Mierzejewski

Father David said in 1998 that �the Council of Hierarchs felt not much of the music should be changed, because the people have become accustomed to the texts that are actually sung.� My pastor states that even in early 2001 Metropolitan Judson said that our church would make only those changes to the texts that were absolutely necessary (and he was talking 2 or 3 word changes). Something happened after Thompson was hired at the seminary and the bishops agreed to these major changes to words and music. My pastor says that when Archbishop Procyk died Father Petras hijacked the liturgical commission and pushed through a lot of changes. And the people at the seminary insisted that because Thompson was a paid professional he could do a better job with music then our own cantors. The new music shows the people at the seminary were wrong.

NJ Cantor wrote: "My pastor says that when Archbishop Procyk died Father Petras hijacked the liturgical commission and pushed through a lot of changes."

Certainly through the years, there was a development in policy. Archbishop Judson, however, was always in support of the Inter-Eparchial Liturgy Commission. To state that when he died, I took the occasion to push through reforms that were not possible before is completely and totally a figment of someone's hyperactive imagination. The basic liturgical text as we have it today had already been submitted to, received by and approved by Rome before Archbishop Judson's death, and he was certainly in favor of what we had done, as per my consultation with him two weeks before his untimely death.

How could +Metropolitan Judson, who was all for married clergy, and a return to our roots, approve of inclusive language?

It just doesn't sound like something he would have wanted for the Metropolia.

I wonder if his grave at Mount St. Macrina is rumbling now that the RDL is in place. I'll find out on labor day weekend.

So...if the translation is bad...the music would follow suit.

OY!!!

The circular logic is astounding here!

Have you actually looked at Bokshai, Ratsin or Papp and compared the MUSIC to the RDL music?

In order to stay charitable, I will not go into detail regarding my specific opinions of the music. I have some problems with it--but it is the translation that has scandalized my conscience most. If you are at peace with this mandate, them I am happy for you.

Peace and blessings,
R

Steve,

Slava Isusu Christu!

I disagree that the RDL music is best for our church or appropriate for the English lanuage(our Admin has in the past posted excellent posts on this, I can dig for them if you want).

But even if I agreed with you on this point, why are you so in favor of keeping tradition in regards to our chant but not in favor of keeping tradition regarding rubrics, antiphons, litanies, etc.????

I'm puzzled????


Monomakh

Okay, I'm not a theological expert, an historian or a musical expert. I don't understand some of what I am reading on these posts because it reminds me of academia, something I am very familiar with since I work at a Big Ten University. Can anyone, in simple, easy to understand language, explain to anyone like me, what people mean when they say things like:

"Have you actually looked at Bokshai, Ratsin or Papp and compared the MUSIC to the RDL music?"

I am not disagreeing or agreeing with the above statment. I can't since I don't understand it! As of this writing (3:45pm on Wed 7/18) there are 33 people registered, 42 anonymous users online and a total of 2,739 users. I would be my next month's mortgage payment (property rates in State College are higher than Pittsburgh and Philadelphia) that most of the people who are online, either registered or lurking, don't understand most of what you people are talking about!

Please, try to remember that we don't all know exactly what the 1942 version is, or the 1965 version is, or the 1970's or 1980's versions are. Maybe there's a quick, easy to understand thread somewhere that we can refe people to so they can have a basic understanding of the issues. There are new people joining on a regular basis, please be kind to us and phrase things so we can understand them. You might be surprised how many supporters you might gain, on both sides!

Tim

You drive home a very good point. The Ruthenian Catholic Church has a deep and rich history of confusion. There has always been an identity crisis. The RDL falls in line with that history.

God bless you.

Dear Tim,

When we sang the Divine Liturgy in Slavonic, the chant books we used were primarily the 1906 Prostopinije of Bokshai and Malinich, along with printed and handwritten variants of the same basic music. In the United States, a cantor in Scranton named Theodor Ratsin redid this book with additional material for the Fast and some extra melodies. In the 1950's, Father Andrew Sokol (Wall, PA, I think) reprinted the frequently used parts of Bokhai, but with Latin letters instead of Cyrillic. This is the "blue book" one still sees people carrying to Slavonic liturgies in Uniontown.

These books, along with local variations, formed a basis for our parish chant in Slavonic.

When English came into use, a committee of priests and cantors prepared VERY simplified melodies based on the prostopinije for the Divine Liturgy in English, using only one or two melodies for each hymn, and often changing the rhythms in startling ways. This collection was expanded in 1970 into a music book called Byzantine Liturgical Chant. (Our administrator mentioned recently that this too was the work of a committee, and its quality suffered as a result.) This book was recorded on cassette tape, with a note attached saying something like "For clarity, the singing on these recordings is much slower than they should actually be sung in church." Despite that, many DID learn to sing these slow, simplified and inconsistent settings in English.

In the meantime, MANY parishes with established cantors continued to sing English chant that was much closer to the older prostopinije. The Advanced Cantor School in Pittsburgh (1985-1992?) collected, taught and distributed many of these settings, which unlike the earlier ones often had melismas (several notes per syllable) and clearer rhythms.

The melodies in the new books are much closer to the Slavonic (Bokshai / Papp / Ratsin) and the Advanced Cantor School settings than to the "official" simplified music from the 1960's. It is sometimes a matter of effort to learn to lead the singing with these melodies, because some cantors are SO used to going on "auto-pilot" with the old ones - but they are beautiful, correctly accent the English (when properly sung; Western assumptions like "the high note should be sung loudly" can get i n the way) and make it EASY to learn the music for Vespers and Matins.

Yours in Christ,
Jeff Mierzejewski

Monomakh:
"But even if I agreed with you on this point, why are you so in favor of keeping tradition in regards to our chant but not in favor of keeping tradition regarding rubrics, antiphons, litanies, etc.????
"

Had I EVER written/posted that I was not in favor of keeping rubrics, antiphons litanies, etc on this board? I never said, insunuated or otherwise that I was not in favor of such. Don't put words in my mouth!

I have observed what I have experienced personally from growing up in the BCC as well as travelling.

Does the 1942 recension call for high and low "Mass" as was commonly found in the 40's and well into the 70's? Why was there so much difference in the various liturgy books and practice? It seemed that each priest was allowed to 'mix N match' rubrics and liturgical usage. This at a time where we supposedly had uniformity.

I posted my comments regarding the MUSIC because there has been so much written about how terribly hard it is to sing the RDL (translation notwithstanding). I asked that those who say it is difficult, impossible, etc to sing, if they themselves had ever heard or ever been a cantor leading Slavonic liturgies to seriously compare the various sources of the music used as the basis for the RDL settings.

God bless you, Jeff! Thanks for taking pity on someone like me. Now I understand things much better. Just a few questions:

"When we sang the Divine Liturgy in Slavonic, the chant books we used were primarily the 1906 Prostopinije of Bokshai and Malinich, along with printed and handwritten variants of the same basic music"

I am presuming the 1906 version was written by two people named Bokshai and Malinich who were most likely cantors. And I am presuming they wrote this version in "the old country" or just after coming to America. Is that correct? If so, that would seem to make their version the most authentic version of what our ancestor's sang in Carpatho-Rus. Also correct? Or is this an opinion? Does anyone else have a different interpretation? I'm not trying to start a fight, I am merely trying to verify.

"When English came into use, a committee of priests and cantors prepared VERY simplified melodies based on the prostopinije for the Divine Liturgy in English, using only one or two melodies for each hymn, and often changing the rhythms in startling ways."

Why would they change it in startling ways? Any ideas as to their motivation? And why would they simplify the melodies? The congregation would have at that point in time (1950's) been made up of the original immigrants from the old country as well as their children-first generation born Americans as well as some very young second generation born Americans. If they could sing the prostopinje in 1949 in Slovanic with more complicated melodies, why couldn't they sing them in 1955 with complicated melodies only this time in English? I understand that sometimes things don't translate well from one language to another, let alone trying to set it into music. But would it have been that difficult? Look at the musical "Les Miserables." It's hailed a work of genius because it was originally written in French and the words rhymed (in French) and made great sense. Then translated to English it still rhymed (in English) and kept the original meaning of the words without changing the melody greatly. And words in French and English sometimes aren't anywhere near each other, as far as syllables go. So to match up translations while keeping the meaning as close to the original as possible and still fitting the rythm and meter is very, very hard. Is that what happened when translating Old Slavonic to English?

"This book was recorded on cassette tape, with a note attached saying something like "For clarity, the singing on these recordings is much slower than they should actually be sung in church." Despite that, many DID learn to sing these slow, simplified and inconsistent settings in English."

Well, that would explain why our cantor in my home church in the sixties made everything sound like a funeral dirge! My mother used to come home pig biting mad, as they say, because they would practice something in choir practice two nights a week, then Sunday the cantor would change it so that everyone almost fell over due to lack of momentum! Thanks for that explanation.

Your last response did not mention the 1965 book that I am used to using. It has the English on the left side of the page and the old Slavonic on the right side of the page in Latin letters, not Cryllic. Is that simply a version of the Father Sokol book or is it something different?

I am not taking sides in this, so plese do not take any of my questions as "leading." I am not trying to "trap" you in any way. They are honest questions and I want to follow and honor my ancestor as best I can. I have stated this repeatedly in different threads on this forum. If the new RDL is something my grandmother, who was born in 1889, would have recognized if she weas still alive, then I'm all in favor of it. I just keep hearing different things and am confused as a result.

Thanks. Sorry this turned into such a long post. I didn't mean it to.

Tim

Dear Tim,



Yes. Joseph Malinich was the cantor of the cathedral in Uzhorod; Father John Bokshai was a priest with musical training who notated the melodies as sung by Cantor Malinich. For more information, the this leaflet from the Byzantine Seminary Press, especially part 5.



Since the chant was an oral tradition, the melodies recorded in Uzhorod would have been just one version - but ended up as an authoritative one (since it was published by the Bishop as a standard for teaching). Also, studies have shown that many of these melodies could remain "fixed" over long periods of time, with only slight changes. These melodies were certainly sung in Carpatho-Rus', and widely used here (though with all sorts of small local or regional variations).



All good questions. Every one I have talked to who was involved with this music told me that the guiding principal was "keep it simple." This was an era when the Liturgy in the OFFICIAL Divine Liturgy text for the people was short enough to be celebrated in 25 minutes. There was protest at the time, and many cantors have told me they continued to sing according to the old melodies, using the new ones only as guides (at best) or ignoring them.

(You will notice some melodies in the Green Book for the irmos (a Matins hymn that on feast days sometimes replaces "It is truly proper") are given in two forms. The much more complicated one, usually labelled "solemn", is the original feastday melody. At a previous parish, I sometimes sang the English texts to these melodies, and was amazed at the number of old ladies who came up to me, told me they remembered them, and sang them to me correctly in Slavonic. I have no idea why there was such a move to abbreviate and simplify the music - it may just have been the tenor of the times.)



With the exception of the irmos melodies, most of the prostopinije melodies were INTENDED to be usable with any Slavonic text; the people had books with text only, and the cantors started the singing. Because of the flexibility in the melodies, they certainly CAN be used for English texts; the important thing is to find where the musical accents are and match them to the English syllable and phrase accent, often leading to melismas (several notes per syllable, in both Engish and Slavonic). In the 1960's versions, a different method was used: omit any "extra note", regardless of whether they are musically important, and avoid singing melismas or complicated rhythms.



From your description, I'm not sure what this is. Send me a PM with the title and a physical description and we can try to figure it out.

Yours in Christ,
Jeff

One is the 65 Liturgicon "Red Book" the other I believe is the 65 Pew Pamphlet "Grey Book" that has seen many versions and adaptations.

Fr. Deacon Lance