That's the million dollar question. Why does my 76 year old father, a lifelong Greek Catholic, have to learn new music at this stage of his life? His attendance at church has dropped off lately.

I hope the hierarchy and commissions are happy with what can be called "The wreck of the old 97"!

Dear John,

You asked why the new ones were good. I answered, using your first example. Now you ask why the old ones were bad.

The old settings were not bad as music, I suppose, but they were not prostopinije; they were a new set of music constructed using materials from prostopinije, simplified and truncated, and in the process making them harder to use unless one memorized every variation. Please reread Father Sokol's comment, posted in the introduction here on your own website.

As far as what I said: the posts are there. I never said that the "point" of the Cantor School was to solicit input; but it was accepted and used (and solicited via the website). As to who contributed - six are members here, none of them publicly "pro-RDL". I'll let them identify themselves if they like.

Yours in Christ,
Jeff

Jeff,

I take issue with your repeated requests because you insist that if people do not convince you that there is a problem then there really is no problem. Last autumn after someone snuck a copy of the new settings out of the MCI and posted it on the web we had a discussion about a few of the issues (some we have re-discussed today). Your response at that time made it clear that you consider literal faithfulness to Boksaj paramount and the accentuation of the text secondary. The discussion went nowhere and I see no reason to repeat it, especially when the bishops have made clear that the new settings are now mandated, that there is no room for review and improvement. Because of this there is really no point to the discussion.

As to your suggestion that I am really a Latin and speak from a Western musical assumption I’m not sure how to respond. Given that the texts are being set for singing in English in America one should consider how they are heard by an American ear. To consider the culture of the unchurched American people who we should be inviting into our parishes is something far different than latinizing.

As to you thinking in necessary for me to provide lots and lots of examples, I don’t see any need to. If I think it would be useful I would certainly provide them to those in authority who can effect change. Plus, if I were to provide ten or twenty you would want more. And if I provided 199 you would insist that it was not “hundreds”. So I’m not going there.

John

This is what has my head spinning John. This music has been "out" and under scrutiny, as you say, for better than nine months now.

How can Jeff NOT remember those discussions?

And how can it be said that the effort was a collaboration when access to the music was restricted to the Internet and to Pittsburgh?...and when the music finally did "get out" nothing that you or others said was taken into consideration.

I was only half joking when I drew the parallel between Jeff's responses here and Father David's claim that we were offering some indeterminate oblation for centuries.

Are you sure you aren't a large white rabbit with a pocket watch, John?

Love,

Alice

Dear John,

I never mentioned "Latin", in any way.

One can CERTAINLY sing "Amen" - do re do - with a pulse on the first and last note. There is nothing that "makes" you accent the middle syllable.

As you say - you are quite willing to make (inaccurate) "observations" about what I believe, think and feel, and I'm not willing to do the same here. You win!

Yours in Christ,
Jeff

P.S. Mary - I have made no statements about collaboration (except one that was immediately altered to say something quite different). Specific comments - quite a few - were forwarded to the IEMC, and a number of changes were made because of them. I'm not going to deny the truth of that just to please someone here.

And no, for "all the discussion", two examples were proposed, and John has now provided a third - moments before telling me I could "stop pretending" that lots of examples had been posted. You win, too!

Jeff,

I most certainly did ask why the old ones were unacceptable.

But we do come to the heart of your position. You don’t reject the old settings as either not singable or useful to the Church. You reject them because they were not as faithful to Prostopinije as you would like. You are willing to force people to unlearn what they have memorized just to serve your personal desire to restore a very literal application of the Boksaj Prostopinije! And since we have parishes where people under 40 only know the 1965 English settings you are willing to force them to abandon what they grew up singing and adopt more literal settings. To what purpose? Does it say somewhere in the Gospel that we Ruthenians will all rot in hell if we drop a notes from Boksaj when we put it into new languages? And can you give me your personal phone number to give to all the people who are grieving because they are being forced to abandon music they have come to love?

Chant serves the text. The text does not serve chant. The Church can and does adapt chant to serve text in different languages. The task of the Ruthenian Church is to provide settings that best serve the English language. If Prostopinije serves this then great! If it does not we are free to invent something new. Don’t forget that the Slavs did not see a need to preserve the Greek Chant they received. They took it and turned it into something that better served Slavic culture. If we are to survive in America we will not do so by being an ethnic Church. We will do so by inviting unchurched Americans to become Byzantine Catholic. To do that we need to set our chant in a manner that is appealing to the American ear, and to allow completely new chant to grow up beside it. It can be done and the newly mandated settings do not accomplish this.

I’m still unsure of your comments on the purpose of the Cantor School. You have chided me for not being there when input was solicited. You have said that the call for input was not what it could have been. And now you say that soliciting input was not a main effort but was accepted, and that the solicitation for input occurred elsewhere. No wonder experienced cantors did not participate. Talk about changing stories and mixed messages!

But we're talking in circles now so there is no point in continuing. As I stated elsewhere I am the least important person in the Ruthenian Church. I'm not the one who needs convincing. The people who need to buy into the RDL are the people worshiping in our parishes. With the mandate taking effect on Friday of this week the RDL - rubrics, text and music - will now be judged on merit. For the sake of the Ruthenian Church I hope that you are proven right and I am proven wrong.

John

Yes. Where does this idea come from that there is some pure form of any chant, anywhere, east or west, to which we must return at any and all cost?

And this "mandate" that it will be the music provided and none other that is also curious. Is there precedent for this approach to musical settings in this Church, as Professor Thompson claimed yesterday...or the day before?

Oh well...I am still trying to figure out how one gets dated drafts from a liturgy that has long since been approved by Rome.

M.

I want to thank John and Jeff for this public discussion. I am beginning to understand the issues on each side more clearly now. I am looking forward to a continuation of the discussion and would be in favor of a "closed discussion" so to speak, which would limit posts to only those in direct response to the specific points of discussion.

I believe this type of discussion is very fruitful to have in public venues. Even if it did not happen before, there is no reason not to start now. We have been told that this promulgation is intended as an interim, so let's start at the grass roots level today for the next promulgation. If the information is publicly discussed, the hierarchs and cantors will have it to pull from in the future. In the mean time, it will educate the faithful and provide a working knowledge of the issues so that they can also have an ownership in the process.

Thank you both for devoting yourselves to our church and for being willing to address these issues in a public venue in order to educate us all.