I am sure some one has asked this question before but is the new pew book avaiable for private purchase? Youres in Christ, Paul

Dear Paul,

Copies are available from the Byzantine Seminary Press for $15.00; look on the Books page for "Faithful's Book for the Divine Liturgy".

Yours in Christ,
Jeff Mierzejewski

Several copies were available at Epiphany's festival at the Bookstore table. I raced in to get one lest they be sold out, but apparently by late afternoon only one of the six had been purchased. They were also priced at $15. I must admit the high quality of the printing, the paper stock, the covers and the binding, etc. would indicate that they should be sold for much more. Very high quality. (OK, so I'm a bibliophile, got 4,000 books and still counting!)

Dr John

I can send you one of the pew books from my parish. It includes everything that the $15 dollar hard back green book should have in it. It's not as pretty, but it speaks volumes!

It is potentially a great investment. If/when the RDL is rescinded, it will be a collector's item!

Looking at the seminary website it appears that the priest/deacon version of the RDL book is not available. Is this correct?

Am I the only one wondering why there would be such a thing as a 'pew' book.

Monomakh

Just hang around, soon parishes will be giving them away, when this Liturgy if finally rejected completely. Already some parishes are giving up on them, and producing their own books. If you find one of these parishes, you can pull one of the books out of the trash can for free.

Nick

why do you ask this?

See the recently closed pew thread in F+W

Alexandr

Here's a PDF copy of it.

304 C-DL_2006.pdf

Americans don't sing. (They don't dance either.)

So, absent a strong tradition from the old county (Welsh coal miners excepted as well as Italian gondoliers), people need something to help them use music.

Apart from the 'camp revivals', most American ecclesial communities relied upon choirs to provide music.

In a scale of 'singers', Catholics and non-Ruthenian Orthodox rank at the bottom of singing-Christians. The Jews are quite the same. Let the choirs or the paid-performers do it.

Hymnals provide a crutch - the words are there and so are the 'notes' (for those who can read music). But even then, most in the pews don't sing. The RC guitarists tried to induce popular singing - it succeeded in limited cases; the rest just listened. Even the TV-evangelists make us of massed-choirs to enhance their liturgical performances. And the African American communities (Baptist or Evangelical) use 'bands' to enhance their worship.

The root question is: Music in American Christian communities - who does it and why?

Should Byzantine Christians use only 'trained singers' (=psalti, cantors) or community singing in worship? And should the ethnic background's tradition be the determining factor in the "outland" who might have a different tradition?

Blessings!

Dr John

Dear Dr. John,

While I agree absolutely with your emphasis in the other thread you posted to moments ago (that many things are more important than the minutiae of liturgical language and music), there is a sense in which Slav plainchant DOES make it possible to "sing our prayers."

The various forms or prostopinije / samoilka are structured musically in a way that matches phrases of varying length. Each has a definite, usually stylized beginning, followed by a "plane" on which the middle of a phrase can be chanted in the rhythm of natural speech. The music does not slow down at the end of each phrase, but becomes slightly ornate, forming a cadence. While completely respecting either a Slav or English accent (I've also used it in German), one can intone a phrase well, listening only for the cantor to BEGIN the cadence. Virtually every such cadence has a "trick" that makes it clear how to finish the cadence with good phrasing and accent, once started. There is usually a final phrase, possibly even more ornate, that brings this particular bit of singing to an end, and prepares for the next part of the service - again, WITHOUT noticeably dragging or slowing down. (That's why you have short terminal melismas in formulaic chant, which is otherwise quite syllabic.)

This kind of music is of value PRECISELY because it allows a congregation to sing their prayers TOGETHER; once the patterns are established in a given language it can be done from straight text, with good flow, accents and phrasing. It just takes practice.

Again, as far as melismas - these forms of chant use them almost entirely at the end, where they serve to slow down the TEXT without slowing the MUSIC (slowing the music brings services to a halt). The exceptions are the melodies for canons and sedalens (sitting hymns), which are VERY ornate and always written out. They form a change of pace from the congregationally sung music.

A typical Ruthenian parish congregation knows about 40 basic chant melodies "by ear" - double that if they have regular Vespers. One could certainly TRY to come up with music in the eight tones, and for the fixed hymns of our services, using "American music" written "from scratch"; but it would likely have neither the flexibility nor the variety of our existing chant, which is "of a piece" even while it covers a great deal of possibilities.

There is plenty of choir music - but our plainchant WORKS for sung prayer in modern languages (in a way that Gregorian chant, say, does not), which is why I'm glad to see prostopinije undergoing a renaissance among cantors across the country in the past decade. Perhaps it is one of the gifts God has given us to pass on.

Yours in Christ,
Jeff

I disagree, Dr. John. Slavs are known for their "song and dance." I remember grandma singing old folk tales to us, and in her later years she liked to sing them while my dad fed her lunch at the nursing home. And, think about all the Eastern European dance groups in the United States and Europe. This all translates to church. In my parish, we have nice participation, albeit better before the RDL than after, but we do have people who sing. I find that if it's a day where I don't feel like singing aloud, I'm still following the words/music in my heart.

Secondly, which church can afford to pay a choir or cantor? No one. My husband has cantored for more than eight years, and aside from receive a gift from the parish priest, hasn't received a dime for his services. But, he doesn't do it for the money anyway. He says people don't sing for two reasons....bad cantoring that the congregation can't follow; and choirs give the impression that the people are now in the pew being entertained.
We need trained cantors and less choral music -- and the singing will take place. JMHO, Stephanie

Monomakh
I was just about to say, it's called the Revised Divine Liturgy, because our churches are not supposed to have pews, except maybe around the perimeter of the room for the elderly who, by the way, regularly stand throughout liturgies in the old country at parishes which have not been heavily latinized.

Dear Stephanie
I had to respond to this because I an aware of atleast one parish that definitely pays its choir director, and that is a good thing. He does it for the love of God, and he gets paid because "every laborer deserves his wage". As for chorale music, there are ways to integrate traditional choral music with the chant of our church and not lose congregational participation. At our parish the choir sings about every other week, which allows the cantors to have complete voice on the choir's off weeks. Also, when the choir sings, it doesn't sing the entire liturgy chorally, but only some of the more major parts of the liturgy. True, the people need to be formed that they should not be merely listeming to the choir, but praying with the choir. In our parish, some choral arrangements have become so familiar to the people that they sing along with the choir! Which I think is wonderful! I must agree with you, though, that cantors in our tradition who don't follow the printed rhythms are the greatest reason why people do not sing along. Rhythm has be woefully neglected in the "old school". However, the new RDL could do much to improve this situation.