Glory to Jesus Christ!

In the video Infant Baptism, what kind of singing was that?

Kyrie eleison,

Manuel

The video referred to in the article (along with the documentation links) can be seen in the original blog post here.

Slava Isusu Khrestu!Praise be Jesus Christ

Hello Manuel

"Receive the Body of Christ taste the fountain of immortality"

These words are sung in the tradition of the Ukrainian Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox churches for sure as communicants approach for communion.

The melody is one familiar to me for as a youngster, it was sung in our church originally in Old Slavonic, then, years later about 1960's it was sung in modern Ukrainian and now sung in English.

Often it is sung in both languages, Ukrainian and English alternately at communion time.

Z Bohom
Kolya

Glory to Jesus Christ!



Dear Garajotsi,

Do the Ukrainian Catholic or Orthodox use Byzantine chant or the Russian chant? I understand that Russian Orthodoxy developed it's own 8 tone style of chant.

Kyrie eleison,

Manuel

The UGCC church I attend has a hymn or 2 during communion. At the Russian Catholic Centre in Melbourne they repeat the verse continually while communion of the congregation is taking place.

Slava Isusu Khrestu

Hello
Manuel

The Ukrainian church of Rus'-Ukraine which was baptized in 10th century at the time of St Vladimir the Great, Grand Prince of Rus' is older than the Church of Russia. The Christian message later went north from Rus'.

Accordingly, the Church of Rus'-Ukraine did use Byzantine chant but over time, developed its own unique Ukrainian 8 tones/hlasi
which with subtle variation are used throughout Ukraine and here in Canada by both Orthodox and Catholic Ukrainians. The Russian Church after it received the Gospel News developed and modified the 8 tones based on those of the Ukrainian Church.

Z Bohom
Kolya

Check such sources as the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Heirmologion, and you will find that the chant which remains in Galicia is based on Zammeny.

Fr. Serge

Glory to Jesus Christ!



Thank you for this information. So I guess there are three chant styles: Byzantine, Ukrainian and Russian?

Kyrie eleison,

Manuel

Manuel,

There is also Carpatho-Russyn chant, which is slightly different from Ukrainian chant. Russia seems to have a couple of styles, the traditional Znammeny chant, and the more choral arrangements for which the Russians are so famous. Several other countries have also developed their own style of chant, but those all seem to have derived from Byzantine chant.

So the question I guess is when will American Chant come around? I think I remember hearing from one of the Ancient Faith podcast that the speaker, an Antiochian priest, was trying to develop one but it is quite difficult.

Kyrie eleison,

Manuel

I shudder to think of what an authentic and indigenous American chant might sound like! (Rock and roll, the blues, rap, jazz, etc...?!?) LOL!!

In the meantime, the sacred sounds of the old world countries (including the ethereal Gregorian chant of the West) feel reverent and 'right'...Here is a very good Byzantine chant, sung in English:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wmhA4D5CKU&feature=related

Glory to Jesus Christ!



LOL Yea I can understand that sentiment, especially with the abuses done in the Roman Church. I love the Byzantine Chant. I was just stating out loud what I think is the natural thought process with so many other regional/national chant styles. It would be interesting if such a thing as reverent American Chant could be developed. But American custom, if you will, has from it's birth to be practical and do away with what's not needed. Look at our English compared to British English. Color as opposed to colour. It would be interesting, but I doubt if possible. Especially in such a world and generation that at large has and is losing the sense of reverence in general .

Kyrie eleison,

Manuel

Personally I think that even if jurisdictional unity is achieved for the Byzantine Churches in the U.S. (whether they be Catholic or Orthodox), each church should maintain its inherited form of chant and work to promote the best expressions of that chant in English. In other words, within an "American patriarchate" Russian parishes should work to produce the best possible expression of Russian/Znammeny chant in English, Greek and Antiochian parishes should work to produce the best possible expression of Byzantine chant in English, Ruthenian parishes should work to produce the best possible expression of Ruthenian chant in English, etc.

One other thing to note is that each country that is traditionally Orthodox has had centuries to develop its own style/form of chant, and didn't just pull it out of mid air at the urging of some liturgical commission. The same will hold for the U.S. and other English speaking countries. So I'd guess that many styles of chanting will exist in the Byzantine churches in the U.S. for a couple of centuries, but a common "American" chant will gradually form, founded of course on the traditional forms of Byzantine chant, particularly Byzantine chant itself.

That is the Communion Hymn for Pascha. It is also the hymn for the Sundays of the Paschal season, except for Thomas Sunday (at least in the Ruthenian Recension). As such, it appears to be a kind of default Communion Hymn. Our BCC parish did not actually use it in that way, but it is so used in a 1966 recording of a Hierarchical Divine Liturgy ( link).

This is the link for the Communion Hymns. Hymn 2, "Receive the Body of Christ," begins at 01:43.

It is an example of Carpathian chant.

No place for the original languages in an American patriarchate?

English would undoubtedly be the principal liturgical language, but that is no reason to discard Slavonic--or Greek, or Arabic, for that matter. The ability of a congregation to move seamlessly from one to another within the Liturgy is a sign that it is comfortable within the Tradition.

One must recognize that when Byzantine chant is sung in English, the melody, or the text, or both, must be altered to accommodate the differences between English and Greek. Remember that the Slavs received the full corpus of Byzantine chant along with the Divine Liturgy, and used it for a couple of centuries before developing their own unique tones better adapted to the peculiarities of Slavonic.

I've heard Znamenny and other forms of Russian chant transcribed for English, by Mark Bailey and others (not to mention Byzantine, Romanian, Melkite and Bulgarian chant transcribed for English), and while they keep the core of the original melody, it's hard to say that it hasn't been adapted for English.

The same might be said of the simplified Prostopinje that was used in Ruthenian parishes up to the promulgation of the RDL. Here, the melodies were tailored to the English texts and adapted more for the ears of English-speakers (as Levkulich famously noted, "The curlicues don't work"). Ironically, these simplified melodies are significantly closer to what is being used in Old Ruthenia than the music of the RDL, because, being an oral tradition, Prostopinje continued to evolve even in its homland.

If left alone, gradually and organically, the chants of the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church would have continued to evolve, retaining its ties to Slavonic Prostopinje, but distinct from it, and reflecting the genius of the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic faithful.

Pity that some people felt they could do better by short-circuiting the process and locking the Church into a fixed set of chants that will shortly be regarded as a museum piece.

I don't think there is anything wrong with a slight change in the melody of Byzantine chant to accommodate English, for example.
Papa Ephraim at the monastery of St Anthony is doing a lot of good work putting English to correctly written Byzantine chant.

Issues normally arise, in my experience, when choirs or chanters are insufficiently trained and cannot chant according to the Byzantine tuning. There seem to be quite a few choirs who will sing the closest Western tone -- and this takes away from the true Byzantine melody.

My two cents regarding Prostopinije. My dad was regarded as something as an 'expert' by both the Orthodox and Byzantine practitioners of the chant during his lifetime. I learned long ago that the type of disagreement being described here was nothing new.(This probably applies to other chant traditions as well, but not being familiar with them, I can only speculate on that.) In Europe, within the borders of the former Austro-Hungarian empire, there was, and remains, a divergence within Protopenije between the Uzhorod school and the Presov school of chant. This was carried over to the US with the immigrants and became exacerbated as fewer academy trained 'Kantors' arrived from Europe following the first war. Oral means of teaching began to prevail and differences from region to region in the US and parish to parish were common. The divisions which led to ACROD continued the process. Both ACROD and the Byzantines have gone through a fair number of translations and chant renderings over the years.

Today, it is only with Slavonic that the Orthodox and Greek Catholic practitioners of Prostopenije can sing together in the traditional manner. (This was witnessed by me last month when the Iveron Icon was at my Church. Many of our Byzantine neighbors attended the Moleben. The limited number of Slavonic responses to both the service and Marian hymns was robust but the confusion caused by competing English versions was quite evident to the ear.) The same is true in Slovakia and Ukraine, as attempts by both have led to various translations in those languages as well.

Finally, we were taught as children by my father and other priests to use the 'written' music as a guide and learn to follow the lead chanter and congregation - not to force them to follow a written 'ideal'. Easier said than done.

We sing it this way in my Russian Byzantine Catholic parish. I'll have to ask the old parishioners how it was sung when everything was in Slavonic. We do use some Slavonic but I've never heard Slavonic for the Communion singing in the few years I've been in my parish.

I can't help but note that ACROD and the Byzantine Church share prostopenije of course. Until the mandate of the RDL the Levkulic work served as the base for both of us, since RDL our chant in ACROD has remained the same relatively while the BC chanting is noticeably different to the ear. At a St. Nicholas dinner at the BC church in town recently, I sadly remarked to the Byzantine pastor that we could only sing the Hymn to St. Nicolas together in Slavonic these days as the pacing and words now differed. Stuart's observations about the oral nature of the chant are correct and regional and parish based distinctions were always present in the old days. However, they never sounded forced to the ear.

Our choir sings this melody.