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#78432 09/07/04 05:30 PM
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jbosl Offline OP
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I recently picked up a CD with spiritual songs written by St. Nikolai Velimirovich, written for families to sing together. I love the idea. I'm wondering if anyone can tell me where I can find a compilation of spiritual songs in the Byzantine tradition.

I know the Carpatho-Rusyns have a long tradition of these songs--where can I find them in English with the musical notation? Any others, such as Serbian, etc?
Thanks
Justin

#78433 09/09/04 02:55 PM
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I would try the bookstores of the Orthodox Seminaries listed with their dominant tradition in parenthesis:

St. Sophia (Ukrainian) South Bound Brook, NJ
St. Vladimir's (OCA-mixed) Crestwood, NY www.svots.org [svots.org]
St. Tikhon's (OCA-Russian) South Canaan, PA
St. Herman's (OCA-Native-American)
Holy Cross (Greek) Brookline, MA
St. ?, (Serbian) Libertyville, IL


In Christ,

Andrew

#78434 09/09/04 07:37 PM
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St. ?, (Serbian) Libertyville, IL

St Sava Serbian Orthodox Church

JoeS

#78435 09/22/04 02:27 PM
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I don't know of any English-language collection of these hymns that is at all extensive. There is a centuries-old tradition of these things, and big books of them with Kievan notation were published under the title _Bohohlasnyk_.

On the Carpatho-Rusyn side, a collection of texts with no music by Uriil Meteor was published in 1913, and several smaller collections by Antonii Bobul�skyi, organized topically, were published over the first three decades of the twentieth century. A collection by Stafan Papp, with the text in the Latin alphabet and with modern musical notation, was published in 1969. All of the above are intended for practical use; a collection of similar texts from old manuscripts, with philological purposes, was compiled and edited by Volodymyr Hnatjuk in 1902.

The language of all of he above remains close to Church Slavonic. On the Galician side, such books have had the text in Ukrainian for a long time now. Iosyf Kohut published a collection of Kol'ady in 1919, reprinted in 1953; the melodies are in two voices. A collection was published by the Basilians in Zhovka in 1926, reprinted in Rome in 1970; this collection is dominated by hymns composed by members of the Basilian order and others, in contrast to the oral-traditional melodies in other collections.

This is by no means a comprehensive list; if others can add to it, please do so. A lot of work is clearly needed to provide English-language versions of this material. Since the texts must retain the metrical structure of the originals, and should attempt at least to retain the rhyme schems as much as possible (often based on inflectional endings that English does not have), such translation is particularly difficult; one must often resort to paraphrase, thus incurring the temptation to rewrite to the extent that the result is essentially a different hymn in the same meter. Another temptation is to introduce a saccharine, sentimental tone foreign to the original.

On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with writing new texts to fit traditional melodies, as long as they are not presented as something else (that is, as translations of traditional texts). There are indeed some English translations out there, but they represent only a small fraction of the traditional repertory.

Stephen


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