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Who are "we cantors"? With the Anthology the names of the specific cantors as well as a summary of the collaborative process was included in the preface, and with the exception of the fifth "adjudicator" all of the other four were life-long cantors within the particular tradition well known across the UGCC in North America.

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Father Deacon,

I apologize; I had thought the discussion of the NPM meeting had ended and didn't see your question.

The post you quote was discussing the issue of Matins as morning prayer. I said:


By "we cantors", I was referring to a group of cantors that formed in the mid 1990's and maintained the CANTOR-L mailing list - back in the days of CINEAST, and before this forum existed (if I have my dates correct). The group consisted of cantors from the Byzantine Catholic Church (including Holy Resurrection Monastery), the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia; most have been posters here over the years. From the online archives of the CANTOR-L forum, it is easy to see both the membership and the issues under consideration.

By "that's why", I meant that we made it a priority to prepare some books for Matins precisely because it IS our principal morning liturgical prayer, and it was quite shocking to discover how sparse the available materials were.

At that time, with the Sybertsville Horologion out of print and inaccessible, the ONLY complete book we had for Matins was the Uniontown "Book of Matins" - which lacks rubrics, explanatory material and music, abbreviates in places (compared to the official Ruthenian books) and contains a variety of other errors. Although we had access to music for Matins in Church Slavonic, there simply were no complete "parish books" for Matins in English, and hardly any music resources. We contacted the seminary in Pittsburgh and obtained EIGHT PAGES of music for Matins, all handwritten, done by a seminarian.

Most of us had had to use Hapgood, Mother Mary's books, and materials from St. John of Kronstadt Press; the Ordo Celebrationis, Mother Katherine's translations of the Sunday Canons, and the old Slavonic books, in order to learn the services. So one of our priorities was to prepare service books for Vespers and Matins, for parish use, with rubrics and music. (This was before John Vernoski, who had been consulted, produced his own books for Vespers).

So my point, Father Deacon, is that in the 1990's, there simply WAS no good way for a cantor in the Byzantine Catholic Church to learn and lead the singing at Matins - which is one reason that as parishes began celebrating more services, Matins was celebrated as AT BEST a "series of well-known bits" like the Polyeleos, rather than as an actual service. To my knowledge, the Ukrainian Anthology only provides the Matins Gospels, for use as recommended private prayer; I did not mean to comment at all on those involved in producing it, or on the Anthology itself.

Yours in Christ,
Jeff

Jeff, the question was quite simple - who are "we cantors". As I mentioned, those responsible for compiling the Anthology are listed by name, the collaborative method summarized, and their competency and qualifications as well as their grounding in the musical tradition are very well known in the UGCC.

As far as the resources, anyone who has been praying the services for a while knows well what is out there. I would rather like to specifically know who "we cantors" are you are referring to who derived the Matins texts and music you are referring to.

My question had nothing to do with texts or methods or comparisons of texts, for that matter. I hope that clarifies. And if I need to limit the specificity of my question further, let's just look at the Ruthenian participants of "we cantors", as I am familiar with the UGCC and ROCOR texts and music already in use at that time and their provenance was as well.

I'm trying to find out "who" (i.e. names and background), and not "what" or "why".

Father Deacon,

In the mid-1990's, a group of cantors started preparing instructional materials on Vespers and Matins, explaining how the services could actually be celebrated in parishes, since in the Byzantine Catholic Church there WERE no materials with rubrics and music - and many cantors (and clergy) insisted that there was TOO little knowledge available to have them at all. The archives for the discussion are online [metropolitancantorinstitute.org], and those involved in the discussion included:

*Monk Maximos, Holy Transfiguration Monastery
*Peter Hrycak, UKCC
*Dave Brown
Bill Metzar
*Andrew Wollert
*David James, ROCOR
Marc Blaydoe, ACROD
*Sharon Mech
Mike Weller
*David Pancza, Slovakia
Elizabeth Riggs, ROCOR
Nicolas Schidlovsky
Paul Gilbert
J. Michael Thompson
Michael Dancisin
Father Robert Pipta

Asterisks mark the most frequent contributors. Our principal topics of discussion were rubrical issues, finding texts, and setting them to music appropriately. In addition to the FAQ we worked on, we published three newsletter issues explaining how to apply the Typikon alongside the Basilian books to actually celebrate services.

Our qualifications for attempting to understand and communicate what we had learned was precisely that - every one of us (including Brother Maximos) had had to learn the hard way, mostly from synthesizing an ARRAY of materials, to sing the services, and we were trying to find a way to make it easier for less determined cantors and apprentice cantors to learn the same services. We weren't "deriving" texts and music; we were trying to take the available texts, find the missing ones, and set the appropriately to existing melodies and music tradtions, in a parish setting.

I'm not sure what this has to do with the Anthology - which doesn't include Vespers or Matins in any case, and certainy doesn't attempt to provide thorough instruction on liturgics for cantors, or explain where to find materials for liturgical celebrations. I suspect you're trying to bring up a different subject, and I'm not sure at all what you're getting at; that may explain why you didn't find my answer satisfactory. There certainly WAS a dearth of materials for Matins in the early 1990's, and "a group of mostly younger cantors, including myself" (if that's clearer than "we cantors") spent a lot of time sharing what we could put together, so that our parishes could HAVE those services. Which (if you look at the post you quote in context) was my point: Matins is important, and (mostly middle-aged and younger) cantors in the past few years have been willing to invest effort make those services possible.

Yours in Christ,
Jeff Mierzejewski

That is a start, thanks. The only reason I mentioned the Anthology, as I explained above (but perhaps not adequately) was only for an illustrative example, i.e. that it listed the names of those involved and gave the general collaborative approach. I was interested in who was involved rather than specifics of texts.

Now, can you explain what the relationship is of what those individuals you have just posted and what ended up on the MCI site? I don't see any input musically or text-wise from the UGCC or ROCOR there, and would be interested who specifically has contributed to MCI, who came up with the music and the texts.

To use the Anthology as an illustrative example only, I know exactly who was involved, their general background with the tradition, and how the collaborative process generally worked. Perhaps this needs to be on another thread.

Dear Father Deacon,

The materials I was referring to had nothing to do with the materials on the MCI website - except for the Sunday Canons of Matins, which were proofed as part of that project, being the "hardest" part of Matins to come up with; they received the blessing of Metropolitan Judson and Metropolitan Nicholas for use at their respective seminaries. Of the individuals involved, several took part in the Cantor Institute and served as proofreaders for the MCI publications.

By and large, the materials on the MCI website were originally prepared by Professor Thompson for use in the seminary chapel, and made available on the website for instructional and parish use, beginning with weekly Vespers propers in 2005. The forewords to the larger books indicate which materials came from the Liturgical or Music Commissions. None of these works are "official", but they are the most complete texts with music so far, and to that extent are a rather amazing contribution for four years' work.

Look for a more complete article on the methodology for the MCI website to appear on the website sometime in the next month or so. As you say, it has nothing to do with the current topic

Yours in Christ,
Jeff

That's what I thought - two separate projects. Thanks for the explanation.