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Apparently, then, the Orthodox and Catholic Churches have been severely deprived of the help of the Holy Spirit in safeguarding the spirit of the liturgy.

As for myself, I am thankful for the sheer depth and power of Russian Church music, which I actually prefer to the sweetness of Palestrina and the dark mysticism of De Victoria. It is my hope that those who would import the increasingly discredited theories of 1960's liturgiology into the Orthodox Churches will be defeated by the spiritual profundity of Byzantine and Serbian chant.

"Apparently, then, the Orthodox and Catholic Churches have been severely deprived of the help of the Holy Spirit in safeguarding the spirit of the liturgy. "

The Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches have been subjected to a degree of persecution and cultural pressures the Latin Church has never known. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Orthodox Church lost most of its schools and seminaries, was deprived of the ability to write and publish books, and was constrained in its ability to teach and evangelize. All that was left to it was its liturgy, and through that it survived.

However, for almost everything else, the Orthodox Church had to turn to the West. Orthodox texts were compiled and printed in Italy; Orthodox scholars had to train in the West. When, from the 16th century onward, the Eastern Catholic Churches were erected in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, its clergy were trained in Western seminaries (usually in Latin) using Western counter-reformation curricula, methods and theology.

In Russia, from the mid-17th century onward, both theology and liturgical music were under such strong Western influences (due to the patronage of the Tsars from Peter the Great onward) that the Russian Orthodox Church underwent what Florovsky called a "pseudomorphosis", and which others have called an intellectual "Babylonian Captivity" during which authentic Orthodox theology, as well as iconography, architecture and liturgical music were almost completely absorbed by Western models--a situation that did not begin to change until the mid-19th century.

It is therefore improper to say that the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches were deprived of the Holy Spirit in safeguarding the spirit of the Liturgy. One could almost certainly say the same thing in spades of the Latin Church from the 13th century onward, and with a much firmer foundation. That the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches have survived and are in the midst of a great renewal is evidence of the Holy Spirit at work. That you look to the spiritual profundity of Byzantine and Serbian chant to save the Liturgy puts you firmly on the side of the liturgical reformers of the Orthodox Church, because the situation relative to fifty to one hundred years ago represents the liturgical decadence of the Orthodox Church.

As another gentle hint: One cannot extrapolate the liturgical situations of the Western Church into the Eastern Church situation. While both have their problems, they are discrete and quite different, both in origin and nature, and therefore what is said of one does not necessarily apply to the other.

"Says who? The liturgical modernists who wrecked Catholic liturgy in the 1960's and 1970's and forced millions to sing the miserable ditties of the OCP?"

Actually, if you go back into history, you will find that the introduction of polyphony was seen as an heretical innovation by the Western Church, back in the 13th-14th centuries--as was the introduction of the organ a century earlier. Throughout the Church, the oldest strata of liturgical music is monadic chant, based on a series of eight modes or tones. This took the form of Roman, Gregorian and Milanese chant in the West, and Byzantine and various Slavic chants in the East.

This has nothing to do with "modernism", but in a restoration of the authentic Tradition of the undivided Church.

Ours is a Heinz 57 parish, more so than most in this state (where Heinz 57 means multiple Slavic groups), so we do a little bit of everything. Byzantine. Greek traditional melodies. Znammeny. Prosptopinje. Kievan. Bulgarian. Romanian. Nothing polyphonic we do is very compex. Archangelsky, Bortniansky, Kedrov (I don't much like Kedrov, but that's another topic), all mostly I-IV-V-(VI) chord progressions. I see very little in the way of complex harmonizations in any parish these days. It certainly isn't hard to sing along, if you want, and many do, starting with the Magnificat at Matins, and continuing on through Divine Liturgy. Familiarity is important: There is less participation during Presanctified Liturgies than normal. There isn't participation when it's something specific to the day; it's the common elements that are sung at every Sunday liturgy or every Wednesday and Saturday Vespers where there is participation. We have this one good, Christian man who comes to every service. He has this big, beautiful, round, deep, resonant bass, truly a beautiful instrument that resounds throughout the church. Unfortunately, he's completely tone-deaf, but he sings, with no embarrassment. It's wonderful. He may be miles away from the note, but he has a really beautiful voice, and he's there to worship.

As for converts, I see pretty much what one would expect. Protestant converts sing a lot more than Catholic converts. I think Catholic and Orthodox can't really be compared. We don't really have a "passive" worship tradition, even if we don't sing along. We're doing metanias and prostrations, etc., etc., etc. Worship is very much an active thing.

We get a lot more participation on Byzantine or Znammeny chants (even specific to the day) with a traditional, stable ison, because all you need is the base note of the tone. Moving ison, not so much. And that's good too, because we can always use more people singing ison to keep the note going (you do have to stop and breathe every once in a while).

And what I mean by Russian (I should have said Slavic, since it isn't solely Russian) polyphony is pretty basic harmonizations like Archangelsky, Bortniansky, etc., not Rachmaninoff or Tchaikovsky (and does anybody actually do those outside of concerts?) But you are right about the organ encouraging participation, although Protestants also have a tradition of congregational singing (and many of those Protestant hymns are more harmonically complex than ours).

"But you are right about the organ encouraging participation, although Protestants also have a tradition of congregational singing (and many of those Protestant hymns are more harmonically complex than ours)."

In the 18th century, the New England Congregationalists had a flourishing tradition of a capella, multi-part psalmody, which in both content and overall feeling, can be surprisingly similar to Orthodox chants. The premier composer of such pieces was William Billings, whose work includes "Praise the Lord" (similar to the Polyeleos) and an Easter Anthem that is sometimes quite close to John Damascene's Paschal Canon.

Paul Hillier, whose Hilliard Ensemble has made several outstanding recordings of Orthodox liturgical music, made an excellent CD entitled Early American Choral Music, Vol.1 [amazon.com] on the Classical Express label.

I should have mentioned that our New England forebears were more capable of tackling multi-part hymns because choral singing was a popular recreational form. Many of Billings' hymns and songs, for instance, were not meant for liturgical use (if that term can be appropriate for the austere worship of the Congregational Church), but for secular use--parties, family gatherings, and community sing-alongs.

Similar choral aptitude was maintained in many rural communities in the United States and in Europe until well after World War II, but the skill is vanishing, and therefore it becomes necessary to simplify our musical arrangements to fit the congregation.

Popping in between services, what I don't get is how Catholics borrow Protestant hymns, then change the lyrics for no apparent reason. I've been told it's to make them more Catholic, or take out specifically Protestant lyrics, but that doesn't explain why they screwed with the lyrics to O Sacred Head Now Wounded (Surrounded? How is that "more Catholic"?) or A Mighty Fortress Is Our God (Ein Feste Burg Ist Unser Gott), possibly the greatest Western hymn ever written. And why lift them at all, when the Romans have that great Gregorian tradition? I'm Orthodox, and I love listening to Gregorian chant. Beautiful stuff.

You all have tempted me to pop in.... Two notes:

1. "Polyphony" represents such a wide variety of music that it's almost useless to call anything "polyphony". If someone were to take all the polpyhonic Mass settings that are still extant from before 1600 (or substituted 10 blank pages for those known to exist) I'm sure it'd fill up a large bookshelf at least. The VAST majority of pre-1600 Latin polyphony was indifferent to mediocre, and probably only 1-10% of what we have avaialble was ever performed after that style went out of fashion (and maybe only 1% was performed in concert or at Mass in the last year).

[sorry, those numbers are made up; please take them as representative rather than authoritative]

We have for instance, the parody masses which parody popular tunes, which were once rampantly popular but are now historical footnotes, which no one would get, and are from their very nature inappropriate for Liturgy. Things like this are the reason why the Council of Trent wanted to ban polyphony, but they relented at the last minute and allowed more focused forms, like Palestrina's great Missa Papae Marcelli.

The composition styles and underlying thoughts behind Renaissance polyphony, the Reformation and Counter-reformation era hymns, 19th-century American religious hymns (not all of which were intended to be performed in Church, as StuartK I believe noted - one elder ex-protestant told me that in his time Amazing Grace would never be sung in church!), and 19th-century Russia are all very distinct and it's wrong to put them all together.

The liturgical suitability of a piece of music has to be evaluated on its own merits and in the context and reason why it was composed (and if you don't know this it's really hard to evaluate it!). I'd even prefer on a piece by piece basis - some pieces may be better or worse than their genres.

2. Music that's strange to western ears: the ancient Greeks allegedly had 16 some modes in their music, of which the Chalcedonian eastern Church of the Sabbaite-Constantinopolitan tradition picked 4 true modes and 4 plagal ones. This means that the vast majority of ancient music was deemed unacceptable for Liturgy. Similar principles apply with Gregorian Chant, the Russian chant traditions, and I daresay good polyphony of whatever era. They aren't intended to excite the passions, but in the same way that an icon uses specific artistic techniques to portray the life of the church, the music of the church uses certain sounds, modes, melodies and the like to convey the prayre and life of the Church.

I personally believe that a vast majority of the principles behind non-liturgical music are inapporpriate for our Liturgy.

And with that, my computer is about to go so I'll have to leave it at that.

Now wait a minute. I've never even been *near* your church!



A couple of weeks ago, at a Knights of Columbus Mass (err, Qurbana :), Fr. Nadim mentioned that he was looking for people for his choir.

I told him that I would do him a great favor, and stay far from the choir.

My voice can fill large auditoriums, and would no doubt be quite useful if it were trained, but I really can't tell the difference between the new & revised byzantine tones . . .

*sigh*

hawk

Sent to a Protestant church for a class in college, I was surprised that they were using one of "our" hymns. When I mentioned it to the prof, he laughed and said it had gone the other direction . . .


Hey, they "demilitarize" it, too "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is now "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory" in some RC hymnals, and dispense with all that scary "rolling thunder" stuff, too.


But if the choice is between modern "liturgical music" and some random hymn stolen from a Protestant, I'll take the stolen one every time.

hawk