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It would be interesting, I believe, if Members from various Eastern traditions with knowledge of the pastoral practice of their respective Churches could share with us their experience, if any, with respect to music for the Liturgy as they celebrate it in languages other than that used by their respective 'Mother Churches': To what extent have musical settings been developed that depart from the musical tradition of the Mother Church? Have any BC or Melkite communities in the Southwest attempted to adapt Latino or Iberian melodies for liturgical use? Have UGC communities in South America adapted Argentinian or Brazilian melodies for use in their Liturgies? Have Orthodox communities in Latin America done anything along these lines when celebrating in Spanish or Portuguese? Does the music for Orthodox Liturgies in Japan reflect Japanese musical influences? Do Orthodox parishes in Alaska make use of Aleut music for the Liturgy? And, of course, are there any good American, English, Canadian or Australian sources of musical settings for the Divine Liturgy in English that reflect the musical traditions of these countries? Is there any consensus (pastoral, cultural or musical) on the success of any of these attempts?

Tim,

Interesting question.

Perhaps our brother, Filipe, could answer that with regard to the Melkite communities in Brazil. I don't recollect that we have any other active posters from South America at present, although we did have a couple of long-time Ukrainian posters from there.

As regards Mexico, hopefully Juan/Mexican or Bernardo can offer their experiences. Aramis or Big John of Anchorage could likely give us insights into the Alaskan situation.

Many years,

Neil

Tim, I can offer one bit of info -- when I was in Tokyo about 2 years ago on business, I attended the Cathedral Church of St Nicholas (known as Nikolai-do). I believe the jurisdiction is associated with the OCA but follows a Russian Recension. Anyway, the bishop served and they followed the ENTIRE hierarchical service, including greeting the bishop at the entrance and the vesting in the middle of the church.

But what was most interesting was hearing the familiar musical phrases of Tchaikovsky and Bortnaski choral arrangements identical to those we know of in Russian, BUT with the Japanese language! It sounded both familiar and etherial at the same time.

Because there were a few Russian priests at the altar, the liturgy was celebrated in about half Church Slavonic and half in Japanese, but following all the Russian music without any influence of Japanese music that I could detect.

Just one item to answer your question.

Jack Figel
(writing from the offices of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, where I just came from the Divine Liturgy for the feastday of the Protection of the Mother of God in the church where the vision took place, Blacherna Church on the Golden Horn. I'll be meeting with His All Holiness this weekend to make further detailed plans for the Orientale Lumen EuroEast III Conference scheduled for next July 5-8, 2010 on the theme of "The Councils of the Church")

The Cherubikon can be sung in English to the melody of that old Baptist hymn, "The Old Rugged Cross".

Likewise, "Tantum Ergo" can be sung to the melody of "O My Darling Clementine" and "Amazing Grace" can be sung to the tune of the theme song from the 1960's American sitcom, "Gilligan's Island".
Just because these adaptations are possible doesn't mean they ought to be actually used. LOL

My thanks to those who have replied thus far. By way of further clarification, I am interested in efforts at what might be called "musical acculturation" by various Eastern Churches.

I have had the same experience as Jack in Tokyo, but that seems to be illustrative of sharing/preserving the musical/cultural tradition of the Mother Church while making the Liturgy more accessible by using the local language, as UGC, BC, and other EC and OC parishes in the US have done over the past half-century or so.

I am looking for examples (if they exist) of using the musical tradition of the local culture. I think I recall that Taverner (sp?) has created musical settings for the Orthodox Liturgy in England that seemed to draw on English musical tradition. I was wondering if this had been attempted anywhere else, and with what result. I was also wondering if such efforts had been limited to choral compositions or if congregational settings had been developed anywhere and if any composer had attempted to write settings for other liturgical services and for the Oktoechos.

Finally, I hope that anyone who might be aware of these developments would know whether CDs or tapes might be available.

There is an OCA priest--Sergei Glagolev >>I believe<< that has written musical settings of the DL and Vesper hymns that could be called, non-Russian, or more authentically American. The New Skete communities have also written their own music for services that could be called American as well.

In my church's choir (an OCA church) I have seen settings marked "Eskimo chant" (presumably Aleut) in the book, but I haven't heard them sung yet. Generally we sing the standard Russian parish settings in English. When I attended the ROCOR parish near me, the melodies were largely identical though the service was Slavonic. A lot of the stuff we use can be found at the website orthodoxtwopartharmony.org run by St. Tikhon's monastery- a great resource.

Something neat I came across- if you to Orthodox.cn you can hear the Paschal troparion sung in Mandarin (it plays automatically).

You are expecting the process to be much more rapid than it ever has been in history. Inculturation takes time, and no better example than the manner in which the various Slavic Churches received the corpus of Byzantine liturgical music. At first, an attempt was made to use the traditional Byzantine chants with Slavonic lyrics, but the linguistic differences were too great. Through a process of radical simplification, the Greek tones were adopted to the Slavonic language.

Then, the tones were further modified to make them more congenial to the Slavic ear. Individual cantors and composers brought their own preferences to the music, which thus evolved organically over generations, with distinct regional differences emerging based on the local musical culture. But understand that the process too centuries. Nobody sat down to write distinctively "Russian" or "Bulgarian" or Rusyn liturgical music.

If such is the case with Russian, Ukrainian, Carpatho-Rusyn, Serbian, Bulgarian and Romanian chant, why should we expect an accelerated process in places where Orthodoxy has been present for barely a century?

In fact, the process of devising a uniquely American chant style is already underway, albeit in its early stages. Once the Liturgy was translated into English, it became clear that compromises would have to be made to accommodate the music to the linguistic peculiarities of English. And if you listen to Russian, Greek, Melkite, Ruthenian or any other traditional chant translated into English, you can hear the differences plainly. John Vernoski and many other cantors deliberately simplified the music to make it singable for American voices, and bearable to American ears.

Unless a particular jurisdiction interferes in the process by mandating one and only one musical setting, then the evolution of the music into an American style will continue in its slow and inevitable path.

That said, I rather think I do not want to see any deliberate attempts to "compose" new liturgical music in an American idiom. Not only is 90% of everything new worse than mediocre (Sturgeon's Law applied to music), but even the best of it, being a manufactured "product", is unlikely to capture the hearts and minds of the people, since they have no stake in it. It would take decades or more for any new piece to become a familiar and beloved part of the repertoire.

Across the pond, you have composers like John Taverner and Avo Paart writing modern liturgical music in the vernacular. For the most part, it has not caught on, or displaced the traditional repertoire of tones and hymns.

I have no notice of such adaptation, in any Eastern or Oriental Church of Brazil, being Catholic or Orthodox.

The maximum is the adaptation of the Byzantine chant to Portuguese and, as Stuart said, any adaptation bring some accomodations. We have in our Eparchy a Brazilian priest who tries to do a better adaptation, not merely a transposition, fitting the chant to the natural Brazilian way of saying the syllabes (as he alleges, the Middle-eastern clergy chant in Portuguese in an "Arabized" way).

In the Melkite Church, we usually try to adapt the language, while retaining the original Byzantine melodies as far as possible, and of course the tones and tuning.

In the US, it seems, though--and I'm not sure whether this is under influence of the Greek Orthodox Church (much Western music in the US) and the Antiochian Orthdox Church (many converts from many different traditions)--the Byzantine tuning (i.e., micro-tonal intervals) does not seem to have been passed on. That is, in the US, it seems that the English-speaking congregations (or is it only if the priest does not speak Arabic or Greek?) use the closest Western note to the original Byzantine tone, and thus achieve an approximation in Western equal-tempered tuning. Perhaps part of the issue as well, is that there is no agreed method to indicate micro-tones in Western music; several attempts at symbology have gained ground, but no single one has clear support, nor has been created as a "standard".

Neil might like to comment here.

PS I should note that there are moves to try and record much of our chanted material in English with correct Byzantine tuning, so that those who learn by ear and not by music theory can pick up the correct, traditional method of chant.

From a (formerly) Canadian perspective, I think you would find it hard to identify a single 'Canadian' musical tradition that could possibly exert any sort of influence on the Liturgy. In the Eastern provinces, you would find a strong (particularly) Celtic strain; in Quebec, a French-Canadian strain originally derived from Normandy and Brittany; in Ontario, more Celtic with a great many other world influences; in the West, a lot of Ukrainian, German, and the British/French mix.

But as all this relates to the UGCs, I think, too, that you would find the idea of marrying the particular Ukrainian way of being Christian to the surrounding culture to be pastorally anathema, insofar as for Ukrainians, to be UGC is very much to pray with one's ancestors in a shared tongue.

I know that sounds as if Ukrainians might put their ethnicity before their faith; but I think that in their case (as, indeed, in the case of many other ethnic Christian groups), being Ukrainian has been one of the things that has nurtured them in the Faith.

I hope that makes sense.

Tim,

Religious Christmas carols have become commonplace in many churches. O Come All Ye Faithful serves as an appropriate supplemental Communion hymn. Silent Night is a good pre-opening hymn for the congregations which sing a series of Rusyn and American carols.

The Incarnation provides ample opportunity for quality non-ethnic hymns; however there don't appear to be many other occasions for quality music, in my opinion....well, maybe God Bless America on the Fourth of July.

The thought of a Liturgy composed by Gordon Lightfoot fills one with dread.

Leonard Cohen on the other hand...

Les cowboys fringants (Montreal) have already come out with a CD called "Grande-Messe" altho I don't think it really has anything to do with liturgics.

FYI - this band is as snarky, pessimistic and gloomy as Beau Dommage, in it's day, was positive, cheerful and lighthearted.