www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy Matins ODE numbering

In the matins book at church ...

They list (in the daily office portion)

Resurrectional ODE 1
Resurrectional ODE 3
"" "" 4

etc

What happened to ODE 2?

Ode 2 is not said except in lent (especially at the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete) due to its penitential character.

More about canons in the Byzantine Rite:

Canons [metropolitancantorinstitute.org]

The Odes of the Canon correspond to the nine biblical odes. The second is routinely omitted due to its comminatory character.

The Odes of the Canon correspond to the nine biblical odes. The second is routinely omitted due to its comminatory character.

also Not much is published in the way of the Tones and Matins (musical scores)

Everyone just assumes that one should automatically know the irmos, Tones, etc. for Matins.

Truth is - I have never seen Matins done on a regular basis to ther differing Tones - so that I am really piecing it all together on the fly as I learn more and more.

A beautiful lady at our church always did the Matins in Tone 6 (with the correct tones for Troparia and Kontakia - and feast daya ) but the rest always in Tone 6

It was how she learned it -

Now Matins has been cancelled at our church until further notice

I am sorry to hear that Matins was cancelled in your parish!

At least for the Byzantine (Ruthenian) Catholic Church, we have had (since 2006) a single book [metropolitancantorinstitute.org] with music for Sunday Matins throughout the year, as well as the proper parts for all the Sundays of Lent and the Paschal Season, and most of the greater feasts.

Each of the irmosy at the Canon of Matins has its own melody in the Slav tradition. It is normal to sing them according the the melody of the first ode in Tone 6 when you don't know the special melody.

This is the pattern used in the green Divine Liturgies book: for each feast, there is a "simple" version of the festal irmos (in Tone 6) and a "solemn" version which is the one in our Irmologion.

By the way, the Cantor Institute website [metropolitancantorinstitute.org] has a complete recording of Sunday Matins in Tone 4 (in English) and all the Sunday and feast-day irmos melodies (in Slavonic).

Jeff

That PDF book is very helpful ...

I have another Matins book that is very complicated and confusing but the online book is clear and do-able

Thank you!

John

ByzKat, not to be picky, but the Metropolitan Cantor Institute book does not contain the whole of the Sunday matins service. It contains parts of the common bits of the service, bits of the psalter, and parts of the Oechtechos. For any Sunday matins service, you actually need at least one other book, that being the menaion, which contains the services for every day of the year. You might need the Festal or lenten Triodion instead for particular seasons.

The reason you need the menaion or triodion is that the saint of the day does not drop out or is not replaced by the Sunday, but rather the Sunday portions are added to the saints particulars. On any Sunday there will be at minimum a canon for the day taken from the saint of the day (menaion) or the season (Triodion). There may also be a magnification/ velichanie to the saint with polyeolos - on a Sunday, the magnification would be sung once by the clergy and the church incensed during the sunday evlogitaria, whereas on a weekday it would be sung 3 or more times depending on parish use. There will also be a troparia with accompanying theotokion at the start of matins for the saint or season, possibly sedalia on the stases of the kathisma, on the polyeolos and on the third ode of the canon, kontakia for the saint, stichera on the praises, etc.

Now, whether matins would be celebrated fully in this way in any Byzantine Catholic parish is another matter. However, it certainly is done in this way in Orthodox Churches of the Slavic tradition - I have in mind to write a book giving the rubrics in a more comprehensive way than are given in any English text that I know of when I get around to it. Till then, the Metropolitan Cantor Institute book is one of the better things going in terms of presenting the common parts of the services, but the full service it is not - it's basically impossible to have the full service for anything Byzantine in just one volume, as our services all use multiple volumes and vary with every single day of the year.

You might try Fekula's spiral-bound book The Order of Divine Services; I have used mine so much that both front and back covers are worn off. There is quite a bit of detail on Matins canons. Another peculiarity is that the Canon of Supplication to the Mother of God is often taken first at feasts of saints of Polyeleos rank before the Menaion canon of the saint. This is true in both Greek and Slavic usages.

I would be very very interested in your detailed book.

Perhaps I am wrong or unaware but the Orthdodox produce wonderful works on THEOLOGY etc. but their musical resources are not up to par (especially in the area of training novice cantors)

At least from my limited perspective

Perhaps the system of years and years of study under the lead cantor or years of study as a reader is the Slavic

Go to http://www.sjkp.org/search.php and put in "Order of Divine Services". It's $35 but a wealth of information on the order of services in regular time, Sunday services, post- and pre-festal times, Polyeleos, Doxology and Vigil-rank services with various combinations, Triodion and Pentecostarion, etc. Note that this is more of an ordo and does not include the texts for the services themselves, but instructions on the order of services.

Thanks Diak I'll have a look at that. Haydukovich, I think your observation is mostly unfair - it may hold true in terms of things published in English. This is for two reasons: firstly, the vast majority of Orthodox don't use English as a liturgical language; secondly, Orthodox don't write "how to" manuals in the same way as eastern Catholics because in natively Orthodox countries they are doing the services, they don't need to revive a tradition. There is far, far, more published in Russian on Slavic chant than there is published in English. You need to keep in mind that most of the Orthodox world does not have English as a first language, so most resources are not in English. You also remember that for most Orthodox there is a fair degree of oral transmission - I was taught all the the stichera tones and most of my rubrical knowledge orally. Orthodox learn to do their services how most Latin Catholics learn to follow the mass or to altar serve, that is by doing it, not reading about it. This is different from the eastern catholic churches, where in many cases they are learning how to do things from scratch having stopped doing things like matins in the era of latinisation, so they are naturally producing more books for people to learn from. As with everything liturgical, however, learning by doing is better than learning by reading.

Otsheylnik,

Thank you - that makes sense - as most Orthodox theologians (some really good ones - spoke Russian or Serbian etc) so I can see what you are talking about.

I am Eastern Catholic (for now) - studying and moving toward Orthodoxy - and I need training and I don't read Cyrillic and have few resources.

If you ever write that book - let me know

I would also like to know more sbout what you know so I invite you to PM me with anything you think I should learn.

Thank you,

John

I've been to ROCOR parishes/missions where both the Kathismata and the Canons were abbreviated (one instead of three). None other than St. John of San Francisco recommended the very sensible division of the Second and Third Kathismata to correspond to the Sunday Octoechos cycle (which I use as well).

It is also not uncommon that only the irmos is taken in some places (I've seen that done in several parishes of both Greek and Slavic usage).