www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Vesper stikhera for September 21st

I understand what Subdeacon Lance is saying and I agree with him. I work with numerous cantors on an ongoing basis and find that many are overwhelmed by the complexity of the order of the Divine Services (like Vespers & Matins). I always recommend that they abbreviate the number of stichera taken at any given service, especially if they are sung in the appropriate tones. There has always been a difference between monastic and parochial usage in the Byzantine East and as we restore these services to our parishes we must refrain from the temptation to turn every parish into an instant �mini-monastery�. This is not a latinization but rather a simply return to the parochial customs of Byzantium.

This is much abbreviated, but my 5-year plan for a parish wishing to restore Great Vespers on Saturday night goes something like this:

Years 1-2:

-Sing Psalm 103, �Blessed is the Man�, �O Lord I have cried� (in the appropriate tone but do not sing the stichera), �O Joyful Light�, �Count us worthy�, �Simeon�s Canticle� and the troparia of the day.
-Recite or simple chant everything else (all of the stichera).
-Limit the stichera at Psalm 140. Do not take repeats. On an ordinary Sunday take 3 + Theotokion. On a Sunday with a feast/postfeast take 3 Resurrectional, 3 feast + appropriate hymns at Glory and NE. If there is a Litija take only 1 hymn. At the Apostica take all for the Sunday or for the feast (but don�t combine) and limit the total number to 4 (no repeats). At the troparia take the Resurrectional Troparion G:NE, and the troparion of the feast. On a feast take all the stichera for the feast but no more than 5 at Psalm 140, 1 at the Litija and 4 at the Apostica. One Sundays and Feast Days omit the stichera for the saint of the day.
-The above procedure allows the people to memorize the fixed hymns and become familiar with the 8 tones for �O Lord, I have cried�.

Years 3-5:

-Slowly begin taking the stichera in their appropriate tones. Continue to follow the format given above (most OCA parishes I am familiar with do limit the number of stichera and many simply recite them).

I don�t see any need to revise the Typicon. We just need to educate our cantors on how to apply it to a parish. Restoring Vespers & Matins to our parishes is going to be like anything else in life. Start simple. Add things as appropriate (but don�t force things). Have a realistic goal for five years in the future (that being the format you want vespers to take over the next 25 years). Always keep in mind the difference between parochial usage and monastic usage.

One practical example: During Pascha at Great Vespers on Saturday evening at the Apostica there are appropriate hymns taken with the Paschal Hymns (the ones sung at the Kissing of the Cross at Paschal Matins). I have yet to find an Orthodox parish that takes them in full. Every Orthodox parish I have been to for Vespers during Pascha simply sing the Paschal Hymns and omit everything else. It�s a good pastoral move and the people learn the hymns by heart and will have them memorized for next year�s Pascha Matins.

Lance,

Maybe we should consider eliminating the often dueling fixed and movable calendar system? The complexity all begins with having the paschal calendar move about like a transparency over the opaque fixed festive calendar. Maybe the �very� early church had it right when they continued to celebrate Pascha on a fixed calendar day?

Joe

Administrator,

Five-year plan? How soft.

I had five DAYS to prepare for my first festive vespers. Before then, I didn�t have a clue what to do.

If you have a pastor who was going to celebrate a full festive vespers whether you were ready or not is an important criterion in determining if you, as a cantor, implements a 5-year or 5-day plan. You have no choice. If you never heard of Samohlasen tones, you learn them quick.

Joe

Joe,

Not soft. Just realistic. When you are dealing with cantors who work full time you cannot expect them to memorize both the typicon and the tones overnight. Five years is very realistic and I�ve seen it work.

I realize that this will not meet with your approval. To be honest, I really don�t care.

Admin

//I realize that this will not meet with your approval. To be honest, I really don�t care.//

Admin,

I was just giving an example of how a 5-day plan was implemented. There are priests who expect their cantors to learn it in that amount of time. At that time I learned it, I was working full-time and attending business classes. Of course, this isn�t realistic. You know that and I know that. As for your last comment, I really don�t know what my approval had to do with it.

Joe

Perhaps I should not state the obvious, but we all strive for the betterment of ourselves and our communities, and that includes those of us whose ministry (or a part thereof) is through the sung word.

We all began simply and quietly listened, followed the notation (if availiable) and learned. Even in the largest and the most "traditionalist" parishes, cantors and choirs often started from less than the ideal and have worked their way up. Those who expect instant purity of Liturgical practice and song (whatever that means anyway) are, respectuflly, not living in 21st Century North America.

Once again, we all work as hard as we can on our chanting skills as often as we can. Heck, I once had a priest of 20 years tell me that he STILL, after all this time, gets a twitch of nerves when doing the "samohlasni pryspivy" when singing in the Kliros.

To those who perhaps have more talent and are able to achieve a higher level of proficiency in a shorter time, more power to you. Still, even the finest musicians in the world spend a lifetime honing their craft.

It is true that Vespers and Matins can be a jigsaw puzzle of stycheras, readings and tones. After a while, the basic structure becomes will become second nature. Key, of course, is that this happens after a while.

As for changing from tone to tone, once again, it takes some time. Another example for you Ukes out there: ever try to go from Tone 5 samohlasnyj to Tone 6 samohlasnyj? Takes some concentration, doesn't it?

In conclusion - appreciate the efforts people make to get better and encourage it, don't just tell them, "you s**k" and you have no business trying to sing. Nurture their interest - let them grow at a pace that is good for them while at the same time staying as true as possible to the Rite.

Sorry to get on my soap-box about this.

Yours,

halychanyn

Joe,

My parish does not serve Vespers, and only this past year we had proper Great Fast services (more or less). Things are slowly changing, with hopefully Hours before Sunday Liturgies and Saturday evening/Festal Vespers.

Fine. Commendable (if we can pull it off). BUT... our official cantor can just about handle the basics (DL, funeral, baptism, wedding). Just about. Forget about all this "other" stuff - there's no one to lead these services.

I know bits and peices needed for Vespers, etc, and, thankfully have books of the music and how the services are to be put together. But I don't know this stuff by heart, and no one else (that I am aware of) at my parish knows. One or two others know some stuff, a few more can 'sing along' but definitley not lead.

I would love to institute these services in their entirity from the very first day, everything sung in the appropriate tones, etc. Sadly, for this to happen we would have to wait until one or more of us had this stuff figured out. If you are able to do so weekly I'll bow down to your superior ability. This I, nor any of my fellow conspiritors, cannot do. The time will come, God willing, that we'll do everything by the book. Until then we will take (a minimal number of) short cuts. Either this, or we risk missing an opportunity to expand the liturgical life of out parish (we've had a lot of changes, especially in personnel, lately. If we wait things will settle and it may then be difficult to institute changes).

Again, the ideal is always everything 'by the book'. Sadly very few of us live in an ideal world and we have to make do with what we have available.

Andrij

I have no doubt my comments will be unwelcome but I must ask. Memorize [T]he [T]ypicon? Why? I have never heard of anyone doing this!

1) Most people I encounter today don't have the knowledge of Slavonic to use The Typikon, and; 2) There are plenty of other resources. Why does it have to me memorized?

Baffled,

Tony

Tony,

Thanks for the post. I should have been more articulate. In my comments on the Typicon I did not mean that cantors should actually memorize it. They should, rather, memorize the order in which the stichera should be sung. The general order of the services (for the stichera, Jesus first, the Theotokos second, then other saints according to rank) is pretty straightforward but the task of assembling the changeable texts in the proper order can be daunting. In working with new cantors I find that it takes a few years before the complexities of the order of festal and post-festal Vespers and Matins begins to take hold and become second nature to the cantor.

BTW, the Typicon I was referring to is the Petras Typicon (since it is the official Typicon of the Byzantine-Ruthenian Church). I probably should start using an appropriate qualifying term as to which Typicon I am referring to.

Admin

Really? When did the Eparchy of Mukachevo adopt the Petras typikon?

(How many typikons did Fr. Petras one combine to get the resulting product? What was wrong with translating Fr. Aleksander Mykyta's typikon, which was and is still the Typikon of the Ruthenian Church?)

Administrator,

Maybe I have only had extraordinary experiences coupled with extraordinary opinions. It seems that the cantor is not alone in this. He/She follows what the local pastor dictates. He is formed in the application, pastorally and otherwise, of The Typicon.

Tony

Andrij,

//I would love to institute these services in their entirity from the very first day, everything sung in the appropriate tones, etc. Sadly, for this to happen we would have to wait until one or more of us had this stuff figured out. If you are able to do so weekly I'll bow down to your superior ability.//

I apologize if my comments seem to indicate that I have �superior ability� in cantoring. I don�t. I never had the luxury of cantor school or a teacher. And I never sang in church until only a few years ago. I was simply expected to show up and chant the service. It was a time-consuming task to prepare for a service that I did not know. I had to write out every sticheron in musical notation because I never heard of the Samohlasen and Podoben tones. Going from the �No Vesper Zone� to a festive vesper service celebrated in its entirety was more like a helicopter ascent rather than a slow grade upward in a jet.

It was more difficult when you are expected to be ready when you don�t have the proper liturgical books available. I saved up every year to purchase my own personal copies of liturgical texts from Uniontown. My biggest complaint was information on attaining these texts was such a big secret. Why were parish offices good at providing all the necessary equipment for its secretaries, but then allow its cantors to fend for themselves with cheat sheets, copies of other cantors� notes, copies of books, and liturgical texts?

To �figure it out� I had to sit down with my copy of the vesper book, read the instructions, look up the propers in the Menaion, attempt to figure out how they all come together, compare how Levkulic did it in his vesper publications that were used for Holy Week, etc. I made many mistakes. The Internet helped because several webpages had interesting articles on vespers. I got a lot of information from Nicholas Uspensky�s �Evening Worship.� This book helped clarify the different parts or liturgical units of the vesper service. Johann von Gardner�s �Orthodox Worship and Hymnography,� especially Chapter II (�The Liturgical System of the Orthodox Church�) proved to be a wonderful piece on the classifications of hymns used in our church. Both texts put perspective on what I was singing. A third book that was of some use was Joan Roccasalvo�s �The Plainchant Tradition of Southwestern Rus�.� Her cheat sheet in the back of the book (144-145) helped me write musical notation for each and every hymn sung to the Samohlasen tones. The same goes for the �Prostopinije.� These were the texts that I used to educate myself in how we cantor in our church. I had nothing else to go on. I never knew what a Typicon was until one showed up on the cantor stand. I still don�t know what to do with the Commons and what those �formats� are all about. In order to �figure out� what a lot of those liturgical terms were, I visited the local seminary library and copied the glossary in the back of a book written by Fr. David Petras on the Typicon. I didn�t know that it existed, but it proved to be interesting and helpful. Again, the Internet helped.

I tell you this because it was not easy. It took time to get comfortable with and actually sing the tones without cheat sheets. My 5-day boot camp was a wild experience. I will never forget it. But not all pastors will expect such to happen. Some won�t have a clue how to even celebrate vespers, so cantors then will not have to worry. It just ain�t gonna happen. Some cantors are lucky to have elder cantors or seasoned ones instruct them in the ministry. Not all are privileged. Some cantors feel threatened when someone wants to learn. Once, when my former parish went from three liturgies on Sunday to two, I lost my regular cantor job and was then physically elbowed out by the elders. I can still remember them huddled around the stand very protective of their turf. I didn't cantor for the next three years.

Joe

I like that idea!

English translations of Mohila and Mikita would do us a world of good.

Dave

Good point. Change my above post to add the words �in America� after �Byzantine-Ruthenian Church� since the promulgation of the Petras Typicon is only offical in the United States.

Good point. While the cantor should know the plan of the Divine Services the pastor is the one who dictates how the service is celebrated.