www.byzcath.org Forums News & Events Church News New mandatory music--Sept. 1???

I agree with Frank C when he wrote about the craziness of the "new improved" music. Why change what isn't broken.....If the powers that be want to make changes, why not put the new music out there to be used in the trenches for awhile. (what works in one parish DOES NOT work in all parishes) Why does it have to be mandated?
We are always being compared to the orthodox....well....EVEN THE ORTHODOX CHURCHES DO NOT HAVE MANDATED MUSIC...THEY ARE PERMITTED TO CHOOSE MELODIES AND EVEN THE LANGUAGE(ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS) DIFFERS.

I would ask why we need an entire makeover of all the music. Yes, perhaps there are areas that may be improved, but why throw out everything in the name of "returning to the true forms..."

I wonder who the "music police" will be...

Patripanny,

Here we go again!

Go ask "Frank C." where he came up with the Sept. 1 mandate. He's probably the only one who heard about it. Probably "others and two priests" will be the answer. Anyway, much of his alarmist and sky-is-falling hearsay evidence contradicts what this forum's moderator witnessed.

I once knew an old cantankerous parishioner who didn't like anything going on in her parish, so she went about telling everyone that "everyone" left it. Her definition of "everyone" was her sister, another cantankerous parishioner, and a family who were never parishioners.

Joe

Or as Yogi Berra said:
No one goes there anymore; it's too crowded!

I am not a big fan of this mandated music either.My dad is a cantor in my church and he showed me the proposed sample for tone 1 and it was awful! One of the lines was something like"and the guards fell down like dead men." it just doesn't sound melodic enough. Each church is different so why can't their music be different. That is one of the many beauties of our church.Unlike the Roman catholic church each liturgy is beautiful and unique.
-Katie g

EVEN THE ORTHODOX CHURCHES DO NOT HAVE MANDATED MUSIC...THEY ARE PERMITTED TO CHOOSE MELODIES AND EVEN THE LANGUAGE (ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS) DIFFERS.


Well, some OCA in one diocese are told they are not to use Kedrov's Our Father, while others elsewhere use it all the time. So, there appears to be no universal standard within the OCA. Each bishop makes some decisions, and lets His parishes make others, except perhaps choice of language. Ideally, it would be local parish clergy who decided, hopefully with lay input, except where a bishop decides that the situation is so important that He needs to step in. It's more complicated that the quote above indicates.

Keep in mind that there are two parts to this situation everyone is getting upset over. 1) the translations are different and 2) the music is different. The music is made to fit the words. the person/people who are setting the words to the music DID NOT DECIDE what words would be used. The liturgucal commission did!!!Blame them. The music is far more faithful to the original slavonic if you compare it. If the phrase "does not sound melodic enough" the issuse is in the translation and the wording. In setting the translations to music, the words always take precedence. If the translations use strange grammer, or unpoetic style, it only become harder to find a setting that works. Over time, the wording and music will resolve and become 'the old music' in 30 years much like the current 'old music' is today. I see it as being more evolutionary than "mandatory"
Mandated music is also not a new concept if one looks at the history surrounding the Bokshai/Malnich 1906 Prostopinije. That irmologion was commisioned for the same purpose of rectifying a lack of continuity among the parishes. Same thing today just 100 years later.

Steve Petach

But is it not true that in the Chicken Little story, the sky eventually did fall? Oh wait, that's the "boy who cried wolf" story. But the point's the same. The wolf eventually came.

Lemko Rusyn,

What do these things matter to one who is lapsed? (cf. profile: Religious Affiliation: "lapsed Rusyn Greek Catholic") Isn't this like worrying about seating arrangements at dinner when one has no intention of attending? Falling skies or wolves, it doesn't matter, the stories were about the integrity of chickens and boys.

Joe

In reply to part of Patripanny's post, it needs to be said that the OCA actually has a set of official translations, and parishes are, indeed, mandated to use them. Does that mean that some parishes dont'? No, of course not. But the original statement is not factually correct.

In the Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Province , there has been an official English translation for the Divine Liturgy (1965, for the Funeral services for laypeople, and for the Office of the Sick. All other texts are either published with local approval by the Eparchial Ordinary (cf. the specific forms of the Divine Liturgy used in the Parma and Passaic eparchies, or the form of the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts published in Parma (without chant notation) and in Passaic (with chant notation) or are private translations--used often with ecclesiastical approbation, granted, but without any formal status in the Metropolitan Church. This would, of course, especially apply to the texts of the Divine Praises, EXCEPT as those texts appear in the Divine Liturgy (i.e., Ektenias, the Ordinary Beginning, etc.).

About music: The music of the OCA is reflective of the practice of the Great Russians, meaning that choral celebration of the Divine Liturgy and the Divine Praises is the norm (outside of monasteries and a very few parishes which have managed to maintain their plainchant heritage from pre-Metropolia days). All choral music (except for that which is arrangement of chant melodies) is called "non-canonical" by the Typikon, because it does not follow the assignment given by the Typikon for liturgical singing.

This is radically different from a church that actually sings what the Typikon assigns, when the Typikon assigns it, and (at one time, at least) in the manner that the Typikon says it ought to be sung. Of all the Slavic Orthodox Churches, that is preserved only by three groups: the Galicians (Ukrainian Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox), the Carpatho-Rusyns (the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Diocese of the USA and the Byzantine Catholic Metropolitan Church) and and the members of Old Ritualist (often miscalled the Old Believer) churches. In these churches, a standard will be set up by the hierarchy. Does that mean that differences do not exist? By no means. It simply means that there is a standard which is taught at the educational institutes of those jurisdictions.
But it certainly does not mean, under any stretch of the imagination, that everyone is permitted to do "their own thing." (Even though that, too, happens.)

(Prof.) J. Michael Thompson
Byzantine Catholic Seminary
Pittsburgh, PA

You're right, Joe, I have no right to post my opinions. I withdraw everything I've ever said here.

Drillock et. al. have set various musical traditions, including Znamenny which is shared by the Galician, Kyivan and Carpatho-Russian traditions, as well as Bulgarian and some Byzantine (Greek) melodies. I would say since the OCA is an accretion of various peoples in the late 19th and early 20th century including Galician, Eastern Ukrainains and Carpatho-Russians as well as Russians, and even Bulgarians (they have their own diocese within the OCA), I would say with the current musical situation in the OCA this is a bit of an oversimplification.

For example, at the Canons of Matins in Theodore Heckman's popular OCA settings from St. Tikhon's Press Tones 1 and 8 are Greek chant, Tones 2 and 5 are Znamenny, 3, 4, 6 and 7 are Kyivan, the Canon to the Theotokos is set in Greek chant, etc.

While it is certainly praiseworthy to preserve chant traditions, we must also be pastorally sensitive to include individual groups within the parish community who may also have a very traditional and beautiful liturgical chant. No Typikon was meant to exclude or alienate groups of Christians from worship. If you have Galicians in a Carpatho-Russian parish, vice versa, Bulgarians in a Greek parish, etc. it is not pastorally prudent to take an absolutist view of liturgical music.

And with regards to this thread (another Yogism), "It's deja vu all over again"

Diak,

I believe you took my sentence out of context. I was not referring at all to the melodies used in the OCA...I was referring to the practice of doing almost all divine services chorally, rather than through the singing participation of the faithful. No matter where the music is taken from (and you are correct that most of the OCA books have at least token, if not more, settings of melodies from Rusyn, Galician, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Graeco-Byzantine-Arab sources), it is music published for the purpose of choral singing.

If you are interested in seeing the way I feel about different congregational chant families getting along and cross-fertilizing, may I please suggest you check out the Prostopinije group on yahoo.com, which (some of us hope) is about to become (at the discretion of the group owner) a "prostopinije-samoilka" group.

(Prof.) J. Michael Thompson
Byzantine Catholic Seminary
Pittsburgh, PA

Yes, Professor, I am rlbsubdeac on that group and made that suggestion - and I will frequent that group even more! I really enjoyed our theorizations about the Search for the Lost Bulgarian Tones...

And I do agree with your point with regard to the polyphonic stylistic tradition in the OCA now that I understand where you are coming from.
Subdeacon Randolph L. Brown

The line "and the guards fell down like dead men" is from tone 6 tropar not tone 1. It takes getting used to, but is singable.

Steve