There is no service in the Orthodox Church that does not make extensive use of chant and hymns. Why is the worship of the Church expressed in melody? The Orthodox liturgy begins with the proclamation “Blessed is the kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…” With these words we are invited to “come and see,” to “enter into a foretaste and experience of the divine reality, the Kingdom of God on earth, which is revealed in the liturgy of the Church.” In this reality there is already an expression of the transformation of our present world and of us who walk in it. We are not merely inhabitants living in a specific point on the planet, but we stand “in the temple of your glory, thinking that we are in heaven.”1 It is not only our life that changes, but all aspects of the world participate in this transformation. A simple table becomes the throne of the Lord, the bread and wine are transformed into the very life of Christ, and the syllables that make up our language of communication become words filled with the Holy Spirit. The words that come from our lips are the words of the Holy Spirit, words that speak of and through God. The Kingdom of God as we experience it in the liturgy is thus an expression of divine beauty: singing, psalms, iconography, service, and reverence are all parts of what believers experience as the manifestation and manifestation of the Kingdom on earth.
A good example of this manifestation of beauty as an expression and experience of the Kingdom of God can be found in the report of Prince Vladimir’s missionaries on their return to Kiev after witnessing the Byzantine liturgy in the Cathedral of Divine Wisdom in Constantinople. Describing their experience of the liturgy, they wrote: “The Byzantines led us into the building where they pray to their God and we did not really know whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor and beauty, and we no longer know how to describe it. We only know that there God dwells among men.”2 The most important thing in this report is not only that the Russian missionaries witnessed a Byzantine worship service, but that they experienced the presence of God in this beauty.
All worship in the Orthodox Church is regulated by the typicon (ordo), which not only sets the structure of each service celebrated during the day, but also specifies the prayers and hymns to be sung and regulates the actions that accompany prayer: for example, incense, processions and entrances, light and darkness, standing, sitting, kneeling and prostration. Chanting is also regulated, not only by the text it serves but by the liturgical task that accompanies it. Thus, the choice of music to be used in worship must be based on liturgical considerations and promote appropriate attitudes in prayer.
An analysis of the structure of our liturgical services distinguishes the following forms of prayer that call for the use of melody: dialogue, psalm singing and chant.
Dialogue is a fundamental form of Christian prayer and has occupied a central place in the worship of the Church from the beginning. Dialogue is fundamental to Christian prayer; indeed, the whole relationship of God with his people can be described as a great dialogue, from creation to the preaching of John the Baptist, through the life, death and resurrection of Christ, to the present day and hour. God initiated this dialogue, and liturgical prayer is one way in which we respond to him, that is, prayer in the form of thanksgiving, praise and supplication. One example of dialogue in the liturgy is the petition. The anaphora is another example of the dialogical form. A number of writers note the speaking of the speaker to the assembly. At this point, Father John Meyendorff says that this usage is to emphasize that prayer is the prayer of the whole community. In fact, the word liturgy in Greek means a common, collective action in which each person has a role.
As for chanting the Psalms, it is a service known in the Church since the beginning and has several forms, including the prokeimenon and the reading of the kathisma.
Emergence of new concepts
In the tenth century, a new concept of church chant and composition began to emerge in Byzantium, in what Dimitri Konomos describes as “a growing freedom from the use of traditional standard materials, free innovation, artistic virtuosity, and the replacement of old materials with new ones.”3 In Byzantium, this concept resulted in a new style of church chant in the fourteenth century called kalophonic, meaning “good and beautiful sound.” In this new style of chant, the emphasis was no longer on the meaning of the words but rather on the sound of the music. The church service thus became a place of musical performance and enjoyment in the hands of professional chanters and well-trained choirs.
The same results occurred in Russia in the middle of the seventh and eighth centuries. The choir replaced the whole people to such an extent that the people no longer sang anything, not only in the cathedrals and churches of the big cities, but even in the smaller towns and villages.
Call for the restoration of liturgical chant
The question of church singing with the participation of the whole people was one of the issues discussed by the bishops of the Russian Church in 1905 when they were asked to submit reports in preparation for an expanded council. In his report, Bishop Constantine of Samara wrote: “We must restore singing to the state in which it was and should be. It is necessary to renew in the minds of our people the concept that congregational singing is the norm and that choral singing is only in its place.”4
Bishop Eulogius of Kholm, who was Metropolitan of Western Europe from 1922 to 1946, wrote in support of congregational singing and suggested that it “be gradually reintroduced, beginning with the petitions and short hymns and then including all the liturgical and vigil hymns.”5 The revival of congregational singing was not simply a desire for reform aimed at responding to a canonical norm and historical precedent, but was seen as a measure that helped to give the liturgy the life, joy and strength that are at the heart of its purpose, content, form and message. This was emphasized in the report of the Provincial Dean of Shenkursk (Archangel’s Diocese): “In general, one can no longer overlook the need to care for the grandeur and splendor of church services in order to bring them to the necessary and appropriate levels of sanctification, so that every faithful Christian may find joy and consolation in the Church and not feel boredom and fatigue. Choral singing, and even better, congregational singing and comprehensible singing play an important role in developing this.”6
The question of congregational participation and the presence of appropriate music are issues that are being raised today in our Churches by both clergy and laity. With isolated exceptions, however, these issues have received little attention and even less guidance. As we have already mentioned, some ninety years ago, the bishops in Russia raised and discussed the question of reviving congregational singing in the Church and even made proposals for a special program for it. They saw this as a necessity for giving life and vitality to the liturgical worship of that time. It is not surprising that today the Russian Church is reconsidering this issue.
… Many churches today are struggling … to maintain a good spiritual and liturgical life. And the leaders of these parishes are gradually realizing that to achieve this life the music used must be singable, appropriate to the liturgy and artistically pleasing. One of the great fears of choirmasters, composers and serious singers is that the use of music of a lower standard than that currently used in Orthodox worship will be the final solution in our haste to solve these problems, especially those related to the participation of the faithful in liturgical singing. The appropriate approach cannot be reduced to the issue of participation and musical style alone, but rather it must be rooted in a true understanding of the purpose and content of the liturgy and what it expresses: the manifestation of the beauty and joy of the Kingdom of God. This, in fact, poses a challenge not only to composers but also to translators, poets, worshippers, pastors and all singers.
Professor David Drilock
Dean and Professor of Liturgical Music at St. Vladimir's Seminary, New York.
Translated into Arabic by Father Antoine Melki
Quoted from Orthodox Heritage Magazine
References
Troparion at Lenten daily mats.
S. H. Cross and O. P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor, The Russian Primary Chronicle, Laurentian Text (Cambridge, MA, 1953), 110-111.
See Paul Meyendorff, “The Liturgical Path of Orthodoxy in America” in St. Vladimir's Theological Quarterly (Crestwood, NY, 1996, Vol. 40, numbers 1 & 2).
Letter CCVIII, PG 32. Cf., James McKinnon, Music in Early Christian Literature (Cambridge University Press, 1987), 68.
For liturgical use in Orthodox worship, the Psalter (150 Psalms) is divided into twenty sections or kathismata with three sets of Psalms in each section. Especially in monasteries all 150 Psalms are chanted over the course of a week, beginning at Vespers on Saturday evening and concluding at Matins on the following Saturday.
St. Germanus of Constantinople, On the Divine Liturgy — Greek text with translation, introduction, and commentary by Paul Meyendorff (SVS Press, Crestwood, NY, 1984), 73.
Dimitri E. Conomos, “Changes in Early Christianity and Byzantine Liturgical Chant” in Studies in Music, 5 (1980) 52.
Johann A. Von Gardner, Liturgical Singing of the Russian Orthodox Church [in Russian] (Jordanville, NY, 1977, 1981) vol 2, 102, footnote 211.
John Shimchick, “Music and Worship” in Orthodox Church Music (Syosset, NY, No. 2, 1985), 7.
John Shimchick, The Responses of the Russian Episcopate Concerning Worship — 1905 and the Liturgical Situation in America. (Unpublished Master's Thesis prepared for St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, 1980), 89.
Ibid., 90.
