Certain Features of Worship in the Orthodox Church (Vol IV, Part 1)

From Michael Ruse:

DeAnne has background in education and she will present Part 1 to start Volume IV, The Worship and Liturgical Life of the Orthodox Church. There are five main sections to Part 1: 

1.    Worship and Theology 

2.    Liturgical Languages 

3.    Liturgical Ceremonies 

4.    The Church Calendar

5.    Liturgical Cycles and Liturgical Books

 There are three types of calendars used for calculating when to observe feast days, weekly fasting, and other liturgical cycles that are used in Orthodox Churches: Gregorian, Julian, and the revised Julian calendar. What do Orthodox Christians do throughout the year? Liturgical cycles run daily, weekly, annually fixed, and annually movable. Other important books that are used in these cycles include the Menaion, Octoechos, and Horologion; these cycles allow us to read through all the Gospels and Psalms weekly and yearly as well as learn about the lives of the saints.   

Each of these smaller sections present us with a similar idea. How do we keep certain features of the old and the new in the Orthodox Church? Metropolitan Hilarion presents us with the idea of a “living Tradition of the Church” that flows from the past into the present. But how is it decided? Should a calendar be updated or kept the same? Should Russian or the inheritance of Old Church Slavonic as a sacred language be kept? The Orthodox Church is experienced in these situations since we've dealt with Arianism and controversies about Pascha before. If some new development causes a schism or a rupture between worship and theology, then it is very likely either a bad idea or not a genuine feature of the Church. 

Another important consideration when we start Volume IV is the nature of worship and theology. It’s interesting that this interaction is called lex orandi and lex credendi (Latin for the law of praying and the law of believing) because it’s an inescapable part of life that our beliefs will follow our worship. Actions reveal our beliefs. He explains that what we believe – like the Creed – flows out of how we pray, and nothing in the divine services hinders us from prayer.

Church Singing in Other Local Orthodox Churches (Vol III, Ch 13)

From Michael Ruse:

Reader Matt Groh will present some exotic material on local church singing from the Balkans and the Caucasus regions, neighboring places of Russia. He is also an educator by profession and he teaches science. Since he is the head chanter at St. John’s, you will not want to miss his presentation on local Orthodox church singing. Join us this Saturday at 4:00 pm. 

The country of Georgia is located in the Caucasus Mountains on the border of Asia and Europe, and both Bulgaria and Serbia are situated in the Balkans. The last two countries have grown out of Slavonic and Hellenic church singing traditions and they are still influential today. They have a unique melodic development while they also share a Byzantine tradition based on the eight-tones like Russian chants. 

The amount of voices used is an accurate and convenient way to categorize church singing in different countries. We can place the ancient traditions of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Antioch under the one-voiced type sung with an ison-drone (bass drone). That type of singing is also used in modern Hellenic, Bulgarian, and Russian lands. Four-voiced homophono-harmonic or part-singing is widespread in Russia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Finland, Japan, America, the Czech and Slovak lands, and Poland. Finally, there is the Georgian three-voiced that is a "unison" type of singing because of its characteristic cadence that grows into one voice. This chapter reveals the Orthodox mind because church singing is varied and unified at the same time. 

Russian Church Singing (Vol III, Ch 12)

From Michael Ruse:

Join us this Saturday at 4:00pm to support our St. Thomas Catechetical School and fellow parishioner at St. John’s, and learn what spiritual resources Russian chants might give to us. This chapter is also worth our attention since Metropolitan Hilarion is himself an accomplished composer and fluent in musical traditions of Russia and the West. 

Znamenny chant is the most "ancient form of liturgical singing" in Russia. The word znamya means sign, which indicates that it’s written with Russian signs on a sheet of paper. Lined-strokes called hooks (kriuki) are written over these signs to indicate how long a certain sound lasts in different sorts of melodies. Znamenny chant has been partly lost. But it can be heard in modern variations in monasteries.

There was a major departure liturgically and in style with znamenny chant during the Post-Petrine period of history with a kind of singing called partesny that seems to follow the other cultural and religious revolutions of that time. Then came a slew of composers who were influenced by Italian schools, which later were criticized by a particular man named, Saint Ignatius Brianchanikov, who fought to preserve znamenny chant for Orthodox worship. Metropolitan Hilarion doesn’t forget to include the high and low points of history, and he never fails to investigate the origins of things. The final section deals with contemporary singing in Russian churches. 

Metropolitan Hilarion has also layered the topic of church singing very well. We have covered the influence of Ancient Israel’s musical traditions, especially the psalms, and Greek antiquity’s melodies, as well as Byzantium’s development of the eight-tone system. Now we arrive back into Russian land. This chapter will be compact, but it’s worth the trekking to discover how everyday words are transformed in divine services to inspire the heart to worship God. Through chanting and church singing we reach our spiritual goal of glorifying God. 

Early Christian and Byzantine Church Singing (Vol III, Ch 11)

From Michael Ruse:

There is a wealth of material in this chapter that covers two major sections: Early Christian Music and Byzantine Church Music. We learn that early Christian musical composition wasn’t fixed from the beginning although there were expectations about what to be used for singing. It developed from the Old Testament hymns, the psalms and also ancient Greek melodies. The eight tones or Octoechos helped form and fix later church singing in the Byzantine period. 

After reading this chapter, we will become easily familiar with the most salient and essential terms and ideas of church music like cantillation, the Octoechos, plagal, cento, neume notation, phonai, domestik, and ecphonetic notation. 

Metropolitan Hilarion also touches on some of the writings of the Church Fathers and what they said about the importance of one’s inward disposition, content and rules for church singing. They viewed the human voice as the primary instrument of praise to God rather than instruments. Because of the association of certain sounds and instruments with pagan culture at that time, they tended to speak against musical instruments for accompanying church singing. 

Join us this Saturday at 4:00pm to learn how church singing unifies our voices toward God in the divine services.