Posted by from Dormition Monastery
on 4/22/2009, 11:54 pm
BYZANTINE MUSIC FOR AN ORTHODOX AMERICA
[Editor's Note: This article appeared in The Burning Bush, a publication of the Holy Dormition Romanian Orthodox Monastery in Rives Junction, Michigan in 1994. The author is not credited; there is only the inscription, "adapted
from a lecture given at a seminar on Orthodox Church Music" at the end of the article.]
Preliminary Considerations
Anyone who studies Church music, knows that it is a dry matter and that it is not easy to make it
understandable. We write this not because it is an interesting subject to speak about, but because it is necessary.
We are often questioned by people unfamiliar with Church music: "Why do you sing this music in church?" or "This kind of melody sounds strange to me"; or if you go to St. Vladimir's Seminary, one seminarian or another will tell you how odd Byzantine music is, or some of the Greek priests will point out that the Russians sing secular
music in church, and so on.
It is obvious that Jesus did not sing with His Apostles after the Holy Supper in a recitative Bahmetev style; nor did they exercise their voices in interminable trills with Turkish inflections. On the other hand, we will not put an end to these kinds of discussions; they will continue for many years. However, we as American Orthodox want to know which is the true Orthodox music and, if it is possible, to adapt it to the American language and spirit. There are certain conditions necessary for studying this subject:
1) To be at home with this subject, one must have musical, linguistic and theological preparation.
2) No one can fully understand liturgical music without profound appreciation of the Liturgy itself -- its structures, its ideas. The ceremonial acts of common worship have always evoked the use of expressive arts: painting, poetry, music. These three arts are tightly connected in the Orthodox Church. If you sing Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninov in a purely decorated Byzantine church, it might be beautiful, but not adequate. On the other hand, in St. Sophia Church in Los Angeles you can sing anything, even Romeo and Juliet. You may be impressed by the naturalistic paintings, electrical devices, but you forget to make the sign of the cross.
3) There is general agreement among musicologists, that words and music in the Orthodox Church are inseparably linked together because the composer and the poet were one and the same person -- a union frequently found in the Byzantine Church up until the tenth century. Composing both lyrics and melodies, these God-inspired artists were referred to as hymnographers. This fact is important in the Orthodox Church, even today, because the
pattern formulae of the eight tones cannot be replaced with personal compositions. For instance, I cannot say I have a more beautiful melody for the Christmas Kontakion than the traditional one; this simply cannot be expressed in the Orthodox Church.
Changes in Church Music
Scholars consider what happened in Russia in the eighteenth century a lamentable fall. The Byzantine Znameny chant was banned from the Church and Western polyphony invaded Russian liturgical singing. It is as though one would cover the frescoes of a beautiful cathedral with cheap lithographic prints, Renaissance style.
All these misunderstandings occur because we are very much European in our image of beauty. Beautiful in the Bible does not have any connection with the aesthetically beautiful. Instead of our sharp distinction between
beautiful and ugly, Christianity poses another antithesis: sacred or profane? Orthodox music, being part of the Divine Service, could not be a matter of aesthetic speculation subjectively because in other religions we may
discover good and beautiful, but you cannot find holiness anywhere except in the Christian Church.
St. Dionysios the Aeropagite, through his book Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, became one of the main pillars upon which Byzantine art was built.
Speaking of music, he asserts that any sacred music is transmitted from heaven.
As a result, the musician is simply a humble hymn-writer, his faith making him an instrument of Divine Grace. He knows that he can compose and sing melodies which came into the world as an echo of the heavenly hymns sung by angels. That is why the artist in the service of the Orthodox Church is not permitted to treat his subjects freely but is limited by liturgical directions. The vast treasury of Byzantine melodies was developed from a limited munber of archetypes transmitted by the angels to inspired persons, and the Church musician is bound to keep as closely as possible to these models. One would be mistaken to see here a lack of imagination on the part of the musician or the painter of icons. For example, the iconographer must give the idea of the saint, not a resemblance of the human being
who was a saint.
Responses:
