Chant Works: Tone 1 Troparion

Anyone who regularly attends services in the Byzantine Rite has heard about the “eight tones.” These are eight sets of musical melodies, with their associated texts, which are assigned to successive weeks of the liturgical year, and also associated with particular hymns that fall on fixed days of the calendar.

In this first installment of Chant Works, we will take a closer look at the Tone 1 troparion melody in the prostopinije, or Carpathian plainchant, tradition used in the Byzantine (Ruthenian) Catholic Church in the United States.

The Eight Tones and Congregational Singing

In our churches, it has been customary for centuries that services are sung congregationally from beginning to end. Here is a description of church singing in the Carpathians between World Wars I and II by a Russian musicologist, Ivan Gardner:

The people chant from the Velikij Sbornik [Great Anthology], which contains all the necessary texts…  The cantors – the more experienced chanters among the parishioners – who stood on the kleros, began the chanting. As soon as those present recognized the melody, the whole church sang: they sang all the stichera, all the troparia, all the irmoi – in a word, everything that the typikon indicated was to be sung. They sang in unison, and whoever was able added a parallel melody line or improvised a bass line. The impression produced was one of extraordinary power.

Beginning in the 1860’s, the people in our churches used books which provided all the texts for Vespers, Matins, and the Divine Liturgy. There was no musical notation; instead, each hymn was preceded by the tone number and the specific melody to use. These books ran to as many as 900 pages – far  too much material to simply memorize.  So how could the people sing it all?

The answer is rather straightforward. There are a limited number of prostopinije melodies in the eight tones – about 60 or 70,  setting aside the more complicated hymns called irmosy – which could be adapted to any text. As we will see, the cantor has a “model” in his (or her) head of how the music goes, phrase by phrase. The people also have a model of the music (hopefully the same one!) from having listened and sung each melody in the past, and once they hear the cantor they follow his or her singing, listening almost by reflex for the places where the music may change, to see which of several options the cantor may choose. At any given moment, there are a limited number of places the cantor can go next, and the congregation listens for them.

There are almost always several “good” ways to sing any particular chant (and here by “chant” I mean a liturgical test together with a particular melody for it).  A “good” chant is one that worthily clothes the liturgical text with music, and does so without awkwardness or surprises, so that the congregational can sing it comfortably along with the cantor in order to concentrate on the prayers and praise they are singing.

Now, when Byzantine Christian texts and music in Greek were brought northward to the lands of the Rus’, the people there (after experimenting with  trying to sing in their own language to the exact same Greek melodies) wrote their own music for the major hymns, and created melodies for the rest that could be expanded or contracted to fit any text. A complete set of these melodies has come down to use as the prostopinije tradition.

In this series, we will start by looking at the melodies in the Eight Tones that are used for singing the hymns we call troparia, kontakia, and prokeimena.

The Tone 1 troparion in the 1906 Prostopinije

As Gardner notes, the people in our churches in Europe first sang from books without music. The most difficult melodies were written down in handwritten  or printed books called Irmologia, while the more ordinary melodies were part of the common fund of each region’s church culture,  learned by listening.

So it was not until 1906 that most of the prostopinije melodies were collected into a printed book, the Tserkovnoje Prostopinije or “Church Plain Chant” of Ioan Bokšai and Iosif Malinič.  This collection has since been reprinted and expanded, but remains our basic printed source for chant in the prostopinije tradition.

The 1906 Prostopinije begins with the melodies in the Eight Tones, from Tone 1 to Tone 8, and Tone 1 troparion is given in two versions:  first a “short form” for singing The Lord is God at the start of Matins, and then the troparion of the Resurrection in Tone 1, which is sung at Vespers, Matins, and the Divine Liturgy every eight weeks.  Here is the Sunday troparion in Tone 1:

The text is in Church Slavonic; don’t worry if you can’t read the Cyrillic alphabet. But even a quick glance shows this is not a particularly easy melody to understand. In fact, it’s one of the more difficult troparion melodies, but for exactly that reason is a good starting place.

Chant scholar Myroslaw Antonowycz noted that Father Bokshai’s version of this melody is “rather improvisational.”  It would be more correct to simply say that the musical engraving for the first page of the 1906 Prostopinije in Church Slavonic has mistakes, including some bar lines which are in the wrong place. We can see this in later chant books, and also in marginal corrections like this above:

The Tone 1 troparion melody in English

Unfortunately, this improvisational nature of the Tone 1 troparion melody was reflected in the first official English setting of  the Sunday troparia for our church, in the 1970 collection Byzantine Liturgical Chant. Here is the Tone 1 troparion for Sunday:

This music is complicated, and more than a bit confusing; every phrase adapts the melody in the 1906 Prostopinije a little differently. As a result, the cantor and people needed to memorize the whole thing – and then do the same for every other troparion in tone 1.

There were several attempts in the 1980’s and 1990’s to restore the original pattern melodies for the troparia, and finally in 1999 the newly established Inter-Eparchial Commission for Sacred Liturgy and Music reviewed both the original Slavonic sources and the various attempts in English, and did new settings of the troparia and kontakia in the Eight Tones. Here is the troparion of the Resurrection (Sunday troparion) in Tone 1:

In this setting, it becomes much clearer that the melody consists of two phrases that are repeated in a cycle, following by two ending phrases.  So let’s label the repeating phrases A and B, and the ending phrases E and F:

To sing any text to this melody, you would divide the text up into phrases of “reasonable” length, according to meaning, and sing the phrases to the A and B melodies, in alternation, saving the E and F melodies for the last two phrases. This is precisely what we are going to do.

When we’re done, I think you will find that even troparia with written-out music will be a lot easier to sing.  And along the way, we can gradually acquire a good sense of how to sing a NEW troparion, or one without written music, to this or any other prostopinije melody.

So let’s imagine that you’ve just opened your copy of the Great Anthology, and you see the following:

Troparion, Tone 1. The stone was sealed by the Jews, * soldiers guarded your most pure body, * but you, O Savior, arose on the third day granting life to the world. * Therefore, the heavenly powers acclaimed you, O Giver of Life. * Glory to your Resurrection, O Christ! * Glory to your Kingdom! * Glory to your salvation! You alone love us all.

Everyone else has this in front of them as well. You are the cantor, and the people are waiting. What do you do?

The A phrase, first time through

Let’s start with some basics. Every prostopinije phrase has to be adaptable to texts of any length, right? So each phrase melody has a reciting tone, a point in the melody where as many words as necessary can be sung in a single pitch.  The part of the melody that comes before the reciting tone is called the intonation, while the ending part after the reciting tone is called the cadence.

Unfortunately, the first phrase of the Sunday troparion in Tone 1 (“The stone was sealed by the Jews”) is SO short that it is hard to tell where the reciting tone is. So let’s look at the beginning of the Sunday kontakion in Tone 1 instead. (In Tone 1, troparia and kontakia are sung to the same melody.)

This is better!  The first notes, over “As God you a[rose],” make up the intonation; this is the “signature” of the melody, the part which tells the congregation how the music is going to go. While singing it, the cantor also sets the pitch, the tempo, and which language will be used if there are several. The intonation here consists of a short note, a long note, and four short notes, and leads into the reciting tone.

The round note with vertical lines on either side is called a “slashed note” or a “double whole note”; when writing chant, we use it by convention to show that all the words under it are sung on the same pitch, using the rhythm of normal speech.  This is the reciting tone. So the cadence consists of the last three notes, the third of which is longer.

We can take out the words entirely, and show the A phrase this way:

Here, the musical accents fall on the second note, the beginning of the reciting tone, and MAYBE the first note of the cadence. The art  of setting text to a melody is arranging to have the accented syllables in the text fall in the right places. Here, accents in the text should fall  on  the half note, the beginning of the reciting tone, and (if possible) on  the first note of the cadence.

We start by just  singing syllables to notes, then adjust by combining several notes with a slur, or dividing a half note into quarter notes, In this case, the only adjustment we need is to slur two pairs of notes together, and everything works:

Look at the four notes over “you a-“. There are a lot of patterns just like this in prostopinije, and usually they bear small accents on the first and third notes. But sometimes it proves very difficult to do it this way, and we end up with accent on the second note of the four, the low note:

In an ideal world we would use just one of these patterns, but it turns out that neither one really covers all the cases. So cantors need to be aware of the two options, and sing accordingly: four notes with accents on 1 and 3, versus an accent on the low note.

Two  other situations deserve mention.  If the very first syllable of the  text is accented, we can switch the half note to the beginning, as here in the troparion of the Cross:

In this case, the four-note pattern will definitely be accented at the beginning. And finally,  if the text phrase has only few accents, we can use  the short form that the 1906 Prostopinije provided for “The Lord is God at Matins.” Here is it in English:

Instead of going down and then up again after the half note, it goes straight up to the reciting tone. But every one of these potential opening phrases is unique to Tone 1 troparion, so it is still clear which melody the cantor is starting.

The B Phrase

Regardless of how it begins, the A phase always ends on re, an “unstable” pitch that signals musically that we still have more to say and sing. To start the B phase, we move one note up the scale, to mi:

Like the first phrase of the Sunday troparion, this text is so short that is has no repeated note or reciting tone. Here is the full form of the B phrase, showing the reciting tone:

We have the same sort of four-note pattern, with several possibilities as to where the accent goes.



Sometimes an initial note is repeated, or a quarter note and half note are swapped to make accents fall correctly. This happens in other prostopinije melodies, but is most common in Tone 1 troparion.

Here again is the complete format for phrase B:

The  B phrase ends on another unstable note, ti.  We will go on!

The A Phrase, repeated

If there are more than two phrases left, we need go back to the A phrase of the melody. But instead of exactly repeating the opening, we raise the first two notes a bit:

The B phrase can have the same sort of variations as we have seen before: the first note can be omitted it we begin with an accent, or doubled if necessary:

So here is the complete format for the A phrase when it is repeated. 

The E Phrase

Most prostopinije melodies end with a single concluding phrase; this is one of the exceptions. At the end of EITHER the A phrase or B phrase, we can sing the penultimate (E) phrase like this:

Here is the  complete format. There are no strict rules for accents; sing as you would speak. If there is a reciting tone, it will usually come on the fifth note.

The E phrase goes down to la below do and ends on it – the lowest note  since the beginning of the chant. This helps affirm that we are coming to the end.

The F Phrase

The final or F phrase leaps up to re, and has not one but two reciting tones:

Here is the complete format:

The whole Tone 1 Troparion melody

Let’s try to summarize what we have so far:

Notes in parentheses are optional.

Back to the Sunday troparion in Tone 1

Here is the Sunday troparion in Tone 1 from the 2006 Divine Liturgies book:

The first two phrases each have an issue which make them difficult:

  • In the first phrase, “sealed” is sung over the last two notes of the four-note pattern we looked at, PLUS the first (and only) note of the reciting tone. Thus, it tries to take in both the accent in the middle of the four-note pattern, and the accent on the reciting tone, as a sort of two-fer. (I call this a “bridged accent”, and we’ll look at those in a future installment of Chant Works.)
  • In the second phrase, slurring from the half-note to the quarter note on the first syllable of “guarded” adds some instability, and is just hard for many cantors to sing reliably.

If we were doing it all over again. I would use the short form for the initial A melody here, and begin the B phrase  with a half note:

By the way, that half-slurred-to-quarter IS sometimes useful – for example, in the Tone 1 troparion for Lazarus Saturday:

Here, the three-note rising pattern on “raised” is an excellent example of “word painting.” One could, of course, sing “raised” on the four quarter notes that immediately follow the half note. More importantly, perhaps, “from the” should probably be sung on the last two quarter notes, so that “Lazarus” stands by itself on the reciting tone. (One flaw in some of the earliest MCI settings was the sense that if notes were slurred in the 1906 Prostopinije, they should always be slurred. This let to some very odd results, which we will encounter later in Tone 3 samohlasen.)

The troparia for January 1

Quite a few cantors have problems with the Tone 1 troparia for the Circumcision of the Lord and the feast of Saint Basil the Great. Here is the troparion of the Circumcision.

The opening phrase, like the Sunday troparion in Tone 1, feels awkward and would sing much more easily to the short form of the A phrase:

In the second phrase, “divine Spirit” has an accent on “-vine” at the very end of the reciting tone, followed immediately by the accent on “Spirit.”  This quick succession of accented syllables is hard to sing clearly; it might be better to put a half note on “-vine.”  In general, when translating texts to sing to prostopinije, it’s good to avoid strings of accented syllables if possible.

The half-slurred-to-quarter pattern is used three times, and in each case it would probably sing better if the next syllable started on the quarter note that follows the half note, and those two quarter notes were slurred together instead.

Finally, “therefore as man” is just tricky to pace, and breaking it across two lines on the page makes it even harder. Changing the initial half note to a quarter and slurring “man” over two notes would be in improvement.  The last two lines, on the other hand, are quite singable as is.

Very like it is the troparion for Saint Basil:

This has the exact same issues: an opening that could benefit from the short A form; a double accent on “divine dogmas”; two avoidable uses of the half-quarter slur;  and the tricky “O royal priest” which should probably begin with a quarter note instead of a half. Try different ways of singing it and see what you think!

The troparion of the cross

The troparion of the Cross is so short that the B phrase and E phrases are combined:

The troparion of several women-martyrs

This troparion from the common of saints in the back of the 2006 Divine Liturgies book displays a different kind of problem with setting a chant.

The beginning IS awkward and would benefit from the short form of the A melody. But the more serious problem is in the second line. The hymn seems to come to a stopping place – think of it as a period – after “By martyrdom  you were led to Christ.”  The next phrase is really a continuation of the same thought, but it sounds like the start of a whole new sentence, and it’s easy to miss the fact that the lambs referred to are the martyrs (and the whole Church!). 

In this case, it would be better to merge the text phrases so the rhetoric is more clear.:

One might also change the half note at the beginning of the E phrase to a quarter, to keep the duple (2 + 2 + 2) rhythm.  In general, prostopinije follows a duple rhythm, sometimes at several levels, and avoids dance-like strings of triples – especially triplets. We will come back to this in a later installment of Chant Works.

The festal theotokion in Tone 1

Last one, I promise!  Here is the theotokion (hymn to the Mother of God) sung at Vespers and Matins for Sunday after the troparion of the Resurrection in Tone 1.  This chant has NOT yet been officially promulgated, and in the coming revision of the Vespers book I would like to fix it up a little. Here is the current version:

Before reading further, try singing it through and see what you could do to improve it!

For me, at least:

  • The opening should use the short form
  • At the start of the second line, “full of grace”, I would change “full” to a half note, to put two beats on the reciting tone, and an accent (albeit a weak or secondary one) on the quarter notes that begin the cadence.
  • In the third line, “as the righteous David has foretold”, two quarter notes precede the half note, and “David” is slurred unnecessarily. Instead, put “as” on the half note, and the remaining syllables exactly match the remaining notes in the phrase.
  • In the next to last line, “Glory to him who came from you” ends with two half notes slurred together over “you.”  A slur on a final syllable is almost always untraditional in prostopinije (there is ONE exception, in Tone 6 troparion, and most cantors are uncomfortable with it). Here is is unnecessary.
  • In the last line, “free” is the only word on the second reciting tone, and would be better as a half note for the same reasons as “full” in “full of grace” above.

What might it look like in the next Vespers book?  As they say in Church Slavonic, Voilà!

I hope you have found this enlightening. We covered a LOT of ground in this installment.  Later this week we’ll consider the much easier prokeimenon melody in Tone 1 (easier to analyze, at least, not necessarily easier to sing), then move on to Tone 2 next week!

If you have ANY questions or comments, please add them to this post!

You can find a complete table of the prostopinije melodies for troparia, with their starting notes, patterns, and examples, here: Melodies for troparia.

Chant Works: Introducing a New Series

This December will mark twenty years since the official release of new texts and music for the Divine Liturgy for our church. In my work as director of our Metropolitan Cantor Institute, I’ve taught several hundred students the ins and outs of our prostopinije, or church plain chant. As parishes increasingly adopt Vespers and Matins, add new cantors (sometimes from other religions traditions), and move into new parts of the country, this is perhaps a good time to take a serious look at the details of our chant and how we use it. Continue reading “Chant Works: Introducing a New Series”

Congratulations, 2025 MCI Students!

The following students successfully completed MCI Online classes in 2025.

Introduction to Liturgy
Thomas Berezny
Adam Bunu
Chiara Buzzi
Gregory Chura
Gwen Dubrow
James Dvorscak
Lisa Gilbert
Justin Gray
Cameron Harvey
Maddie Hebert
Sean Hines
Victoria Kennedy
Andréa Kakuk
John Kosinski
Joseph Krug
Steven Lesure-Blair
Christian Liguori
Caleigh Link
Jennie Maney
Jack Mansfield
Jeffrey McCallister
Ian McElrath
Dan Nguyen
Jeremy Parson
Guillermo Perez
Vodoldymyr Rebinczak
Julianne Sauvage
Ethan Schimmoeller
Ethan Scott
Cynthia Sleight
Dean Tartaglia
Rose Tsakinakas
Stanley Tuchalski
Michael Varga
Elias Vargas
Jacob Villa
Theodore Walsh
Phillip Williams
Matthew Wood

Introduction to Church Singing
Arman Afshani
Benjamin Crimando
James Dvorscak
Maddie Hebert
Caleigh Link
Jennie Maney
Dan Nguyen
Dean Tartaglia
Rose Tsakinakas
Michael Varga
jacob Villa

Reading in Church
James Dvorscak
Cameron Harvey
Jennie Maney
Dean Tartaglia
jacob Villa
Matthew Wood

Introduction to the Divine Liturgy
Arman Afshani
Benjamin Crimando
Caleigh Link
Dean Tartaglia
Michael Varga

Introduction to the Eight Tones
Arman Afshani
Benjamin Crimando
Caleigh Link
Dean Tartaglia
Michael Varga

Introduction to the Typikon
Arman Afshani
Benjamin Crimando
Caleigh Link
Dean Tartaglia
Michael Varga

The Liturgical Year
Dean Tartaglia

The Divine Liturgy
Angela Sedun
Dean Tartaglia

The Office of Vespers
Dean Tartaglia

Mastering the Eight Tones
Dean Tartaglia
Olivia Whitlock

Great Fast and Holy Week
Lisa Edwards
Olivia Whitlock

From Pascha to All Saints
Olivia Whitlock

Services for the Living
Lisa Edwards

Hierarchical Services and Reader Services
Olivia Whitlock

Services for the Departed
Olivia Whitlock

Services of Christmas and Theophany
Lisa Edwards
Olivia Whitlock

Congratulations, all!

For more information about the MCI cantor curriculum, go to  https://mci.archpitt.org/classes. 

The 2025 Byzantine Assembly: What you should watch

This past July, I was honored to take part in the 2025 assembly of clergy and laity of the Byzantine Catholic Metropolia of Pittsburgh, held at Saint Mary’s Byzantine Catholic Church in Whiting, Indiana. (Here’s a video review.)

Myself, I’m still processing the event and doing follow-ups, but if you’re a cantor, I would especially encourage you to check out these three presentations, and leave your comments below!

Assembly Talks 1: A Theological Cosmology

As  promised last time, I am watching each of the recorded presentations from last November’s assembly of the Byzantine (Ruthenian) Catholic Church in the USA and posting my comments here, in hopes of starting a robust discussion going forward.

Continue reading “Assembly Talks 1: A Theological Cosmology”

The Assembly and the MCI

In November, the Byzantine Catholic Church in the US held an Archieparchial Assembly in Hillsborough, NJ. Unfortunately, I came down with Covid that week and was not able t0 attend. Still, I think the Assembly deserves some serious consideration, so I am going to be

  • Posting the text of my presentation here for discussion, and
  • Posting a link to the video for each presentation, every 2 days or so, along with my comments, and see what sort of useful discussion we might have!

The presentation below is also my roadmap for the MCI in the coming year. Please let me know your own thoughts and priorities!

All Creation Should Sing:
What our chant teaches us, and what our church singing can offer to a fractured and anxious world

Liturgical services sung from beginning to end by everyone present are a hallmark of our church, the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Mukachevo and its daughter churches around the world, as well as the Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese. In this presentation, I will show how singing these services well, using our traditional plain chant or prostopinije, can bring us closer to God, build up our Church, and draw others to Christ.

Why all creation should sing

My title is “All creation should sing”… but why is that?  How does it happen? Let’s start with our baptismal symbol of faith, the Creed:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, creator of all things visible and invisible.

So God created the angels, and what we usually call the created world: rocks and trees, plants and animals, the heavens and human beings; this is the first point of our faith.  The second point, which we can observe everywhere, is that this creation has fallen away from God’s design; this is what we call the Fall, and it has left the created world fractured and anxious. The third and crucial point is that God so loved the world that he redeemed it so that it could become what he planned and intended from the beginning.

Now Scripture tells us that the angels constantly praise and adore God, but they do this entirely in spirit; they can’t bow, or sing, or dance before the Lord. Animals praise God simply by existing, but they do so (as far as we can tell) without words, and perhaps even without thinking about God; they simply are.

As for us human beings, we are (as we sing in our funeral hymns) composite living creatures, matter AND spirit, lofty and lowly alike. It is our unique privilege to receive both material and spiritual gifts from God, and use our bodies and our spirits to express our praise, our thanksgiving, our sorrows, and our joys to God.

And in fact this is what God asks of us! In the Scriptures, old and new, we are constantly encouraged to “sing to the Lord.”  In this way, we serve as a bridge, uniting everything in praise of God, and uniting ourselves WITH God, and the angels, and the created world. And we do this by… singing – singing, gathered in the assembly, the synaxis, the ecclesia, the Church.

So where does our church music come from?

It’s important to recognize that singing was ubiquitous in the ancient world, and in the early church; it’s hard to find any mention of liturgy in the first thousand years of Christianity that was NOT sung. In early Constantinople, where our Byzantine tradition of worship comes from, public services consisted largely of the singing of psalms, usually with refrains (like “Holy God, holy mighty, holy immortal, have mercy on us” or “Save your people, O Lord, and bless your inheritance”) along with litanies and prayers. At first there was a bias against new church-composed hymns, due to their use by heretics, but eventually the psalms were supplemented with specifically Christian hymns, usually written as poetry in Greek or Syriac.

Greek church singing often set successive hymns to the same melody; you can do this with poetry. How many people know “America the Beautiful”?  How many know the second verse? Third verse? But if I wrote out a dozen verses, you could probably sing them all to the same melody pretty easily. That is how Greek singing of troparia and other hymns worked.

When the Slavs adopted Christianity from Constantinople, they translated the Greek Scriptures and service books as exactly as they can, sometimes translating word by word. At first, they tried to make poetic translations that could use the Greek music as well, but after a century or so they appear to have given up, and used prose translations instead. To sing these, they gradually developed their own Slavic chants, based on Greek church music but adaptable to words whose accents fell differently in each verse – sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. Thus we have the znammeny chant, named for the znamenie or “signs” that were written over the words to show where the pitch went up or down, or stayed the same, or used several notes for one syllable. Only the complicated music was written down, and by the 1600’s each local Slavic church had its own collection of chants, sometimes borrowing from one another. With influences from Europe, composed music and choir music became more common, and the melodies were written down in square notes on a four-line staff; this notation was used in our church into the early 20th century. Thus we have Kievan Chant, Novgorod Chant, Court Chant, and the choral music of Bortniansky, Tchaikovsky, and Chesnokov.

So what is the prostopinije I mentioned earlier, and how is it different?

Prostopinije – “plain singing” or “plain chant” – is the liturgical chant of the Byzantine Rite Slavs of the Carpathian highlands. It is a complete chant system – that is, it provides melodies for practically everything that is to be sung in Byzantine Rite services. While it has borrowed some melodies from its neighbors, these aren’t terribly obvious; nothing like Russian Orthodox music where you might have several chants for one text, a znameny chant, a Kievan chant, and a Greek chant, for example. With a few exceptions like the major hymns of the Divine Liturgy, there is pretty much one melody to use at any point in the services.

Prostopinije is (relatively) easy for congregations to sing, and harmonize by ear; it adapts to all sorts of texts. It is related to Ukrainian plain chant or samoilka, though it sounds a bit old-fashioned in comparison, and slightly Westernized.  For almost two hundred years it has been sung in at least two languages, Church Slavonic and Hungarian, and so singers have learned to adapt the same melodies to different environments. All this gives it a real flexibility and subtlety.

The presence of a leader of song, the cantor, allows the people to sing entire services themselves, in dialog with the clergy, in the good order called for since apostolic times. The cantor chooses the melody (where there is a choice) and sets the tempo; the beginning pitch is usually based on the singing of the clergy, so there is a continuous musical thread through the whole service. The cantor is a specialist in church music, but not a soloist. In fact, according to our liturgical books, the cantor has two actual solos in the course of the year. (Does anyone know what those are?  At the end of the vigils for Christmas and Theophany, the cantor sings the troparion of the feast in the middle of the church, standing beside a lighted candle.)

In Europe, the cantor and the priest were often the best educated individuals in the village, and so the cantor often served as a teacher as well. Since early times, literacy in the lands of Rus’ was achieved by the study first of the primer or Azbuka, then the psalter or book or psalms, then the Chasoslov, or book of the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours – but these books didn’t contain the changeable parts of the divine services, which were found in large books like the menaion and triodion, used by the cantor.

Around 1860, a parish priest named Popovich commissioned a book for his flock that contained all the texts and hymns for Vespers, Matins, and Divine Liturgy on Sundays and feasts. He called it the Velikij Sbornik, or Great Anthology. Using these books and their familiarity with prostopinije, under the leadership of experienced cantors, congregations could sing all the services for Sundays and feasts, from beginning to end, themselves, in plain chant. This ignited what has been called a “fever of congregational singing” which astounded even Orthodox travelers in the region – it was a true innovation, and one that united communities and led to even wider knowledge of church services through practical experience.

So what did these people, our forebears in faith, learn? What can our chant teach us?

Chanting teaches us to keep our attention fixed on God. We sing to God and the saints; we sing about God and the saints; and we sing to encourage each other. We hear about God, and experience order and delight.  Sometimes the “learning” part of the liturgy is emphasized, but the knowledge we gain from actually taking part in the services is experiential: the same sort of knowledge that comes from being in a relationship. Chanting teaches us to keep our attention on God.

Now, this isn’t easy, and we need to constantly re-learn it. It IS possible to sing words without reflecting on them or even meaning them. The more we internalize the hymns, the more we can mean them instead of simply executing them. A good place to start is by singing the beginning prayers: learning to sing “Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit”, and mean every word. But singing these words can help.

Chanting also teaches us how to be a community. Good listening is vital to good singing; the ears are the most essential tool for communal singing. We should be listening to the clergy, the cantor, the people around us – and ourselves, comparing our pitch and tempo and timbre to those we are singing with, matching and blending and harmonizing. This can be as tricky, and as beautiful, and as fun as good dancing – not just with a partner, but with a whole ensemble, like old-fashioned stage musicals. It is learned by practice, and practically anyone can do it.

We not only learn to listen to one another, but we learn to take turns – leading, following, contributing our part. Sometimes a hymn is repeated, so we can sing it and then listen and meditate on it, or listen and then sing it ourselves. Our chant changes with the feast and the season, and in the regular cycle of eight tones. We learn the value of faithfulness, or those who come to every service, the voices of those who have travelled to be back with us, or those who have struggled mightily to be part of our community. We learn to recognize those who are missing, so we can pray for them and assist them.

Communities can implement choirs – a group of those who practice more difficult music, perhaps, for special occasions. These organizations can foster camaraderie and allow for more focus on music; they can also become a clique within a parish, or displace congregational singing, both things to be avoided. But our church has sometimes had thriving choirs, even multi-parish choir competitions, and this can contribute to respect and love for one’s own parish as well as beatify the services, if done with care. Not everyone needs to do everything in the parish, as long as all who can contribute are welcome!

Chant teaches us to unite opposites.  In his recent book on the Akathist Hymn to the Mother of God, Father Jack Custer pointed out the many paradoxes that are reconciled in the words of this hymn. The same is true of our chant. One voice and many; men and women; adults and children – there are many ways to sing in alternation, or in call and response, that are entirely part of our parish. The use of children’s choirs is quite ancient in Eastern Christianity, and the alternation in singing between men and women has a long and beautiful tradition in our own church. Even the richness of elderly and young voices singing together can add a rich sense of universality to our singing.

We can also balance old music and new music, as the householder brings forth from his store-room things both old and new.  We do have older melodies which could be dusted off and used, such as the music for the dogmatika at Saturday evening Vespers, and the samopodoben melodies at Matins.  We have a long tradition of using many different versions of the Cherubic Hymn, and some parishes have particular local melodies which, if appropriate for wider church use, might be shared. At the same time, a core repertoire of music that “everyone knows” is invaluable for joint events such as eparchial pilgrimages.

In the matter of uniting opposites, a step up comes in restoring the singing of harmony in our plain chant. These harmonies need not be written out like choral music; in fact, our church has a particular tradition of extemporized or “folk” harmony which we would do well to make popular again. This requires even better listening skills, but it can be learned and should be more widely employed. At the same time, unison singing will always have a place, and can serve as a vital contrast, or for use where harmonization is too difficult to do well.

Finally, chanting teaches us to be joyful. Joy is the mark of a true Christian. In the fourth chapter of Saint Paul’s letter to the Philippians: “Rejoice always! I say it again, rejoice! Everyone should see how joyful you are. The Lord is near.”  Singing is words together with melody; remember I mentioned how we unite body and soul, word and emotion in a way that neither angels nor the rest of creation can quite manage? Words tell the story, melody shows the feeling. That is why music can raise us up, and why we use special music for special feasts – to remind us once more of what we are doing.

Our singing in common shows that the celebration belongs to everyone present; that is the special value of events such as pilgrimages, ordinations, and parish anniversaries. In gathering together and singing in common our praise, our thanksgiving, and joy, and yes, even our sorrow, we do something in the church that fulfills our particular role in the cosmos: the liturgy is the Church, being who she is.

In our singing, we unite the earthly liturgy with the liturgy taking place eternally in heaven. This is signified in the layout of the traditional Byzantine church: from Christ the Pantokrator or “ruler of all” in the dome, down through the ranks of angels and saints, to the people standing in the nave. As Father Robert Taft once said, the church isn’t fully decorated unless the people are there taking part. And over the sanctuary, we see the Mother of God, her hands upraised, as we send up our prayers and our praise to God.

So what can our church singing offer the world?

First, an experience of God, and knowledge of God. Remember that in the language of the Hebrew Scriptures, “knowledge” is not simply facts or book learning, but a real knowing of another person. This relationship with God employs everything we are: body, soul, and spirit; thoughts and emotions; our internal narrative and our place in the community. This is reflected in a chant in which the words, AND the feeling behind them, are important. Just as we present ourselves and express ourselves differently on different occasions, or for different purposes, we have different melodies for different purposes. But at all times, we are (or should be!) singing and celebrating with Christ, before the Father, in the Holy Spirit. In this way, we come to know God by doing.

Second, church singing offers the world an experience of community united in a common endeavor. We sing ALL the services together, and this required labor and learning – a sort of initiation into the community. We are united in listening and response, and this is open to everyone who enters the community. A particular role here is played by memorization; most of our hymns and chants are used regularly enough that they can be memorized, allowing us to sing from the heart.

One comment here: I thoroughly believe that the publication in 2006 of books with music was a necessary step for our church, and greatly improved our capability for common church singing. Now that the melodies we use, once so varied as to be divisive, are much more held in common, we can begin to at least consider returning to the use of books with just the texts of the hymns, which sometimes allow more focus on the words we are singing and praying – AS LONG AS the cantor truly knows and can lead the requisite melodies, and the people can follow the cantor. 

Third, church singing offers an experience of unity in variety. Our roles are all important, but they are not the same, and they may change with time. Yet everyone has a role to play, and (hopefully) a moment to shine. In particular, we always have room for more cantors, and ANYONE with the requisite skills can be a cantor. We have a long tradition of women cantors, especially since the introduction of English, and we have had serving parish cantors as young as twelve. At weekday services, it may be the case that no official cantor is present, and anyone in the congregation who knows how may step up to lead the people’s singing.  (Do check with the celebrant first!) We also have a tradition of the singing of reader services when no priest is available, and some of our parishes have endured years during which they faithfully sang Vespers and Matins under the presidency of a cantor, with the Eucharist celebrated when a priest could be present. We adapt and we learn.

But above all, church singing can offer an experience of joy. There is an ecstasy – that is, a “standing outside ourselves” in singing together well.  United with the angels in the presence of God, we learn freedom from passions and anxiety because we are part of the song that is sung before the throne of the Most High, as described in the Apocalypse of John:

“The four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each of the elders held a harp and gold bowls filled with incense, which are the prayers of the holy ones. And they sang a new hymn: ‘Worthy are you to receive the scroll and break open its seals, for you were slain and with your blood you purchased for God those from every tribe and tongue, people and nation. You made them a kingdom of priests for our God, and they will reign on earth.’ I looked again and heard the voices of many angels who surrounded the throne and the living creatures and the elders. They were countless in number, and they cried out in a loud voice: ‘Worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive power and riches, wisdom and strength, honor and glory and blessing.’ Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, everything in the universe, cry out: ‘To the one who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor, glory and might, forever and ever.’ The four living creatures answered, ‘Amen,’ and the elders fell down and worshipped.” (Rev. 5:8-14).

 So how do we get started?

As members of the body of Christ, sing – regularly, and as much as you can. Saint Paul tells us to address one another in psalms, and hymns, and sacred songs, but we have to start by remembering that we CAN sing. Sing things you remember from church when you’re alone, or even caring for small children; sing children’s songs or folks songs, show tunes – anything whose content is not objectionable. (In the same way that singing hymns, even by rote, can help bring us closer to God, singing bawdy, rude, or wicked lyrics, even if we “don’t mean them”, is unlikely to build up our life in Christ. Words DO matter.) But pick something worth singing, and sing!

Next, really listen to the singing in church, follow the cantor, and try to blend with and support the singing of those around you. Memorize some common hymns, such as the Sunday troparia or the fixed hymns of the Divine Liturgy, and try singing those. You will probably find that once you sing the first few words, a surprising amount of what follows may come automatically. Once you can sing a hymn from memory, stop, and sing it slowly to yourself while thinking about the meaning of what you are singing. Treat them, in a sense, like Scripture: don’t just rip through them, but savor them and make sure you understand the words you sing.  (If you hit something you don’t understand, ask your priest or cantor!)

If you think you “can’t sing” – even if you’ve been told you can’t sing – find out how anyway.  There are people who are truly tone deaf, but they are quite rare. The Metropolitan Cantor Institute has online classes in singing open to anyone in our church, with online games that develop your ability to discern and sing musical pitches. There are also introductory classes that teach the basics of Byzantine liturgy, and how to serve as a church reader, all free. Take advantage of them!

Finally, come to all the services at your parish and make them a part of your life, then take what you’ve learned out into the world. (By the way, the world begins for us in the narthex or vestibule of the church; just as the sanctuary represents heaven and the nave the Church, the narthex is the gateway between the Church and the world that needs to hear the Gospel. That is why the pre-baptismal ceremonies, and the engagement service, are performed in the narthex.)

What about cantors?  As cantors you should be doing all these things, AND learn all you can about our services – the cantor is a traditional teacher of our church culture – and all you can about our chant and how it works. (See the handout for some suggestions.) Make sure to always prepare for each service; walk through the music and know your part. I recommend that the cantor always check with the celebrant before each service, and ask his blessing. Welcome newcomers to the church, and make sure they have what they need to take part. Train your assistants and your church readers well, and plan for a cantor or cantors to follow after you!  The Metropolitan Cantor Institute materials and classes can help here, too. 

At the parish level, we all have a responsibility.  From time to time, look deeply at your parish’s liturgical singing and see what if anything it needs.  (If nothing, rejoice!  But as Metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky of blessed memory once directed, if after two years the people are not singing with a cantor, that cantor should be retired!)

Next, consider putting together a history of your parish’s musical culture. (Watch the MCI blog for ideas.) Invest in whatever it takes to improve your parish singing, because this is one of the first things that newcomers AND returnees notice. Make it your goal that in church, everyone sings.

Finally, as a Church, we have work to do.  More than fifteen years after the promulgation of the Divine Liturgy, we still have plenty of work to do to provide better material to parishes. The Seminary Press can serve as an ideal focus for this as it has in the past.

Good singing has to be experienced before it can be imitated. As a church, we should be able to point to examples of liturgical and musical excellence, variety, and beauty. In the coming year, the Metropolitan Cantor Institute plans to create a weekly curated stream of audio and video highlighting services and singing that show off the best we have to offer. We invite every cantor and parish to suggest contributions to this stream.

The Church can also do more to foster local and regional singing classes. These have largely been on hold during the pandemic, but there is no reason a large parish or a deanery could not hold local classes on liturgy and music for cantors and parishioners. If there is interest, the Metropolitan Cantor Institute could facilitate local classes, including multi-day “boot camps’ for new cantors.

We can also do more to integrate chant into Eastern Christian formation classes for youth, as well as adult education.

We can (and should) establish a contact list of cantors across the church, both for internal communication between cantors, and to assist pastors in finding help to meet their parish’s needs.

Finally, we as a church should consider emphasizing more formal expectations for serving cantors, such as some form of cantor certification – not as a requirement for service, but as “setting the bar” of what a trained cantor should be able to do. We cantors need to up our game to serve the Lord in this ministry, for the good of our Church.

I thank you for your time and attention, and I hope this will enable you to sing a new song this weekend and upon your return home.   I welcome your questions, and look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Handout

Our Chant, Episode 3: The Role of the Cantor

Our chant – like our liturgy – is at once insanely complicated and gloriously simple.  It is easy to learn the basics of chant, and even the harder melodies can be sung by anyone in the congregation, IF they have someone to follow who knows the chant and how to apply it in practice.

Time and again, I come back to the following observation of the Russian Orthodox musicologist Ivan Garner about the singing in the churches of the prostopinije tradition in Europe:

In all village churches, both Orthodox and Uniate, congregational singing of all the services in their entirety has been practiced exclusively, including the hymns of the “proper,”  utilizing the full range of tones and melodies…  The cantors – the more experienced chanters among the parishioners – who stood on the kliros, began the chanting.  As soon as those present recognized the melody, the whole church sang: they sang all the stichera, all the troparia, all the irmoi – in a word, everything that the typikon indicated was to be sung.  They sang in unison, and whoever was able added a parallel melody line or improvised a bass line.  The impression produced was one of extraordinary power.  But the main thing was that those present were not passive listeners, they were not “the public,” but were aware that they themselves assisted at the performance of the divine services.

This is an excellent place to start, and you can read more in the article What is a cantor?  on the MCI website.  But for purposes of this article, I would like to talk more specifically about what our Church and our chant need today from its cantors: I believe it needs cantors who are learned, perceptive, and willing to share what they have.

The learned cantor

Our chant – like our liturgy – is at once insanely complicated and gloriously simple.  It is easy to learn the basics of chant, and even the harder melodies can be sung by anyone in the congregation, IF they have someone to follow who knows the chant and how to apply it in practice. And therein lies the complexity.

We live in a time and place where few people sing naturally, and where our divine services are held a few times a week. So it takes conscious, conscientious study to master our patterns of worship and singing. 

If you want to become a learned cantor:

  • Really listen to the singing of experienced cantors and clergy, both in your home parish and everywhere you go.
  • Find out more about the history of our chant and liturgy.
  • Learn all our chant melodies and how to sing them; listen and practice until you know them by heart – and can sing them in church.

The real test of mastery will be the ability, when given a book for one of our services by anyone who comes to you, to be able to explain what the service is, and why we celebrate it; to demonstrate the singing, in a way that can touch the heart of your hearer; and to teach anyone by example how to sing it well.

The watchful cantor

As we will see in later episodes, our plain chant is structured in a way that makes it easy for a congregation to sing, if they have good leadership.  And one of the essential characteristics of a good leader is that he or she pays attention to what is going on:

  • Before the service: is everything prepared and practiced? Does the congregation have what they need for worship? Do I know what I need to do to start the singing at each point?
  • During the service: does the music match what we are doing, in tempo and style? Are people singing well, or do they need more guidance? Are we in step with the clergy? Am I actually praying, or just going through the motions? What can I do right now to make sure all is done in good order, to the glory of God?
  • After the service: is there something I need to review orpractice? Is there something I need to teach the members of the congregation, or someone I can invite to the cantor stand – perhaps as my eventual replacement?

Some of this “situational awareness” comes from practice, but I can also recommend an ancient Christian practice particularly to cantors: keeping vigil. Spend time, starting with a few minutes, every day, in quiet before God. Learn to calm your passionate mind and listen for the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Glorify God and ask him to show you what you need to see, when you need to see it.

The generous cantor

Finally, an entire army of learned, perceptive cantors will not do what Christ asks of us unless these cantors are also willing to share what God has given them in study and prayer:

  • sharing your time: being truly faithful to your commitments, in church and out – being reliable and on task.
  • sharing your vocation: being open to forming new cantors who will one day take their turn leading the singing (perhaps so you can harmonize!)
  • sharing your heart: showing kindness and compassion, even in difficult circumstances, or toward people you might otherwise dismiss.  It is often in those people we most need to see the face of Christ.

As many of the saints have said, none of us really knows the struggles of those around us. And yet the times when people come to church – especially for baptisms, weddings or funerals, or when they return after a long absence – may be absolutely crucial in determining whether they see the beauty of the kingdom of God in the people and worship they encounter, or if they experience disorder, contempt, and thoughtlessness. We need to love all those God puts in our path, because our aim is for all of us to one day feast together in the Kingdom of heaven.

In future episodes, I will be looking at much more concrete examples of how our chant “works” in serving our worship. But I would invite you to comment here about your view of the cantor’s vocation, and how we can make it a more effective sign of the truth, goodness, and beauty with which God desires to bless the world.

 

 

 

Our Chant, Episode 2: What is “our chant”?

Hearing the chant – preferably, hearing it sung well – is a prerequisite for singing it well.  Like jazz, this is not a form of music you can learn from reading it in a printed score.

My introduction to this series begs the question: what is our chant, exactly?

In the Byzantine (Ruthenian) Catholic Church, we sing our services congregationally, from beginning to end, using a liturgical plain chant called prostopinije, which means “plain singing.”  Parts of this music form – the more complicated parts, which we have in common with Russian and Ukrainian chant families – were written down centuries ago.  But the ordinary melodies sung at every service? Those were not written down until the beginning of the 20th century.  Instead, every village sang its own, slightly different version of the same basic hymns and responses, and perhaps add a few of their own.

This worked rather well when cantors served in their home villages, or were at least willing to switch to using the local versions of melodies;  where people did not move around much; and when cantors (lead singers) and church members attended services through the week, and for many hours on Sundays. The sheer amount of chant that one heard made it possible to learn a vast amount of music by heart.

 But even at large gatherings such as pilgrimages, it became apparent that the chant was not at all consistent from one place to another – again, except for the complicated melodies which were written down in the chant books called Irmologia.  So a series of bishops in Eastern Europe opened chant schools, published music collections, and (to some extent) began to standardize the prostopinije chant. This was the state of affairs when those who founded our churches here first came to the United States.

An oral – and aural – tradition

We sometimes refer to our chant as an oral tradition, meaning it is passed on by word of mouth, whether teaching or lived experience.

But is is also an AURAL tradition, meaning we learn by what we hear (and see, and sense with our bodies – which are intimately involved whenever music is performed by ourselves or others).  Hearing the chant – preferably, hearing it sung well – is a prerequisite for singing it well.  Like jazz, this is not a form of music you can learn from reading it in a printed score.

So our chant consists of:

  • a basic stock of melodies – about 90 in all – to be learned by heart, internalized, from hearing and singing them over and over.
  • a method of applying these melodies naturally to any liturgical text – all the troparia, kontakia, and other hymns we sing.
  • a shared understanding of how cantors, clergy, and congregatons communicate with each other during the service.
  • a common way of singing chant in harmony

The boundaries of the chant are pretty clear, but not entirely so – some spiritual songs (the 18th and 19th century Eastern European equivalent of “praise music”) made its way into the chant in the form of borrowed melodies, and sometimes popular choral hymns for the Liturgy were transmuted into something that looked like plain chant.  But overall, our chant provides the music we need to sing every liturgical service in the church year.

Chant books

On the MCI website, you will find thousands of pages of music. But the basics of prostopinije are found in our chant books, generally in Church Slavonic, and sometimes in older notations. It is not necessary to read these books – unless you really want to understand the ins and outs of the chant, or if you are setting new texts to the chant melodies.  One of the aims of this series is to “open up” the chant books so you can see how our prostopinije developed, and how it works, in detail.

Next time, we will talk about those who are responsible for “executing” (and hopefully not killing!) our chant: our cantors.

For the complete services, go here.  And leave comments or questions below if you like!

Our Chant, Episode 1: Introduction

It seems to me that it is time to take a serious look at our plain chant, and how we sing it in worship. That is the purpose of this blog series, Our Chant. 

It has now been

  • 70 years since church first began celebrating services in English
  • 55 years since the first official chant settings in English
  • 14 years since the release of our current Divine Liturgies book, which our bishops promulgated in order to have a common format of the Liturgy across our entire church

It seems to me that it is time to take a serious look at our plain chant, and how we sing it in worship. That is the purpose of this blog series, Our Chant.  I hope it can serve as way to spread knowledge of our chant, how we use it, and how we can improve our church singing while maintaining our tradition of sung congregational worship.

Why a series?

The Metropolitan Cantor Institute website has a wealth of material about individual plain chant melodies, and how to sing services. But because it is an instructional site, we have stayed away from presenting a lot of historical background, or any critical commentary on our chant and how we sing it. I hope that this series will let us provide some of this background, AND enable cantors to contribute to the discussion.

Many of the issues that affect our church singing are common to a range of melodies, so I am going to first look at the shared issues that we face whenever we sing, THEN look at particular chant melodies and services.

The series will focus on our Carpathian prostopinije, and a few other chants we use in church. Paraliturgical hymns and choral music of our church will get their own series as time permits. New posts will appear every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

Topics covered

Watch this space for an index of all articles in the series.

Congratulations, Fall 2020 MCI Students!

The following students have successfully completed MCI Online courses in the second half of 2020.

The Plainchant of the Byzantine Catholic Church
Mark Adinolfi
Brandon Barker
David Boney
Gregg Buczkowski
Sherrill Franklin
Christopher Gerzano
Katrina Holt
Michael Komishock
Aidan Medcalf
Sarah Medcalf
Gregory Puhak
Mark Venkov
Mark Worhatch
Millie Woryk

Introduction to Liturgy
Gregg Buczkowski
Benjamin Cafeo
Loretta Fernández
Elizabeth Freiberg
Christopher Genzano
Tiphaine Lamb
Sarah Medcalf
Natalie Popiel
Gregory Puhak
Theresa Szatkowski
Cyndee Zbylut

Introduction to Church Singing
Loretta Fernández
Elizabeth Freiberg
Mary Hendricks
Kyle Holdridge
Lidija Pašo

Reading in Church
Elizabeth Freiberg
Dennis Zitny

Introduction to the Divine Liturgy
Elizabeth Freiberg
Lidija Pašo

Introduction to the Eight Tones
Gregory Puhak

The Liturgical Year
Michelle Rubush

The Divine Liturgy
Mary Hendricks
Gregory Puhak
Olivia Whitlock

The Office of Vespers
Gregory Puhak

From Pascha to All Saints
Sherril Franklin

Services for the Living
Susan Kopko
Olivia Whitlock
Patricia Yamrick

Hierarchical Services and Reader Services
Susan Kopko
Julia Revilakova
Andrea Riley
Adrienne Terleck
Patricia Yamrick

Services for the Departed
Susan Kopko
Judith Walsh

Services of Christmas and Theophany
Susan Kopko
Judith Walsh

For more information, go to  https://mci.archpitt.org/classes.