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Newsflash from New Liturgical Movement: “Chant and polyphony call for a live space with a natural acoustic”

Published 23 May 2009 General , music , The Orthodox Faith 5 Comments
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Jeffrey Tucker at The New Liturgical Movement briefly talks about issues related to amplification and acoustics within a nave. It’s a few days old now, and the points are reasonably obvious, but nonetheless worth making. This section in particular, uh, resonates with me:

The liturgical choir, however, is there to assist the ritual and be part of a sound framework that is broad and inclusive of the entire space — to be part of something larger than the sound it is making.  […] Chant and polyphony call for a live space with a natural acoustic, and… [thus] I’m not sure that it is really possible to talk about acoustics without dealing with the style issue. How a parish deals with the issue of [acoustics] can be very revealing as to what the designers and decision makers regard as the modal music of parish life.

This is an issue with which the people who sing at my parish are currently struggling (including the priest); it is a building which was built in 2001 as a temporary space, intended in the long term to be the education wing of a larger complex which was intended to include a bigger Byzantine-ish temple with, likely, a reasonable acoustic. Because the nave was going to be classroom space eventually, it was built as acoustically dead as they could possibly manage. Low ceiling, ceiling tiles, carpet. The room actually sucks sound out of you before you ever have a chance to phonate — and that’s a feature, not a bug, according to the people who helped plan the current space. They figured the bigger complex was just a few years down the road, so it wouldn’t really be that big of a deal.

Well, already in 2003, they were realizing it was probably going to take another ten years before they would be able to build the church on which they had counted; now, eight years after the current building opened its doors, we’re looking at likely ten years before we’ll be able to knock down a couple of walls to expand what we have, let alone build another building. What we have is what we have, and that is not likely to change any time soon.

As a result, the conversation has shifted to how we can make the most of our “temporary” space that hasn’t actually turned out to be temporary. This effort was begun in earnest this last January, and a good amount has been accomplished since those pictures were taken. Still, a coat of paint isn’t going to fix the acoustics, and our focus is turning to what we can do about the acoustics. For me, it’s not an abstract question; it’s like singing into a wet towel, and I’ve been doing it for six years now. It takes a toll.

Truth is, there’s little we can do. The support beams in the structure above the ceiling tiles are horizontal; we’d get maybe eight inches if we took them out. This means we can replace the carpet with something less absorptive, like beauty bark, and/or replace the ceiling tiles with something a little less absorptive. The trouble is the next question which gets asked: how do we justify spending the money to do any of that when this building is intended to be something else in the long run, and spending the money now would simply set us back farther from being able to build the next phase?

I bring all of this up for two reasons. First of all, if there’s anybody who reads this who has solved a similar problem or has ideas regarding how this problem could be solved, I’m all ears, baby.

Secondly, I think this comes back to Mr. Tucker’s point: how those involved with decision-making at a parish deal with acoustics says a lot about what they think is important with respect to music. To that end — let’s be real, guys, we’ve got a 90% sung Liturgy. If it can’t be heard past the third row when the choir is screaming themselves hoarse, that’s a problem. I entreat anybody reading this who is ever involved either with mission planting or the building of a new church building — plan for the acoustics. Plan for the choir. Plan for the vocal health and longevity of the people who sing. Put a mission in a space that is reasonably live — nonstandard acoustics will hurt you, not help you. Involve the cantor/choir director in the design of a new building — they will be able to tell you what they need, and at a minimum, a vaulted ceiling with a floor that isn’t one giant sound absorber should be treated as a reasonable starting point. In general, please don’t deliberately hobble your singers and then say, down the road, when asked about it, “Sorry, we actually intended it that way.” Your clergy will thank you, too, particularly during Holy Week.

These things, truly, are not “nice to haves”. They are “need to haves”. It’s not a snobby musician thing; it’s the fact that if we get callouses on those two little flaps of flesh in our vocal tract, we’re done.

Churches are the last venue where one is at all likely to hear live, unamplified music anymore on a regular basis; we aren’t going to hear it at home, we aren’t going to hear it at school, and heck, a lot of the time we aren’t even going to hear it in an opera house anymore — and even in a lot of churches you’ll find amplification out the wazoo. Our ears have become accustomed to the nonstandard room as being the standard, and then just being able to turn up the volume if we can’t hear something. I cringe every time I see somebody chanting into a microphone; somebody has missed the point in that instance, and it’s either the person insisting on using the microphone or the person who has insisted that the cantor needs a microphone.

For further reading, I suggest Thomas Day’s Why Catholics Can’t Sing. I also published an article a few years ago in The Journal of Singing on this topic — maybe I’ll repost the text here.

Ethnomusicology: “Right Singing in Estonian Orthodox Christianity: A Study of Music, Theology, and Religious Ideology” by Jeffers Engelhardt

Published 22 May 2009 Academia , General , music , The Orthodox Faith 4 Comments
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As I’ve more or less said before, I’m not an ethnomusicologist, but my interests do tend to at least touch things ethnomusicologists care about and vice versa. Thus, I at least keep my eyes open, and also as I’ve noted before, I’m in a good place to to do so (at least for the next two weeks).

The current issue (Winter 2009, Vol. 53, No. 1) of Ethnomusicology: The Journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology has an article titled, “Right Singing in Estonian Orthodox Christianity: A Study of Music, Theology, and Religious Ideology,” by Amherst College faculty member Jeffers Engelhardt. It is “an intimate musical ethnography of how Estonian Orthodox Christians at a small parish in Tallinn are making their liturgical singing ‘right'” (p.32), and seeks to examine the questions,

What do musical change and religious renewal reveal about the dynamic interrelationship of theologies and musical styles? How are orthodoxy and orthopraxy established musically? How do local histories condition the possibility of current and future practices? (p.32)

These are great, practical questions, and Prof. Engelhardt has been able to base his exploration of them on practical experience — between 2002 and 2007, he spent a lot of time conducting field research at Cathedral of Saint Simeon and the Prophetess Hanna in Tallinn, including singing in the choir (although, as he notes, he is not an Orthodox Christian himself).

Prof. Engelhardt makes several excellent points and observations; he places his work in the context of religious renewal for Christians in general in Estonia, which is “a process of investing their lives in the post-Soviet order with a particular morality and soteriology.” Estonian religious renewal is significant because

[it] both recognize[s] and resist[s] conventional aspects of the modernity mythologized in post-Soviet and postsocialist transition and ostensibly figured in the European Union: democracy, liberal pluralism, secularism, free markets, cosmopolitanism, universal human rights, consumerism, individualism, “normalcy,” and benign nationalism. (p.36)

For the Orthodox Christians in particular, “right singing” is an ideal which exists in this context;

it is a musico-religious poetics whereby Orthodox Christians are transforming understandings of personhood, human ecology, and secularism in Estonian society through sonic ideals that have decided moral and ideological dimensions. […] Thus, the musical and liturgical practices, congregational life, and institutional affiliations of local Orthodox communities in Estonia bring together a host of aesthetic, theological, social, and ideological concerns. All of these concerns coalesce in the idea lof right singing… [which] is a conduit of illumination and transforms invidiual and corporate bodies into Orthodox bodies of Christ. Right singing creates the correct unity of doxa (belief) and praxis (practice) that is the conservative essence of Orthodox Christianity. (Ibid.)

Prof. Engelhardt follows up on this point by suggesting that “[i]f the singing is right, then the belief expressed in that singing is right; if the belief is right, then the musical practices grounded in that belief are right” (p.37).

In other words, religious renewal in Estonia is not just about reclaiming something repressed during the Soviet era but about fundamentally trying to reshape the world around them into something consonant with their Christian faith; furthermore, “right singing” is not just an expression of these aims for the Orthodox Christian in Estonia, but one of the instruments through which the aims will be completed.

Given this, one of the really interesting points of Prof. Engelhardt’s analysis of the Cathedral’s practice is when he speaks of using Byzantine music for special Liturgies, such as a specific example where a parishioner was to be ordained to the diaconate.

There are a number of reasons why [the Cathedral] would use [Byzantine music] to make this liturgy special. Singers, priests, and parishioners at the Cathedral…invest Byzantine chant and styles of singing perceived as temporally or geographically distant with special significance. These ways of singing are right because they sound the right religious ideology and create the right religious imaginary [sociological term referring to a set of values, institutions, laws, and symbols common to a particular social group and the corresponding society]; they distinguish Estonian Orthodox musical practices from Russian Orthodox Obikhod-inspired practices. For [the Cathedral], Byzantine sounds are “right” because they are “more archaic” and “more monastic” than the Estonian Orthodox traditions with marked Russian Orthodox and Protestant Lutheran influences; Byzantine sounds bring worshipers to the “right level”… [and] Byzantine ways of singing are “more ascetic” and evoke the “feeling” that is such an important part of Orthodox Christian experience… [and] Byzantine ways of singing bring [the congregation] “to the source” of the Christian tradition[.] (p.39-40)

This interlocks with earlier point of how “right singing” (orthopsalmody?) is an ideal which exists in the context of religious renewal in Estonia: “[F]or Orthodox Estonians, the trajectories, geopolitics, ideologies, and moral norms of this kind of transition do not correspond entirely with the Orthodox lives they imagine leading” (p. 41), therefore

[r]ight singing is…how Orthodox Christians situation themselves within a global religious imaginary… [which] has enabled religious renewal and, in the process, established alternative, Orthodox perspectives on the modernity being fashioned through post-Soviet transition, reframing its liberal ideologies and doctrine of secularism. The Byzantine aspects of right singing, in other words, create a form of “morally inflected cosmopolitanism”…that is given voice through liturgical practice[.] (p.44)

He reaffirms and restates this point a little later:

In general, then, what is sung at the Cathedral…and, just as important, how it is sung, localizes temporally and geographically distant Orthodox sounds in order to make singing right… Byzantine is a chronotope (a temporal and spatial field of action) incorporating aspects of musical style, theology, and religious imagination that captures what singers sense as the archaic, originary, and more authentic qualities of their way of singing. Negotiating this kind of proximity…within a global Byzantine imaginary as part of the ongoing renewal of Estonian Orthodoxy and amidst ongoing social, economic, and ideological transformation, then, is a process of making singing right. (p.46)

Prof. Engelhardt concludes with some startlingly sympathetic observations:

The ideal of right singing gives voice to eternal religious truths that empower Orthodox Estonians to live faithfully and in relation to God, one another, and a global religious community. The soteriological, ethical, and affective dimensions of right singing are profound, and by singing the right way, Orthodox Estonians realize their full humanity through the unity of beauty and truth, aesthetics and veracity. […] By endeavoring to sing the right way… Orthodox Estonians work at incrementally transforming themselves, their Church, and their world into this likeness [of God]. Musical practice, in other words, is an agentive means of religious transformation as it shapes individual and communal disciplines, sensibilities, and moral actions. (p. 50)

Prof. Engelhardt’s ethnography is very thought-provoking, and it is remarkable how applicable the picture he paints of the situation in Tallinn is to the Orthodox church choirs in the United States I’ve seen or with whom I’ve sung. While not using the specific technical language of ethnomusicology and sociology, I’ve participated in many conversations about Orthodox liturgical music that wind up in largely the same place as this article. One question that comes to mind is, just as much as the “Byzantine imaginary” allows Orthodox Estonians a means to frame their responses to modernity, I wonder to what extent we might hypothesize that some Orthodox Americans, or even Orthodox Christians elsewhere, wish instead to synthesize modernity with the Byzantine imaginary? What does that look like? How does the synthesis differ from the response?

Now, a questionable point, at least for me, is methodology. A large portion of Prof. Engelhardt’s fieldwork depends on his perspective as a participant in the choir, and he acknowledges that while he is participating with the faithful, he is not participating as one of the faithful. Without getting into the question of whether or not one should sing in the choir if one is not Orthodox, I’ll just say that it begs the question of how his observations were colored by the perspective of a non-believing participant. I don’t doubt that it likely helped to make his observations as sympathetic as they are, but it seems to me that there are lines being crossed with this methodology. Again, I am not an ethnomusicologist, so I acknowledge I raise this question from a standpoint of ignorance, and I would be curious as to how an ethnomusicologist might answer this concern. One way or the other, this is a methodological approach that strikes me as at least requiring full disclosure — that is, it not being enough for the researcher to state that they are a non-adherent; rather, a statement of of what the researcher’s religious beliefs actually are is needed to clear up any ambiguities. I could very well be totally wrong on this point, and if I am, that’s fine, but that is my initial reaction.

In all fairness, Prof. Engelhardt acknowledges the problem to some extent, noting that not being an Orthodox Christian presents certain challenges to this kind of work:

The ideal of right singing gets at things that are hard for ethnomusicologists to get at: belief, faith, the numinous, and apophatic ways of knowing through negation rather than through the positive statements of modern scholarly practice. The challenge for non-Orthodox ethnographers like myself, then, is to apprehend at all the correct unity that makes singing right. (p. 37)

Another shortcoming is the bibliography; of 125 total references listed, literature which specifically treats Orthodox Christianity only gets six entries. Of those six works, four deal with Orthodox sacred music, three of which focus on Russian practice. Given the prominence of Byzantine chant in the ethnography, it is odd to me that the references would not reflect more substantial reading and understanding in that area. Some citations talking about theology of icons or liturgical aesthetics in general would also seem appropriate, given how Prof. Engelhardt synthesizes his points in the conclusion.

There are also some curious imprecisions here and there; there is a quotation on pp. 35-6 from the “Canon for Sunday Orthros,” which hardly narrows down exactly which Canon it might be (and his translation from Estonian isn’t a lot of help, either). He refers to the diaconate being the first step in becoming a priest; while it can be, yes, it is not the prescriptive matter that he implies. In another instance, he speaks of “an authentic Orthodox theology of sound” (p. 49) without clearly stating what that might be or providing a citation.

Having noted these points, however, I think there is much to appreciate about Prof. Engelhardt’s work, and whatever I may wonder about his methodological approach, I applaud his willingness as a non-Orthodox Christian to treat the musical practices of Estonian Orthodox Christians on their own terms. If you are interested in reading the entire article, it is not available online, but if you’re near a university library, they should have the journal on their shelves.

I’ll close with Prof. Engelhardt’s final paragraph, which is perhaps the part every scholar who works in areas related to religion should read:

Beyond these conclusions about why the right singing of Orthodox Estonians is right (conclusions based on a musical ethnography of orthopraxy), one verges on matters of belief and faith (the inwardness and veracity of doxa) that reveal the limits of how modern, secular scholarship produces knowledge… Suggesting how musical style, religious ideology, and sociohistorical circumstance affect the rightness of sound is only part of the story. The other part of the story is about the epistemology given voice through the outward expressions of orthopraxy; it is about the ineffability of some religious experiences, the unverifiable efficacy of some rituals, the possibility of divine revelation, and the corporeal sensibility of the authentic, all of which are no less real or true than musical style, religious ideology, and sociohistorical circumstance. Regarding these profoundly significant aspects of right sounds, one must, I believe, defer to those for whom they are right, stopping short of any complete representation in order to recognize and reflect on their ultimate meaning and power in the lives of the faithful. (p. 52)

The Voice of the Lord: Selected Hymns from the Feast of Theophany

Published 20 May 2009 General , music , The Orthodox Faith Leave a Comment
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Yesterday I came to home to an unexpected surprise: a complimentary copy of The Voice of the Lord: Selected Hymns from the Feast of Theophany, a new recording of Byzantine chant in English dedicated to the memory of Sonia Belcher. Sonia was a dear friend of my priest and his family, and when she passed last February, Fr. Peter spoke about her quite a bit. This CD is quite the labor of love, to say the least, and proceeds from it will go to support The Theophany School in Boston, an Orthodox Christian school which began largely as a result of Sonia’s effort and perseverance.

The collaborators on the project are impressive, to say the least. Hieromonk Ephraim of St. Anthony’s Monastery (aka “Papa Ephraim”) composed the English-language versions of the hymns specifically for the recording (music found here under the entry for Theophany, 6 January); the protopsaltis is Rassem El Massih, a graduate of the Archdiocese of Tripoli’s School of Byzantine Music, and the choir roster is a who’s who of the new generation of Byzantine cantors in AOCNA — including Gregory Abdalah, Basil Crow, Jamil Samara, and Khalil Samara. Dn. Nicholas, Sonia’s husband, is also a part of the ensemble. As the notes say, the goal was to produce a recording of traditionally chanted Byzantine hymns re-composed for the English music, and specifically in the style idiomatic to the Patriarchate of Antioch.

I’ve only listened to it all the way through a couple of times thus far, but my initial impressions are that the result of their efforts is top-drawer through and through. The ensemble sings together beautifully and is very well-coordinated; the English diction is clear as a bell, and hearing the melodies match the English texts as well as they do is very refreshing. The liner notes do a moving job of telling the reader who Sonia is and just why she inspired both the recording project as a whole as well as this particular repertoire.

One curious thing I’ll note is that, as good as the English diction is — compare, for example, with the Mt. Lebanon Choir — the kind of sound the ensemble produces made my ear expect Arabic when I first popped in the disc. It took about ten seconds for me to be able to “hear” the English; when I listened to it a second time, I couldn’t believe that I’d had a problem in the first place. Go figure.

I’d like to thank Basil Crow and Khalil Samara for sending me the disc, and all involved for contributing a fine example of what traditional Byzantine chant can sound like when sung well in English. I’d like to encourage anybody who knew Sonia, or who might be interested in Byzantine chant or Orthodox Christian education, to buy this CD; it’s a more than worthy effort, and a more than worthy cause.

AOCA Chancellors issue opinion on Holy Synod’s 24 February decision

Published 18 May 2009 General , The Orthodox Faith 2 Comments
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The Archdiocese’s own attorneys have weighed in. The conclusion is the money quote, to say the least:

…the February 24th decision is not a valid decision of the Holy Synod of Antioch. Moreover, even if were, it would have no effect on our Archdiocese since it wasn’t intend to apply to our Archdiocese and if it was intended, it would not apply because it is inconsistent with, negates, and would violate the irrevocable Resolution on Self-Rule, the Archdiocese Constitution and the Archdiocese Articles of incorporation, filed with the State of New York. Unless properly amended, these documents cannot be overridden and the February 24,2009 decision is inapplicable to the Self-Ruled Archdiocese.

Pursuant to the Constitution, all members of the Board of Trustees including the clergy and the hierarchs have an obligation to insure that the Archdiocese Constitution and Articles are protected. A constitution defines certain rights and privileges and obligations, these apply to the entire church population including the laity. It is incumbent upon all members to insure that these provisions are not violated even if one disagrees with them.

There is an element of trust that is underlying the role of a member of the Board of Trustees (and a member of the General Assembly) whether the person is a hierarch, priest, or member of the laity. That trust is that the member will act in the best interests of the Archdiocese and follow the dictates of the spirit as well as the letter of the Constitution.

If the members do not act to protect the Constitution and the self-rule as defined therein, then they will have violated that trust. The consequences, among others, will be a legitimate lack of trust by clergy and laity in the leaders of this Archdiocese. That would be tragic.

In Christ,

Robert A. Koory

Chancellor

Charles R. Ajalat
Chancellor

Full text is at the link above, and my hat is tipped to Mark Stokoe and co.

Unanticipated interest

Published 13 May 2009 General , Media , music , The Orthodox Faith 1 Comment
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I’m taking most of this week off. Megan’s grandmother on her father’s side passed away last Thursday — memory eternal, Frances — and while we’re not traveling for her funeral, it was evident that it would be beneficial for me to spend a few days at home. Plus, I have some vacation time I need to use or lose, and our friend Benjamin Czarnota has been here for a visit.

The other positive, if not exactly enjoyable, thing has been using the time to make use of my insurance benefits while I still have them. So, Monday, I got an eye exam — dilation makes me intensely irritable, by the way, because I can’t bloody read, but the upshot is that my prescription hasn’t changed — Tuesday I got a dental checkup and cleaning, and then, this morning, as a result of yesterday’s dental checkup, I got a root canal. For a variety of reasons, this was not entirely unexpected — let me simply say that delaying having one’s wisdom teeth removed by five years can have far-reaching consequences, and I do not recommend it as a course of action.

I am hopeful that tomorrow might not randomly involve invasive surgery.

Anyway, something very unexpectedly cool that happened today is that, after four years of talking about the whole choir schools thing and having people not get it and/or otherwise ignore me, the publication of the piece in AGAIN has generated interest from a rather unanticipated source. I got a phone call from the church today saying that such-and-such person from such-and-such entity had read my article, really liked it, and wanted to do an interview about the ideas I was discussing. I called this person back, we had a lovely chat, and it looks like this is going to happen in a couple of weeks.

Now, similar interest in a different piece has come from a different-but-similar source before, but this is different in that what’s been asked for is an interview rather than a reading, and the entity in question is taking responsibility for the recording and editing themselves. (Since I didn’t say anything else about that recording, I’ll say now that after posting the file to the FTP site specified, I never heard from the people in question again. I’m reasonably certain that what happened is that probably the quality I was able to achieve at home wasn’t up to snuff, which is not anything I take personally, but this particular institution not having the wherewithal to make its own recording arrangements is something that’s going to rather severely limit its potential contributors. Oh well). Anyway, I’m still not going to go into too many details until it’s a done deal and I know exactly what’s going to happen and when, but it’s still a rather exciting development, and we’ll see if it’s actually meant to be.

Metropolitan Jonah is contra den Zeitgeist

Published 9 May 2009 General , Media , The Orthodox Faith 1 Comment
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“Only the Orthodox Church is most firmly opposed to the spirit of this world.”

Now, if I could only get him to say that in an overly-pretentious mix of Greek, Syriac, Latin and German…

(Hat tip to the American Orthodox Institute.)

Towards the Great Council

Published 8 May 2009 General , Media , The Orthodox Faith 5 Comments
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I mentioned earlier that I was researching the preparations that were going on in the 1970s for the Council that was supposed to happen at that time. Interlibrary loan hasn’t exactly been a ton of help; the acts of the preparatory meetings aren’t in any library that they can find, and then other publications are listed, but when a request is entered, it comes back as “unfillable”.

The one thing ILL has been able to come up with is the English edition of the collection of introductory reports of the Preparatory Commision, Towards the Great Council, prepared in 1971 and published in 1972. It’s a quick read, all of 52 pages. Here’s what the back cover says:

Preparations are under way for a Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox Church, the first since the seventh Ecumenical Council of 787. No date has been fixed as yet, but it could take place as soon as the long stage of preparation is terminated. In 1974 the First Preconciliar Panorthodox Conference should convene at Chambésy near Geneva. Its task will be to examine the six reports prepared by the Interorthodox Preparatory Commission in 1971 and presented in this edition, as well as to revise the catalogue of themes for the Great Council which was prepared by the First Panorthodox Conference at Rhodes in 1961.

The Great and Holy Council of the Orthodox Church is planned to be held in all probability some time during 1974 and, in preparation for its discussions, the Interorthodox Preparatory Commission, representing the various Orthodox Churches, was commissioned to draw up a series of statements on six topics proposed, in 1968, by the Fourth Panorthodox Conference.

Well. I guess when you don’t have an emperor to see that things come together or else, four decade delays can happen, right?

There is much in here that is interesting and worthwhile; I’ve already discussed the report titled “Fuller participation by the laity in the worship and life of the Church”, which is two pages (well, just over one when you figure in the space for the title on the first page) and amounts to “This is not an issue of great concern; if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

The first report, “Divine Revelation and the way it expresses itself for the salvation of man”, has some very interesting things to say about Biblical scholarship.

…our Holy Orthodox Church declares that Scripture, being divinely inspired, preserves unimpaired within itself the presence of the Holy Spirit, in those revealed truths which it narrates, teaches and expounds for man’s salvation. In its words it preserves intact the collaboration between the divine and human factor in such a way that, even should the human presentation and clothing of God’s word be imperfect, yet the substance of the divine content of the revelation is not impaired. The essence and distinctive character of both remain intact; the human element is to be investigated according to human methods, while the divine aspect is not to be formulated in a one-sided, individualistic, and subjective fashion, but all the details are to be judged in accordance with the entirety of Holy Scripture and Revelation, and this entirety in its turn is to be judged in accordance with the Tradition of the Church from the beginning, there being but one source for both the unwritten and the written divine word. […]…it must be acknowledged that the attempt to ascertain which is the genuine and original Greek text according to tradition in the Orthodox Church, and the publication of an edition of the New Testament embodying such a text, is fraught with difficulties. This is especially so inasmuch as there exist several families and categories of different classes of manuscripts, on which most of the editions have been based, without any one of them being adjudged entirely accurate, complete, and perfect.

There also exist in our Eastern Church, on a somewhat more official level, editions issued by the local Orthodox Churches, such as (among others) the edition brought out in 1903 by the Ecumenical Patriarchate. This did not have the same aim as the so-called critical editions, that is, the discovery and restoration of the original text of the sacred books; but its aim was simply to restore the most ancient text…as found in the ecclesiastical tradition, and most notably in that of the Church of Constantinople. …[O]ur Holy Orthodox Church should entrust to expert Orthodox theologians the task of editing the best possible scholarly edition of the original Greek text of the New Testament, so that the text so prepared may thereafter be recognized and accepted by the whole of our Holy Orthodox Church. (pp. 6-7)

Now, there’s an interesting thought — that the Orthodox should take a bolder, more central role in Biblical scholarship, and that we should maybe be looking to the Greeks to produce the definitive critical edition of the Greek text.

It is the remaining four reports, “Adaptation of the ecclesiastical ordinances regarding fasting to meet present-day needs”, “Impediments to marriage”, “Concerning the calendar and the date of Easter”, and “Economy in the Orthodox Church”, where we get into material that no doubt sparks arguments.

The report on fasting is actually an illuminating — and sourced — walk through the history of fasting practices in Orthodox Christianity. It ultimately recommends what I would hesitate to call a relaxation of fasting norms (although they use that word), but rather more of a pastoral acknowledgment that one size doesn’t quite fit all. This, of course, already happens frequently at the parish level; here the recommendation is that this be formally and universally understood as what is going to happen. One of the big specific changes the Commission recommends is something that the Antiochians already do anyway — eliminate fasting altogether between Pascha and Ascension.

It is clear that the Commission views this recommendation as being made for pastoral reasons, not for purposes of modernizing:

[We recognize] that most of the faithful in the society of today do not keep all the rules of fasting, on account of the difficult circumstances in which they live. Contemporary conditions demand a form of fasting that is less severe and shorter in length. Such a change is necessary in order to avoid creating problems of conscience such as result from breaking the strict ecclesiastical ordinances — problems which poision the spiritual life of the faithful. A change in the rules of fasting currently in force does not conflict with the basic principles of fasting. (p. 28)

What’s fascinating, though — and what rather dates this text — is the bit about “the difficult circumstances in which” the faithful live necessitating changes. I would argue that nearly forty years later, at least in America and perhaps elsewhere, people don’t keep the fasts for exactly the opposite reasons — because their circumstances are great. Archimandrite Joseph (Morris), current abbot of St. Gregory Palamas Monastery in Ohio, tells a story about how after a homily given during Lent, one of the “cradles” in his parish came up to him and said, “Honey — ” (“They always call you ‘honey,'” he muses at this point in the story) “– Honey, I heard you talking about fasting. That’s the old country. We don’t do that here.” What seems to be implied is that many of the faithful with ethnic ties to the faith associate fasting with the poverty they or their forebears were trying to escape.

The calendar discussion, of course, is already controversial; the Commission recommends solving the problem by adopting the new calendar and the current manner of reckoning the vernal equinox, arguing that it is

quite evident that the First Ecumenical Council considered the astronomical factor as of prime importance for determining the common date of Easter. It thus follows that all the Orthodox Churches following the decisions of the First Ecumenical Council, are abound to celebrate Easter on the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox, according to the most precise calculations that scientific astronomy can provide. In each case, this means employing the calendar considered by expert astronomers to be the most exact. (p. 37)

To its credit, the Commission “acknowledges certain local pastoral difficulties” with enacting and enforcing this idea, and “therefore proposes that the time and way of applying the resolution should be left to the discretion of the local Churches” (p. 38).

“Economy in the Orthodox Church” is doubtless the part that gets people in certain circles growling the “e” and “h” words. This is the issue the Commission seeks to address:

The problems concerning exactness and economy have attained vast proportions in contemporary Church life; for never before in the Church’s history have the issues of inter-Church and inter-confessional relations, of the rapprochement and union of Christians, and of ecumenical unity, been raised so persistently and in so many different guises. (p.41)

To that end, the Commission proposes, we may say the following about non-Orthodox:

The Church being one, all who are alienated from her may be considered as standing on different rungs of one and the same ladder leading up to her when they desire to return to the Church. More precisely, we could say that the Holy Spirit acts upon other Christians in very many ways, depending on their degree of faith and hope. It is consequently clear that Christians outside the Church, even when they do not maintain their faith intact and immaculate, none the less keep their link with Christ, through their unwavering hope in Him. These Christians rejoice ‘with the joy of hope’ (Rom. 12.12). They confess that, through hope, they possess Christ, the common Lord, along with all Christians, because the confession of Christ unites us all, He being our common Lord and the hope of our final salvation. (p. 45)

However,

all [of Orthodoxy’s] relationships with [the other Christian Churches and Confessions] are founded on the quickest and most objective clarification possible of the ecclesiological question and of their doctrinal teaching as a whole. [The Orthodox Church] also recognizes that rapprochement with them will be brought about on terms having as their centre the divine-human structure of the Church. Yet she by no means intends to forget the existence also of the multiple pastoral responsibilities belonging to the Church of Christ, comprising her duty to preach the Gospel ‘unabridged’, and to remove from the conscience of the faithful everywhere all manner of censure; for it is truly a scandal to them that Christians are divided, since ‘Christ is not divided’ (1 Cor. 1.13).

Our Holy Orthodox Church will in no way fail to apply akribeia [translated earlier as “exactness”] to those articles of faith and sources of grace which must be upheld, yet she will not neglect to employ oikonomia wherever permissible in local contacts with those outside her — provided always that they believe in God adored in Trinity and the basic tenets of the Orthodox faith which follow from this, remaining always within the framework of the teaching of the ancient Church, one and indivisible.

A further goal is, on the one hand, to provide a living witness to Christ and the true faith within a secular society and a world which for the most part does not follow Christ and, on the other hand, to lead all to the one Lord, the one faith, the one baptism, the one breaking of bread, the one God and Father of all (Eph. 4.5-6). (p. 50)

Thus, among the goals the Commission recommends, we find the following:

Within the bounds of economy — identified with the extreme loving-kindness of the Godhead — to find ways and means of applying this economy to the contemporary situation of good relations between the Christian Churches; with a view to furthering all aspects of common life in Christ: ecclesiastical practice, worship, common prayer, theological collaboration and consultation, etc., until the efforts of all the Churches toward union have been crowned with success.

And:

To act together on particular occasions, under the presuppositions accepted by the Orthodox Church…, in a spirit of mutual respect, striving, and cooperating in common for the edification of all in Christ. (p. 51)

Finally, the Commission maintains that, economy being the particular prerogative of the Orthodox Church and which “constitutes the only means whereby the church makes allowance for human weakness” (p. 51), these goals would constitute an application of economy “so that the work of man’s salvation on earth may come to fulfilment and all things may be reconciled in Christ at the last day” (p. 52).

If somebody would like to lend a hand in helping me unpack all of that, I’d be much obliged. It seems like there’s a lot there to which the people who feel strongly, one way or the other, about ecumenical activities might react, and I invite comments from all sides.

What is the most telling report of all in this little book, at least to me, is the section “Impediments to marriage”. Of particular interest is the two pages dealing with mixed marriages; we may sum up these two pages by saying, “We all handle this question a little differently, so we’re not sure what to do here.” It observes that each national church has a varying practice when it comes to mixed marriages, and that uniformity of practice would be good, but they are uncertain how to achieve that. Thus, “the Commission proposes that ways and means of applying economy in this matter be studied, and that in the meantime it should be left to the local Orthodox Churches to determine whether to apply economy under circumstances of necessity” (p. 35).

I had a professor of medieval history in my undergrad who said that a problem a unified Christendom ran into was that differing practices don’t have to be a problem, but that only works as long as they don’t have to be right next to each other, or as long as two groups in communion with each other but with different practices aren’t trying to evangelize the same people. Along related lines, in reading Clogg’s A Concise History of Greece recently, it became clear to me that part of the reason the various ethnic jurisdictions kept to themselves in this country for so long is because, well, they don’t like each other too terribly much (and not for bad historical reasons).

I am reminded of an edict from Rome I heard discussed a few years ago that Byzantine Catholic married priests are to stay away from the Vatican, because they will only serve to confuse the issue of priestly celibacy. Basically, the reality of different practices seems to be, “Sure, we can coexist and be in communion, but I’m afraid your difference in how you do things will only confuse my people if we interact too closely,” with a concomitant fear that efforts to standardize practice can only result in laxity (or rigidity, perhaps).

I have no idea how much this particular set of reports will inform the planned Council in its current form, but it is interesting to see what problems the Church hoped to solve at that time. The announced issues to be discussed this time around are as follows, per this article:

  1. The Orthodox diaspora, where the jurisdiction over the Orthodox flock beyond national borders will be defined. According to the canons now in effect, before the growth in the phenomenon of emigration the faithful outside of their home country belong to the ecumenical patriarchate.
  2. The manner of recognizing the status of autocephalous Church.
  3. The manner of recognizing the status of Church autonomy.
  4. Dypticha, meaning the rules of mutual canonical recognition among the Orthodox Churches.
  5. Establishing a common calendar for feasts. For example, some Churches celebrate the Nativity on December 25, others 10 (sic) days later.
  6. Impediments and canonicity of the sacrament of matrimony.
  7. The question of fasting in the contemporary world.
  8. Relationships with the other Christian confessions.
  9. The ecumenical movement.
  10. The contribution of the Orthodox in affirming the Christian ideals of peace, fraternity, and freedom.

Nos. 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 seem to be directly related to what’s discussed in Towards the Great Council; we’ll see how much has changed in the intervening years when it comes down to actually talking about them.

Meanwhile, I’d still love to get my hands on the other preparatory materials from the 1970s in a way that doesn’t involve me having to travel to Geneva. If anybody has any thoughts, I’m all ears.

The narrative of decline vs. the narrative of continuity in Byzantine music

Published 29 April 2009 Academia , General , music , The Orthodox Faith 4 Comments
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Such profound hostility to the performing practice of the received tradition made the sanitisation of Byzantine chant a fundamental prerequisite for its acceptance and consumption by Westerners and Westernised Greeks. Conscious emulation of the Solesmes restoration was, as we have already indicated, a particularly ingenious solution to this problem. Adoption of the earliest manuscripts as the sole arbiters of authenticity and without grounding them in a developed concept of performing practice meant that Tillyard, Wellesz, and Høeg were able to bypass entirely the embarrassing “nasal singing” of traditional Greek cantors in favour of a hypothetical reconstruction that was both aurally and methodologically fashionable. With everything distasteful thus reassuringly dismissed as “Arabo-Turkish” accretions, its new Western curators could ensure that Byzantine music “in all its original purity” assumed its rightful place alongside Gregorian chant in the pantheon of European musical history. (Alexander Lingas, “Performance Practice and the Politics of Transcribing Byzantine Chant”, Acta Musicae Byzantinae VI, Iaşi, Romania, December 2003, p. 74)

Full article is here. It’s a barnburner, and tells you not only what Lingas thinks of the “narrative of decline” but also what Greek chant specialists thought of it while it was initially being promulgated in the first place. (A tip of the hat to Basil Crow, who passed this along.)

On Bright Friday: Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!

Published 24 April 2009 Academia , General , music , The Orthodox Faith Leave a Comment
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This is the time of year, the last week before dead week, when I typically find myself scratching my head, thinking, “Where the heck did the school year go?”

Heck — where did April go?

Tomorrow will be the first Saturday here at home when I haven’t had to set an alarm since February. Note to self: next year, when you’re asked if you’re up to 8am Saturday Liturgies all throughout Great Lent, say “no”.

Anyway… getting home after the trip to Seattle, I was ragged to say the least, but I was nonetheless returned to your regularly-scheduled Byzantine Holy Week, already in progress. To say it was bizarre I’m not sure really covers it; being in the midst of a death in the family (and recovering from bronchitis before we left), and having missed, more or less, Palm Sunday, plus all of the Bridegroom Matins services, as well as having broken the fast while traveling, during Western Easter no less, to just drop in with Unction on Wednesday and return to fasting for all of five days just felt weird. Also, since my experience of Orthodox Christianity has been very much in the context of my marriage, having my wife gone made it even weirder. By the time people were yelling “CHRIST IS RISEN!” late Saturday night, I just had to admit — “Sorry, not feeling it this year.”

Which makes it a good thing that the Resurrection of Christ does not particularly depend on my feelings, I suppose.

Agape Vespers Sunday morning found me missing a perfect fifth at the top of my voice and in possession of an extra major third at the bottom. Such was the case for much of my choir. Folks, I will write a separate blog post about this later, but let me beseech, implore, plead with, beg you — for the health, sanity, and vocal longevity of your choir and cantors, when you decide upon a mission space or build a church, however temporary you plan for it to be, acoustics and an intentional, non-negotiable place for your choir and cantors are not a “nice to have”. They are a “need to have”. Low drop ceilings with acoustic tiles and carpets cannot be considered a reasonable option, because then your choir and cantors, who likely won’t be trained singers in the first place and who won’t have any way of adjusting for how an acoustically dead space messes with your hearing or your singing — to say nothing of your priest, particularly during Holy Week — will have really no option in the long haul but to yell through services against the room or just not be heard — and frankly, you probably won’t be heard terribly well anyway. As well, to haphazardly jam the choir into a corner they were never meant to occupy, where they are walled in by, well, a wall, the congregation, the solea, and the plane of a deacon’s door, particularly on Pascha when you’ve got extra choristers as well as people’s baskets encroaching on what is already too little space — well, it just doesn’t work very well, from any standpoint. Do not tell yourself, “Well, the space is temporary, so we’ll just make do while we have to,” either — temporary is a guest with a habit of staying late.

But I’ll come back to that another time.

After Agape Vespers, I was prepared to go home, make my Paschal nachos, bottle beer, catch up on some homework, and then go pick up my wife at the Indianapolis airport at 10:30pm.

Did you hear that? That was God elbowing me in the ribs, saying, “Gotcha good, didn’t I?”

At 3:30pm, I got a phone call from Megan at the Seattle airport. The short version is that, thanks to weather, the Chicago-to-Indy leg of her flight had been cancelled, and because it was a FAA-imposed delay which caused the cancellation, there really wasn’t much United Airlines was willing to do beyond to say, “Have a nice night at O’Hare and we’ll get you on standby the next day… at some point.”

“All you have is carry-on luggage, right?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“OK. I’ll see you in Chicago.”

I quickly called friends to let them know that nachos would have to wait, and I left at 4:30pm (EST) to try to intercept the 8pm (CST) flight.

Thanks to an eight-mile backup on northbound highway I-65 (the left lane was closed for construction, although no actual construction was occurring that I could see), I finally got there about 9:30pm (CST), or 10:30EST — the time I was supposed to pick her up in Indianapolis in the first place.

We got home around 3:30am (EST), making it an impromptu eleven hour round trip. Thankfully, Megan was up to driving most of the way home so I could sleep, since I had to go to work the next morning.

It was a great start to the week.

I am, however, finally caught up with all of the Greek homework that I missed while I was sick and subsequently out of town, as well as ready, more or less, for the conference paper-style presentation of my research project for the history seminar I’ve been in this semester. It will be a work in progress, and I’ve already said I’ll need an incomplete for the full paper given all the surrounding circumstances, but I at least have something to show people, and I think it’s reasonably interesting. I think. In short, it has to do with how Coptic and Byzantine liturgical texts show us how each Church builds its communal identity relating to, and institutional memory of, the Council of Chalcedon with the rhetoric employed in the relevant hymnody, synaxarion readings, and even in fixed portions of the Liturgy such as the Commemoration of the Saints in the Coptic rite, and so on.

We’ll see how it plays in Peoria. I don’t think I can assume any liturgical knowledge whatsoever, so a good chunk of my time is having to be taken explaining various segments of the different services. Hopefully eyes won’t glaze over too much.

So, besides not having gotten enough sleep in two months and coming up on the end of my part-time status as a student, I can say that I appear to have a chant teacher while I’m in Greece, I have my renewed passport, and we have Megan booked to come out to Greece for the last 9 days or so that I am there.

I had received some suggestions about chant teachers, but held off acting on any of them until a particular individual got back to me. This person finally did, saying, “Well, here’s how you get in touch with Lycourgos Angelopoulos as well as Ioannis Arvanitis.” The catch with Πρωτοψάλτης Λυκούργος, alas, is that he speaks Greek and is “able to communicate in French”; I’m not sure I want to depend on languages which are works in progress for this kind of instruction, so I sent an introductory e-mail to Arvanitis in Greek (proofread by my friend Anna Pougas, so that I wasn’t inadvertently telling him “έχω τρία αρχίδια” or anything like that) and in English. He wrote back in English, saying yes, I’ll be here, here’s my number, call me when you get to Athens. We’ll see what can actually be done in seven weeks, but I’m looking forward to actually getting to learn even the most basic of basics from somebody who actually knows what they’re talking about and who has had the real thing in his ear and his blood for his whole life.

Anyway — life is slowly returning to manageable levels. At least until it’s time to leave my job and go to Greece for the summer.

Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!

GOArch Paleologos Graduate Scholarship

Published 20 April 2009 Academia , General , The Orthodox Faith Leave a Comment
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The deadline for this is today, so it won’t be terribly useful for this year, but I will keep my eyes open and look for the announcement for next year. In the meantime, if you’re an Orthodox Christian looking for money for graduate school, it is at least worthwile knowing that the Paleologos Graduate Scholarship exists and is administered by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America. Details here, and details for other scholarships administered by GOArch can be found here.

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