Orthodox Church Music

Last year (or was it the year before?!), I gave a series of classes at my parish entitled “Liturgical Dynamics,” in which I discussed the various cycles and layers of commemorations that govern Eastern Orthodox worship.  The reason I used the term “dynamics” is that in the English-speaking world, “dynamics” has come to refer to things in flux, the changing relationship of various areas and items (in business, education, etc.)  Those of you who are musicians, of course, know that “dynamics” refers to issues of volume (the relative loudness and softness in music).  This is, in my opinion, an unfortunate term because it is limited in its reference, whereas the idea of dynamism is broader in scope and application.

Orthodox readers who have attended the Divine Liturgy of the Greeks (and Arabs) will recognize that, toward the end of the singing of the Trisagion, the Celebrant intones, “Dynamis!”, the Cantor responds, “Dynamis!” and proceeds to sing the hymn in a louder voice with a more florid melody.  (I wish that we Slavic-style churches had this practice.)  This is often translated, “With strength!”  One might think, “With potency!”  Or simply, “LOUDER!”

My class wasn’t about the volume of sound, however.  It was about interplay, changes, fluxes within the liturgical life of the Church.  Of course, I could only give it a cursory treatment; it was designed for the average church-goer whose interest in such things may be real but limited.  They require only short answers to slake their thirst.  And there’s nothing wrong in that.

Periodically, I’ll be writing a post having to do with Liturgical Dynamics.  These will interplay with those on Orthodox hymnography (of which I’ve already posted two), which seeks to explore the Scriptural and patristic sources at work within.

Today I want to share a quote I did not have for the class.  This comes from Fr. Meletios Webber’s book, Bread & Water, Wine & Oil, which I think should be the standard text for catechumens.  (But no one asked me.)  Fr. Meletios briefly, but succinctly and powerfully, explains the basic ethos of Orthodox spiritual life as it is expressed in prayer, liturgy and the disciplines.  A good read which I recommend.

In his chapter on time, he explains the role of Pascha and its cycle of observances thus:

The last cycle is that of Pascha.  This great day, this Feast of Feasts, like a huge comet traveling through the solar system, bends and distorts time like nothing else.  Its presence in the year, weaving in and out of ordinary time based on factors which include not only the movement of the moon, but also the religious observance of the kinsmen of our Lord, attracts a number of other important days to its wake.  Dominating the year, yet in many ways independent of it, Pascha stands as a fanfare of God’s majestic entrance into the realm of humanity, sealing and enlivening the Incarnation of Christ in order to transform and transfigure the lives of men and women with the intensity of His love.

What more could I possibly add to that?

In this posting I’m going to leave the subject of music and talk about brakes.  You know, those things that help us slow down and stop.

I’ve become convinced over the years that Orthodox liturgical worship is very healthy and contemporary.  For about 30+ years an ecumenical movement has been alive in the western Christian world centered on an ecumenical monastic place called Taizé in France.  I’ve not had the opportunity to visit but as a teen I listened to an album (yes, a record!) of some of their music A LOT.  So did my sister.  I still would.  In fact, I’ve adapted a couple of their chants for our local parish use, to good effect.

A basic focus of the Taize community/experience, beyond ecumenism (By the way, this is ecumenism that developed in the wake of the last world war, so European healing was very much at the heart of it.), was a more contemplative style of worship and prayer that keyed off of traditional Christian phrases (Kyrie eleison; Jesus, remember me…; Alleluia; Maranatha; etc.) and the psalms.  Candlelight, icons and gentle repetition figures prominently.  Taizé services have spread throughout the protestant (mainline and even evangelical as well as Anglican) and Roman Catholic world.

I’ve not attended many, but I’m familiar with the music – much of which is good – and its ethos.  And I’ve often wondered, since it clearly meets a need in the Western Christian world, if there was a way in which Orthodox worship could be performed with this more contemplative style in mind.  (I often find that Orthodox leaders of worship – especially lay Readers and Cantors — aren’t very good at it, and often “perform” it in a rather hurried, get-to-the-end style.)  I’ve become convinced that it’s not necessary.  Rather, that we Orthodox need to perform — and that’s the correct word — our worship more mindfully and with more truthfulness to our own tradition and to the values that that tradition is trying to communicate.

I want to focus on one thing that lies outside the order of worship itself.  It’s customary for churches to place icons out on stands (analogia) for the veneration of the Faithful as they enter and exit the church building.  I’ve come to experience these as “brakes.”  And I think that, just as important as what icons and their veneration proclaim concerning the Gospel (There is so much written on that!), they are an integral means to our preparation for worship and prayer and divine encounter.

These brakes, these strategically-placed icons slow us down.  Unless we rudely barge into the church in goal-oriented fashion, we have to stop and greet the Lord, His Mother and the Saints depicted in them.  If we do it properly, we make the sign of the Cross, bow and kiss the icon.  Whether we bow once or thrice, we must stop to do it.  Therein lays an invitation – an invitation to come out of the World into the place of prayer, into the Kingdom.  To not do so is, first, simply to be rude – rude in that old sense of neglecting to kiss your Mother goodbye or not saying “Thank-you”.

But to not take time at the icon – and here I must opine that one mindful bow is much more healthful than three distracted ones! – is to put off the time of our recollection, re-centering, gathering together of our hurried, busy and distracted self.

“Martha, Martha, you are busy with very many things!”, said the Lord.

I often get impatient with my church singers because they arrive for a service or a rehearsal and, of course, take time to greet the icons.  But then they are late!  However, I’m grateful that they take time to do this, even if they are late.  They will sing the service with more attentiveness.

And that’s always a good thing.  Indeed, it’s necessary.  Jeremiah 48:10

The last time I was considering the Gospel reading from Luke 24:36f, the story of Luke and Cleopas meeting Christ on the road to Emmaeus.  This reading is the sixth in a series of eleven that are read each Sunday morning at Resurrection Matins in the Orthodox Church.  These readings are called eothina, and each have two hymns that attend them: an exapostilarion and a doxasticon.  These hymns summarize, to some degree, the lesson that was read.

Here is the doxasticon sung after the refrain “Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit”  after Psalms 148-150 and their attendant hymns.  Again, I use Fr. Nassar’s translation which I’ve edited to a contemporary idiom:

Since You are the true peace of God to man, O Christ, You gave Your peace to Your Disciples after Your Resurrection.  You showed them frightened when they thought that they were beholding a spirit.  But you removed the anxiety of their souls when You showed them Your hands and feet; and yet they were in doubt.  But when You took food with them, reminding them of Your preaching, You opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.  And You made with them the eternal covenant, blessed them and rose, ascending to Heaven.  Therefore, with them we worship You, O Lord: Glory to You!

This praise is in the form of a prayer, recounting the basic events of this Gospel:  the Lord gave His peace, removed their anxiety by showing His scars, ate food, taught them, made a covenant, blessed them and ascended.  Because of these gracious actions, we know the Lord and give Him glory.

That’s all that can be done.

I’ll confess a slight disappointment: both of these hymns conflate the events of the Lord’s eating with His disciples and teaching them found in this Gospel.  In the reading, there are two events.  In the hymns, they are somewhat combined.  I find the story of the meeting with Luke and Cleopas to be one of the most poetic, and wish the hymnographers had dealt with that part of the story specifically.  Oh well…

These hymns of the Orthodox liturgy are didactic in nature; their purpose is to summarize and strengthen our understanding of the Scriptures.  But they also place us “with them.”  Because of our faith and through our common worship, we, too, glorify the Risen Lord.  Through their witness in the Gospels we, too, behold “His hands and feet.”  This collapsing of space and time into a single Presence and Now is probably THE key feature of Orthodox liturgical worship.  It is its raison d’etre, its very nature and its absolute goal.  The hymns of the Church narrate this intention.  Rather like an emcee or a tour guide, the Church is given a single voice in these hymns, guiding the Faithful through the common prayer and praise to the place of arrival: glory.

A life that gives glory and even seeks it (Rom. 2:7) is one of gratitude and humility, receptivity and docility – penetrable by the Holy Spirit.

Next: Church Brakes

When Eastern Orthodox faithful attend Sunday Matins, whether it is held immediately after Vespers Saturday evening (a “vigil”) or on Sunday morning immediately before the Eucharist, they are attending a Resurrection Service.  Each Sunday, except for rare exceptions (e.g. Palm Sunday), is a “little Easter.”  Actually, I rather disagree with that moniker “little.”  How can a Feast of the Resurrection be “little”?  But the point is that Sunday is first a commemoration, an “entering into,” the Resurrection.  That’s a quote from one of the many hymns for Sunday: “Enter, you faithful, into the Resurrection.”

The service of Matins, which is the primary morning prayer, is where this reality unfolds expressly.  Each Sunday, a Gospel lesson is read proclaiming some part of the Resurrection account or a subsequent appearance of the Savior.  There are 11 of these readings, called eothina (sing. eothinon).  This term, says Fr. Seraphim Nassar (RIP) in his wonderful book Divine Prayers and Services, means “pertaining to the dawn.” (There seems to be some evidence that these 11 Gospels at one time matched 11 Gospels of the Passion, to which a burial account was added making the 12 Passion Gospels of Great Friday Matins.)  And each of these is paraphrased by two hymns: an exapostilarion and a doxastikon.

Perhaps another time we’ll deal with what those hymns are and where those hymns come.  I’m not going to now.  (That information is widely available online.  Start with OrthodoxWiki.)  Suffice it to say that if you weren’t present in church for the reading of the Resurrection Gospel (tsk-tsk), then it will be paraphrased in two different places later – one about 20 minutes before the end and the other about 10, depending on how long Matins is at your parish or monastery.

Now, by way of substantive illustration, I’m going to deal with the sixth of these, which tells the story from the Gospel of St. Luke of an appearance of the Lord to His disciples and the encounter of Christ by Luke and Cleopas on their way to Emmaeus (24:36-End).  I suggest that you read it if you’re not familiar with it.  (It happens to be one of my favorite Gospel readings, which is completely immaterial.)  The exapostilarion for this lesson paraphrases the first part of the story.  Here is Fr. Nassar’s translation which I’ve edited into contemporary style:

When You rose from the grave, O savior, You revealed Yourself a Man by nature, as You stood in the midst of Your Disciples and ate with them and taught them the baptism of repentance.  Then at once You ascended to your heavenly Father and promised to send the Comforter.  Therefore, O most divine and incarnate God, glory to Your Resurrection.

Notice the verbs:  the Lord rose, revealed, stood, ate, taught, ascended and sent.  And we give glory.  I frequently teach my church singers that this is where the emphasis and understanding need to be placed.  It’s in what the Lord does that we derive our faith, and in what we do that we manifest that faith.  These verbs drive the narrative.

A flurry of OT images and stories come to mind, because so many of those stories have so many actions, too: the angels appearing to Abraham, Jacob & so many others, Moses teaching the people and climbing up the mountain, Elijah ascending to heaven and commissioning Elisha, and so on.  So much activity!  So much human activity pressed into divine service!  The actions of Jesus are common enough in the OT, but then  not common.

For none of the prophets and judges and kings and holy women did these things after having risen from the dead.  And none preached with this Divine Authority.

Pinocchio was swallowed by a whale, just like Jonah.  Just like Jonah, he was spat out onto the land after repentance.  Pinocchio’s story is told “according to” the story of Jonah, in a sense.

Now, this is a simplistic and obvious correlation, and I only use it because P. was on my mind at the time of this writing.  I’m busy with a musical play that retells the story of Pinocchio for children.  And my analogy isn’t quite right.  Pinocchio just recycles what literary folk would call “the whale motif.”  The New Testament doesn’t just recycle Old Testament motifs.  The analogy in the Gospels between Jesus’ Resurrection and the Jonah story is called a “sign.”  Jesus got swallowed by the tomb, or Hades, which in mythology is personalized – a kind of beast.  Also, Jesus isn’t spat out by Hades passively as much as he just wasn’t held by it.  Jonah (and Pinocchio) is passive to the actions of the whale.  In Jonah, it seems that God commands the whale to vomit out Jonah.  In P., he and Gepetto light a fire that causes the whale to sneeze.  Jesus, on the other hand, rules Hades by virtue of His being the God-Man.

The point is, the story of Jesus out-sizes that of Jonah. Duh!  But when telling the rather incredible story of Jesus rising from the dead, we begin to get a grasp on it by remembering the story of Jonah.  You see, we’re accustomed to confessing Jesus’ Resurrection.  But once-upon-a-time, it was a new proclamation.  The folks who witnessed it had to make sense of it themselves first before they could pass it on.  They understood it, in part, “according to” the story of Jonah.   “Remember when Jonah was three days and nights in the belly of the whale?”  “Yeah.”  “Well, Jesus kinda did the same thing.”  “Really?!  He did?  How?”  “Well, He was buried, and then three days later we saw Him and talked with Him and eve ate with Him!”  Wow!  What was that all about?!”  “I’m glad you asked!”

The same is true for another type of the Resurrection – the crossing of the Red Sea.  That’s a pretty big and awesome story.  But Jesus’ story overflows it.  Jesus doesn’t merely pass through death as Israel did the sea; He descends into it quite on purpose and even empties it.  But we understand Jesus’ Resurrection “according to” the story of the Red Sea crossing.  In it, as well as in the previous episode of the story when Israel is delivered from Egyptian captivity by being saved from the Avenging Angel, we find our vocabulary and images for telling about Jesus.

“For from death to life, and from earth to heaven has Christ our God led us as we sing the song of victory,” we sing.  (It has a pretty catchy melody; maybe you’re humming it to yourself even now.)  Egypt to Canaan, captivity to freedom, Moses to Christ, the song of Moses & Miriam to the song of the Lamb.

This is where Christian hymnography comes into play, for Orthodox hymns about the Resurrection call it “the Passover [pascha] of the Lord,” “a great Passover,” “the Passover of beauty.”  The Gospels refer to His approaching “exodus” in the account of the Transfiguration, anticipating His Passion and Resurrection.  These events in the life of Christ might have been somewhat ordinary when viewed “on the ground” by an average by-stander.  I don’t know.  There isn’t too much in the Gospels to indicate that the disciples saw anything that made Jesus’ arrest, trial, condemnation, crucifixion and burial extraordinary.  It was His subsequent appearances and gift of the Holy Spirit which gave this new community their sight to see Jesus’ Passion as a New Passover — the Passover.

The theme of the New Testament is not one of miracles.  That is not the proclamation.  The proclamation is the Resurrection and what Jesus’ death and life mean in light of it.  Jesus is the New Moses, the New Jonah, the Final Lawgiver, and the Final Word.  He was raised “according to the Scriptures.”  It’s not just that the Old Testament foresees this Messiahship, but it provides the means by which we understand it.

So, how do the hymns of the Church, in addition to what I’ve quoted above, understand and relate the Gospel, the Feasts and the Saints?

This is what we’ll continue to explore.

So, hymnography in the worship of the Church serves tradition, I said.  And tradition is an active thing, even a way of life, I said.  It’s meant to be living, not “dead letter,” to quote St. Paul.  Hymnography feeds this life-style.  It’s not the only thing that feeds it, but it does feed it in a certain way that other means don’t.  Sermons feed it.  The disciplines do, too, as does obeying the commandments.  To practice prayer and fasting and almsgiving is to act out the Tradition, the life-style.  That will get to the heart of a person much faster than a sermon or a hymn.  But it takes work to pray, fast and give; and hymns and sermons are a means of developing the appetite for such things.

They also give us a vocabulary for the spiritual life, I think.  (I have to be careful here; I am not a guide for the spiritual life!)  The way we talk about things, the names we use for things, how we describe things is important to how we understand them.  That’s why I get nervous when folks get chatty and creative when speaking about the life of faith.  They’re not trying to get you to see things in a way that is common but in a way that is individual, idiosyncratic to themselves.  Dangerous!

Hymns and sermons, when done “right”, provide us with “a way of speaking” (to quote a morning prayer from my prayer book) that will hopefully train our way of thinking.  And hopefully a way of speaking and thinking that is not only accurate, but beautiful.

(I’ll probably need a blog post on beauty.)

Because hymns are set to music – melodies and rhythms – they go through the skin into the bloodstream much quicker, rather like some kinds of medications.  Or alcohol.  They tend to bypass the head and go to the heart more directly.  If the hymn is well-written, well-composed and well-sung, then it just might stir a holy feeling or disposition within us like, say, gratitude.  Now there’s a necessary attitude.  One can’t get far in this quest that we (with Pinocchio) call “being real” (as in human) without thankfulness.  Even that children’s story “traditted” this truth to us: Pinocchio’s lies were an affront to the love of his papa, Gepetto, which in turn got P. into a lot of trouble; and they both ended up being swallowed by a whale.  (Sound familiar?)

Now, the story of Pinocchio is so familiar to us, not only because we heard it as kids, and because the story is pretty interesting, but because it’s familiar.  We understand those lies.  We understand our will weakening before hucksters (Cat & Fox).  We understand feeling shame before the love of a parent we’ve dishonored through selfishness and disobedience.

But we also have heard part of that story before.  After all, didn’t Jonah suffer from childish rebelliousness?  He got swallowed by a “great fish” trying to run away.  And he came to his moment of repentance inside the belly of that whale.

We might say that the story of Pinocchio is told “according to the Scriptures.”  Using the language and scenes of the Bible, we hear the story of Pinocchio, and the age-old values of honesty and obedience and dire consequences are passed along to us.

When St. Paul says – twice – that Christian Faith is “according to the Scriptures,” once in regards to the resurrection and another with the Lord’s Supper, he is saying that we understand the truth of Jesus in scriptural terms.  We use the vocabulary and images and events of the Old Testament to tell the story and understandings of the New.  While we believe that the truths in the New transcend those of the Old, they cannot do without them.  Take the Old Testament away and the New goes with it.  The New fulfills the Old.  It doesn’t consign it to oblivion.  It takes the old stories and images and words and fills them with the meaning gained by the witness and experience of the Risen Lord.

This idea is rather important as we encounter and explore and understand Orthodox hymnody because it draws on so much scriptural vocabulary.

Next:  According to the Scriptures, continued

Warning: Extensive use of italics in this posting.

Recently I’ve been very impressed with the traditional content of Eastern Orthodox hymnography.  By traditional I’m referring to the root Latin verb, tradare, “to hand over.”  In this sense, we can creatively use the English word as a verb, to tradit: “I tradit this to you.” It’s not very literary, but it gets the idea across that tradition isn’t meant to convey the idea of a mere static custom.  It’s meant to convey the idea of holding onto something once given with the imperative to, in turn, give it on to someone else.  Like a family heirloom, one generation receives it and then gives it to the next, who then give it to their progeny, and so on.  This is a much more active concept.  I suppose we could say bequeath, but it doesn’t carry the relational aspect with it, that that which was bequeathed was received at the hands of another once-upon-a-time.

So, when I say that I’m impressed with the traditional nature fr Orthodox hymnography, I’m saying that it is a major instrument in the handing-on of Orthodox Faith.

I suppose most people who care at all about these things would think this rather obvious, and maybe it is.  That song is a primary means of handing on understanding to others is pretty universal.  But stop for a moment and consider:  What song is going through your head right now?  I’ve a song from a children’s play of Pinocchio going through mine.  It’s mainly moralistic, teaching about the virtue of honesty and the vice of dishonesty.

That’s certainly something worth handing on, and it’s a darn sight more interesting to a kid than merely being given the perennial rule, “Don’t tell a lie.”  In this story, the lies have consequences: Pinocchio’s nose gets embarrassingly longer with each lie, and his dream to become a “real” boy diminishes.  Leaving aside the implication that those with longer noses are less “real than the rest of us”, this story and it’s attended songs – at least in this production – drive the point home that simply being human doesn’t make one so completely.  That humanness is something to grow into.  In this story, a wooden, stringless puppet can become human by his will to be good and some decisive action following.

The story and the songs actively and dramatically – far more effective modes of communication than mere rule-recitation and lecture-giving – present these truths.  They hand on from teller to hearer the story and its foundational values.  This is tradition, and it’s precisely what church song is for.

The fathers of the Church had this in mind when they approved of church song, so that the psalms and divine words would be accompanied by attractive (read: catchy) melodies.  This would accomplish two things.  First, attract people more readily to the services; and, second, to stick tunes with divine words into the heads of the people.  In this way, the people would be accompanied by bits and pieces of praise and prayer throughout their daily work and not just the secular songs about love and lust heard in the marketplace.  Or even songs with competing versions of the Faith itself.

Next: According to the Scriptures