Music for Pascha, Part 1

As we move into the final week of the Great Fast, it’s time to move the Hymnal Project forward and look seriously at music for the Great Fast.

Strangely, we don’t have nearly as many paraliturgical hymns or spiritual songs for Easter as we do for other seasons; instead, we tend to sing the Paschal troparion (Christ is risen from the dead) a LOT, in both chant and choral versions.

We do have one well-known spiritual song for Pascha (“Christ is risen / Joy from heaven”) which I will talk about later this week.  And I had hoped to delve into our choral tradition, such as the music of our Archieparchial choir, and the settings of the Sybertsvile Franciscans. But for better or worse, many of those don’t work nearly as well for ordinary congregational singing. (I’m willing to be convinced otherwise, and will circle back to consider a few next week!)

So instead, I’d like to do something which was discussed by the Inter-Eparchial Music Commission when the new Divine Liturgies book was printed, but never started: the proposal of some new settings for liturgical texts we already have, to supplement our existing official chant settings, choral music, and spiritual songs and hymns.

Check out the following article and tell me what you think!

Alternate melodies for Christ is risen

Later this week I will present some settings of other liturgical music for Pascha, before turning back to our own “spiritual songs” for singing before and after the Liturgy.

Please leave your comments below.  May God bless your Fast!

Songs of the Passion of Christ

We now come to one of the thornier problems in the hymnal project: those “Lenten hymns” which are really songs of the suffering of Christ on the Cross. These were often sung in connection with Stations of the Cross and other Lenten services which were imported from the Christian West, and replaced our own services such as the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, Lenten Vespers, and the Royal Hours on Great and Holy Friday.

In addition to those printed in our 1978 Divine Liturgy book, our “core” collection of these hymns is Father Levkulic’s Hymns for Great Lent. About half the context of this work is strictly liturgical: music for the Liturgy of Saint Basil, the Typical Psalms and Beatitudes, the troparion of Thursday, and the hymn, Beneath your compassion, which is sung at Vespers on fast days.  This music we already have in official versions, and need not concern us here.

There are also Lenten hymns in this  collection which are properly hymns of repentance, that could be sung at services throughout the Great Fast as well as our minor fasts.  We discussed those in a previous thread,  as well as a pair of songs for Palm Sunday.

The remaining hymns in this collection are very specifically about the suffering and death of Christ on the Cross. In our tradition, these would be most suitably sung during Great and Holy Week, especially on Holy Thursday and Holy Friday.

These should definitely be considered for the hymnal:

The ones marked with an asterisk could use a literal translation of the Slavonic to accompany the music, and also have additional verses we might want to consider. (One problem with some of our English hymns is that they take only the first few stanzas of a much longer composition, and so focus on only a small part of the whole drama of Christ’s death, burial, and Resurrection. In these cases, more verses would be a good thing!)

This hymn, though popular in our church in the past, has a very complicated history, as regards both text and music. I am looking for someone who would be willing to do the work to establish a printable version of it in English and Slavonic.

The following hymns are more problematic.  If your parish sings these hymns and you want them included, let me know in the comments.

  • O my Jesus, suffering in pain (O Isuse, poranennyj)
  • O my people, my people (L’udi moje, l’udi)
  • O soul so sinful (Hl’an duše moja)
  • We venerate, O Christ (Poklanjajusja, moj Christe)

Please leave your comments below – as well as any additional Lenten hymns you would like to have us consider!

 

A Vesper Book for Priests and Deacons

One of the perennial issues with creating liturgical books here at the MCI is the whole question of how many  books per service, and what goes in them.  A book with everything for the cantor and people?  Cantor music in a separate book?  What about a book without music for parishes that want to reduce printing costs?  And of course, what about all the priest’s prayers and the detailed rubrics – where do those go? Continue reading “A Vesper Book for Priests and Deacons”

New books for Lenten Sunday Vespers!

I am pleased to announce updated versions of two books from the Metropolitan Cantor Institute:

The Order of Vespers on the Sunday of Forgiveness (Cheesefare Sunday) and the Sundays of the Great Fast

This book (88 pages) contains the complete service of Vespers on Cheesefare Sunday afternoon and on the five Sundays of the Great Fast – everything but the saints’ stichera, which change from you to year.

The Order of Vespers for the Sunday of Forgiveness (Cheesefare Sunday)

This book (28 pages) contains ONLY the service for Vespers on the afternoon of Cheesefare Sunday, along with the service of mutual forgiveness (which is also in the larger book for the entire Fast). This smaller book does not include the stichera of repentance in the Eight Tones, or any saints’ stichera, so it is exactly the same from one year to the next.

What’s new about these books?

  • They use more current translations of Vespers, matching the Divine Liturgies and Presanctified books wherever appropriate – both text and music.
  • Music is provided for all psalm verses at the Lamp-lighting Psalms and aposticha, so there is no need for a second book, or large leaflets with this music.
  • The formatting has been vastly improved, and I intend to use the same style (perhaps with further improvements) for the other MCI Vespers books as they are revised.
  • Music has been smoothed out where necessary, and typos have been corrected.

For parishes that celebrate Sunday afternoon Vespers several times during the Great Fast, I recommend the larger book, while parishes that celebrate ONLY Forgiveness Vespers might want to stick to the smaller one. Both books are intended for printing in booklet form on legal size paper. Here the the prepared booklet versions:

The Order of Vespers on the Sunday of Forgiveness (Cheesefare Sunday) and the Sundays of the Great Fast – camera ready version

The Order of Vespers for the Sunday of Forgiveness (Cheesefare Sunday) – camera ready version

One thing these books do not include is the text of the prayers said privately by the priest, such as the Prayers of Light, as well as detailed rubrics for celebration. Rather than putting these in every single MCI book for Vespers (and having the cantor and congregation have to leaf past them), we have created a NEW book containing the priest’s and deacon’s parts of Vespers – both Great and daily Vespers, AND the rubrics for Vespers with the Divine Liturgy, the All-Night Vigil, and Great and Holy Friday.  Watch for a blog post coming soon!

Songs for Palm Sunday

In the previous post, we looked at hymns for the forty days of the Great Fast,  which ends on a Friday. The next day is Lazarus Saturday, and after that is Palm Sunday. These two days mark the transition from the Great Fast to the Great and Holy Week of the Lord’s Passion.

We have two traditional hymns for Palm Sunday – one newly composed in English, and one a translation of a Slavonic hymn (which is also used for our A setting of the Cherubic Hymn):

Both of these could use a bit of fine-tuning. Please read the discussion articles and add your thoughts below!

Songs for the Great Fast

The next set of music I’d like to address in the Hymnal Project is our collection of spiritual songs for the Great Fast and Holy Week.

Why this poses a particular problem for us

Much of our para-liturgical hymnody (that is, songs meant to be sung outside of liturgical services)developed in an era when, due to Roman Catholic influence, our primary services for Lent were the Stations of the Cross, and the rosary with Sorrowful Mysteries. Vespers and the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts were neglected, and instead “daily Mass” was celebrated throughout the forty days of the Great Fast.

This led to an over-emphasis on the suffering of Christ on the cross, in all its physical details (“On the morrow you must face the Cross in pain / Slowly from your bloody wounds all life will wane….”), rather than on urging us to repentance and conversion (metanoia).  Of course, meditation on Christ’s love for us as shown in his sufferings can bring us to conversion, but if you look at our liturgical texts, the Passion itself is much more the subject of Great and Holy Week than of the forty days of the Fast.

So where do we start?

We do have a number of hymns which are eminently suitable for the Great Fast itself.

Beneath your compassion (Pod tvoju milost’) is a heart-felt plea to the Mother of God for protection and aid, sung at the end of weekday Vespers during the Great Fast.  This is actually in the back of our Divine Liturgies book, but should be in the hymnal as well, in both English and Slavonic.  We should also have choral versions of this available.

Do not forsake us (Ne opuskaj nas) is another plea for protection, this time directed to Christ. Originally published in Hymns for Great Lent (see below), it is a true Lenten text.

Have mercy on me, O my God is a versified setting of Psalm 50 (that is, a psalm turned into a hymn). This Psalm is the Church’s great song of repentance.

Having suffering (Preterpivyj), originally a Polish hymn which became “naturalized” in Slavonic, has been sung at the end of Lenten services in our church for many years.  In view of the sufferings of the Lord, it makes a plea for mercy and forgiveness.

Follow each link for more information, as well as a discussion of any tricky points in the hymn which need to be addressed before it goes into the hymnal.

Father Levkulic and Hymns of the Great Fast

Many of the Lenten hymns we use were collected by Father William Levkulic and included in the back of his 1978 Divine Liturgies book.  Some years later, he published a larger collection, Hymns for Great Lent. (The booklet itself is undated; does anyone know when it came out?)

This booklet contained more than just Lenten hymns: it also provided music for the Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great, as well as the Typical Psalms and Beatitudes (which as a result became associated in the minds of many with the Fast), several settings of Beneath your compassion, and the troparion of Great and Holy Thursday. Much of this music now exists in officially promulgated settings in our Divine Liturgies book, so perhaps half of Hymns for Great Lent is now out of date for our purposes.

Of the remainder, there are quite a few hymns of the Passion – which, as I argued above, may be better saved for Great and Holy Week – and two hymns for Palm Sunday.  Some of these hymns as well known, while others (as far as I can tell) are rarely sung in our churches.

Hymns of  the Cross

We could, of course, just group all the remaining Lenten hymns under the heading “For use during Holy Week”, but this would give us four hymns for all of Great Lent, and perhaps a dozen to sing on the days of Holy Week – where only a few are likely to be used if the full cycle of liturgical services is held. Without regular Stations of the Cross, we simply have too many “hymns of the crucifixion” to sing in the course of a few hours, once a year.

Or perhaps not. Among the Passion hymns in our repertoire, there are at least three that focus more on the Cross (as a symbol of God’s love and Christ’s victory) and our response to it.  These hymns might be suitable for our Lenten observance, especially from the third Sunday of the Fast (the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross) through the end of the Fast:

At the most holy cross of our Savior

Beneath your cross I stand

Come now all you faithful, look upon the cross

My proposal would be to label these as “hymns of the Cross”, or even include them in the Great Fast section of the hymnal. This would provide a more even balance between the hymns for the forty days of Lent, and the songs we sing during Great and Holy Week.

Your comments welcome below!  You can use this space to provide your insights on the general topic of Lenten hymns, and on any of the specific hymns linked above.

And as always, see the Hymnal Project page for the overall status of the hymnal, and each hymn we are looking at.

 

 

Changes to MCI music in 2019

It’s been twelve full years since the new Divine Liturgy books were published and distributed, and fifteen years since the MCI began regularly distributing music for liturgical services.  With that in mind, I am planning on making a few changes in the coming year.

Communion Hymns – starting in 2005, the MCI distributed music for liturgical Communion Hymn of the day using a full assortment of the various Cherubic Hymn melodies, in order to help cantors and congregations learn them.  But we are long past that point, and so in the New Year, the MCI will only print the TEXT of the Communion Hymn(s) of the day, allowing the  cantor free choice of which melody to use. The exception for now will be a few feast days where the green book has a very specific seasonal melody to use; for now, these will be left in the propers.

Remember that the Cantor’s Companion has a table of ALL the Communion Hymns, and where they can be found in the Divine Liturgies book to each of the different Cherubic Hymn melodies.  You can also use this handout.

Vespers – the current MCI Vespers books were prepared in 2005-2006, and don’t always match the texts, music and rubrics in  our 2007 Divine Liturgies book and 2010 Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts book.  In the coming year, ALL the MCI Vespers books will be getting a much needed revision to match official texts and  correct various typos and infelicities which have been noted over the years.  Stay tuned!

The Hymnal Project – this will continue through 2019, and with luck a draft will go to the Music Commission next Fall.  Watch the blog!

The Harmonization Project – as part of our work toward chant and church music revitalization, in January we will be launching a project to make available harmonized (3- and 4-part) settings of plain chant and spiritual songs, along with materials to help teach and learn choral singing in church.

New music – there is at least some music which we might fruitfully introduce, now that most parishes are used to what is in our Divine Liturgies books (after ten years, I can’t call them new!).  For example, there are settings of the Cherubic Hymn into English which might be added to our repertoire, as well as complete collections of all the Communion Hymns set to each melody. This will probably be a project for later in the year, but I would welcome your thoughts and suggestions.

Online classes – these will continue.  The introductory courses in liturgy and church singing can be taken for free, and I am adding one in the history of our chant.  The remaining courses follow a regular schedule, and can be completed in two years from beginning to end, at a cost of about $35  per month.  Classes on reading in church, the liturgical year, and music for the Great Fast start on January 7.  See the classes page for more information.

As you can see, we have a lot going on – but the goal here is the glorification of God through the singing and worship in our parishes.  Christ is born!

Hymnal roundup: Christmas and Theophany

So the first part of the forthcoming hymnal – material for Christmas and Theophany – is basically complete, and the results are available online in the second edition of the Byzantine Catholic Hymnal for Nativity and Theophany.  Take a look!

There are a couple of pending issues on these:

In the town of Bethlehem could use a new translation, one which includes more than just two of the seven Slavonic verses, avoids bad accents, and which keeps the poetic conceit of ending each verse with some sort of the name, “Mary.”

Jesus came from heaven – I would love to have a complete singable setting of Spas naš narodilsja, which also avoids the theological issues of “Jesus coming from heaven.”

Jasna zorja – this uses the tune of Silent Night, but has a different text. I would like to include this in the hymnal, but in general nothing goes in with a non-English text unless there is also a translation provided (whether singable, as a separate hymn, or a literal English translation to put beneath the Rusyn Slavonic hymn.  Anyone out there who can provide either a literal translation, or some history on this hymn, please drop me a note at mci@archpitt.org!

Silent Night – there IS a literal translation into Magyar (which I have) and one into Slavonic (which I don’t – or rather, the only text I have isn’t clear on how to match the text to the melody). Can anyone provide a text for Ticha noč, or text and music, that have been in actual use?

I am starting to fill in the tables at The Hymnal Project with things to work on for the Great Fast (which we will start on in January), Pascha (March-April), the Mother of God (May-June), and the saints and lesser feasts (July-August). God willing, by September we should have something to hand off to the Music Commission, and perhaps be able to publish it for next Christmas. As always,  your suggestions are welcome!

Traditional “English” Christmas Carols

All the spiritual songs we post on the MCI web site include English language versions – but for Christmas there are a collection of primarily “English” Christmas hymns and carols which were added to the Christmas Eve service book at the request of cantors, as text only (no music), so the words would be available for parishes that want to use them:

  • Angels we have heard on high
  • Hark! the herald angels sing
  • It came upon the midnight clear
  • Joy to the world
  • O come, all ye faithful
  • O little town of Bethlehem
  • Silent night

They can be found here. on pages 13-15, and I plan to incorporate them into the proposed hymnal, as you can see here.

BUT:

  1. I am not convinced ALL of them are needed, or if there are others that should be included.
  2. We should at least consider adding the Rusyn (and perhaps even the Hungarian) texts for Silent night and O come, all ye faithful, since these exist and are sung in some of our parishes.

Your thoughts?

This will wrap up our discussion of Christmas hymns for now, so if you have any suggestions, please make them below!