Tag: Hymnal

O who loves Nicholas the saintly?

The next spiritual song for the hymnal project is the popular hymn to our holy father Nicholas, bishop and wonderworker:

O who loves Nicholas the saintly?

Follow this link for the current state of the discussion, covering the Slavonic text, a few possible tweaks the the English, a new verse, and possible harmonizations.  Add your thoughts using the comment block below!

(I will admit that the commenting mechanism not working out QUITE as well as I had hoped.  I am considering the option of having weekly working sessions, using a phone/web conference.  If so, they will be on Thursday evenings.)

Also – now is a really good time to add your suggestions for any additional Christmas hymns we should work on.

Hymnal Project: Spiritual Songs for the Nativity of the Lord

Please add your suggestions to the blog entry for the Nativity hymns, or send me a note at mci@archpitt.org. Thanks!

 

O Father Nicholas

In the work on the hymnal project so far, we have considered:

  • a liturgical refrain turned into a spiritual song (“Come, O Jesus”)
  • an old (1970’s) paraliturgical hymn (“The Ancient Prophecies”), which required some work and benefited greatly from collaborative input
  • a more recent paraliturgical hymn (“Truly, Zion’s People”)

All three of these were in English, and for the time of the St. Phillip’s Fast (November 15-December 24).

Next, I’d like to take a look at our first hymn which has both Rusyn Slavonic and English Versions: the first of our two hymns to the bishop and wonder-worker Nicholas, archbishop of Myra in Lycia, whose feast is December 6.

This hymn was included in both the 1978 Divine Liturgies book and the MCI Byzantine Catholic Hymnal – but as you’ll see in the article, it has some issues to resolve before I can consider it in final form.

Read the following web page (which ends up covering quite a few topics, including two other hymns) and post your comments and questions here!

O Father Nicholas

Truly, Zion’s People

Here is another hymn for the Philippian Fast – this one by J. Michael Thompson, the founding director of the Metropolitan Cantor Institute.

This piece comes from a larger collection containing hymns for each Sunday of the liturgical year, as well as weekday and feast-day hymns.

QUESTION: would you rather see “new songs” such as these included in a comprehensive hymnal, or should there be separate books for “old” and “new” hymns?

Spiritual Song: Come, O Jesus

Here is the FIRST discussion item for the Hymnal Project:

Come, O Jesus

Follow this link to see what we have to say about this hymn, and contribute to the article by leaving your comments here.

The basic format for each of these articles will be:

  • Introduction
  • Current version (if there is one)
  • Original language text, if there is one
  • English language text, with discussion
  • Melody or melodies, with discussion
  • Do we include in the hymnal?

This format may evolve, of course.  That, too,is open for discussion here!

Guidelines for a New Hymnal

In order to arrive at your destination, you first have to decide what it IS. With that in mind, I’d like to propose some general guidelines for the content of a new hymnal for the Byzantine Catholic Church in the US.

  • It should contain all the hymns routinely sung in our churches, in both English and (where appropriate) the original languages such as Rusyn and Hungarian, with suitable pronunciation helps, and literal translations (though these may be made available separately rather than in the hymnal itself).
  • Hymns in English should be singable, correctly accented, and accord with our theology and spirituality.
  • All text and music should be properly credited where the originator(s) can be identified.
  • The hymnal should be organized in such a way that it is easy to locate desired hymns.

In addition:

  • When a hymn has several verses, there should be regular: that is, slurs should occur in particular places, and accents should not move from one verse to the next.
  • When the same melody is used for several different hymns, the same basic form of the melody should be used.
  • Notated music should be clear: in particular, any harmonization should be in a supplement rather than in the main hymnal.

Please post your thoughts and suggestions below!

Spiritual Songs for the Nativity

What are spiritual songs?

For more than ten years, our Church has suffered from the lack of a collection of our spiritual songs (I prefer than term to paraliturgical hymns, although they mean the same thing – music for singing by the people, on spiritual themes, but not part of the Liturgy itself).

Last year, the Metropolitan Cantor Institute was asked by our Music Commission to begin work on such a collection. This project officially starts today, with spiritual songs for the Nativity season, along with hymns for Saint Nicholas and Theophany.

What you can do to help

Here is a list of songs for the Nativity season (from November 14 to January 6) that I am planning to work on over the next  month.  Each each song, these will be a thread on this blog covering its history, versions, music, and translations, along with any known issues we ought to resolve.

Please ADD (in a comment) anything you think should be on this list.

Please COME BACK periodically and add your thoughts on each hymn as the work progresses.

I hope to have a final version of this collection done one week before the feast of the Nativity.

Music for the Nativity Fast
Come, O Jesus (moleben responsory)
The Ancient Prophecies

Saint Nicholas
O Father Nicholas (Otce Nikolaje)
O who loves Nicholas the saintly (O kto kto)

Nativity
Angels from heaven (So nebes anhel)
Eternal God, through gates of birth (Boh predvichnyj)
God the Lord eternal shows himself to us (Hospod, Boh predvichnyj)
God’s Son is B0rn (Boh sja razhdajet)
Heaven and earth now welcome their Redeemer (Nebo i zeml’a)
In the town of Bethlehem (V Viflejemi novina)
Jesus came from heaven (Spas nas narodilsjaa)
Joyful news to the whole world (Nova radost’ stala)
Joyful tidings come out day (Radost nam sja javl’ajet)
Rejoice, all nations, God has become man (Christos rodilsja)
Wondrous news to the whole world (Divnaja novina)
You three kings (Trije Cari)

Theophany
The choirs of angels sing (Anhely sohlasno)
To Jordan’s water

Have Mercy on Me, O My God

This week, I’m beginning a new series on non-liturgical songs for use before and after church services, as part of the MCI’s contribution toward a new hymnal for the Byzantine Catholic Church.

Singing during the Great Fast

Our first “official” set of spiritual songs for Lent is probably the set in the back of the 1978 Levkulic Divine Liturgy book:

  • The sentence is passed (Uže dekret)
  • Christ our King, who reigns with justice (Christe Carju spravedlivyj)
  • In Gethsemene’s Darkness (Jehda na smert’ hotovilsja)
  • Beneath your cross I stand (Pod krest’ tvoj staju)
  • Come now, all you faithful (Prijd’ite voschvalim)
  • Now do I go to the Cross (Idu nyni ko krestu)
  • Having suffered the passion (Preterp’ivyj)

A later book from Father Levkulic and cantor Jerry Jumba, Hymns of the Great Fast (1984), added music for the Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil as well as:

  • At the most holy cross (Krestu tvojemu)
  • Earth and heaven mourn (Nebo, zemlja sotvorinjnja)
  • O my Jesus, suffering in pain (O Isuse poranennj) – two versions
  • Rejoice today (Radujsja zilo) – for Palm or Flowery Sunday
  • Have mercy on me, O my God
  • Do not forsake us (Ne opuskaj nas)
  • O my people, my people (L’udi moji)
  • O my God, you are so merciful (O Bože, moj milostivyj)
  • O soul so sinful (Hljan’ duše hrišna)
  • So boundless is her sorrow (Stala Matia zarmuščenna)
  • The grieving mother Stradaljna Mati)
  • We venerate, O Christ (Poklanjajusja moj Christe)
  • O Son of David – for Palm or Flowery Sunday

I hope to look at each of these over the next three weeks. But what these have in common (for the most part) are that they are not so much Lenten hymns, as hymns of the Passion of Christ.

In our tradition, broadly speaking, the texts and prayers of the liturgical services tell us what we are about. And the forty days of the Great Fast are mostly about repentance and conversion, NOT on the sufferings of Christ.  Those are much more the focus of Holy Week itself, which comes after the forty days of Lent.

But there is one hymn in Hymns for Great Lent that definitely “works” for the entire period of Lent: a versified setting of Psalm 50, King David’s psalm of repentance.

 

 

  • The original was in 2/4 meter, but only fit into that meter with difficult. Instead, I re-barred it in a chant style, still keeping a fairly duple meter.
  • I changed the opening note from G to  E, following an oral tradition in a number of parishes. This has two advantages: it gives a gives the piece a better minor-key sonority, and it allows each verse to begin and end on the same note.
  • In three places an extra note had to be added to put an accent in the right place. Rather  than complicate the music at the top, I marked those places with an asterisk (*) and added just the problematical music at the bottom.

Whoever leads this is still responsible for SINGING the accents correctly, but I think it works, and I plan to add it to the proposed draft hymnal.

There is one spot that doesn’t sing as well as I would like.  In the last verse, “a heart contrite with humbleness” requires work to fit it to the first ten notes of the last phrase. It CAN be done, but it’s awkward. Any suggestions for a text that works better?

Please append your thoughts below!  Do you have any Lenten hymns we should talk about that are not listed above?

“To Jordan’s Water” – understanding the issues with a new hymnal

A paraliturgical hymn that was sung recently in many of our parishes, “To Jordan’s Water”, illustrates several of the issues we are facing with a new hymnal for the Byzantine Catholic Church.

Continue reading ““To Jordan’s Water” – understanding the issues with a new hymnal”

First steps toward a hymnal

At the request of the Inter-Eparchial Music Commission, the Metropolitan Cantor Institute is sponsoring initial work on a hymal – that is, a collection of paraliturgical hymns for singing before and after the Divine Liturgy, and on other church occasions as well.

On Saturday, October 2, 2016, we held a workshop on paraliturgical hymns at which we sang through a variety of our hymns, and discussed what might go into the proposed hymnal.  A complete recording of this workshop is now available, along with the handout that was distributed.

Please take a listen, and if you have thoughts on the subject, or things you’d like to suggest go into the new collection, please leave a comment here!