ICON OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY, BY PIMEN SOFRONOV
The TYPICON of
the Orthodox Church’s Divine Services
CHAPTER THREE
THE RUSSIAN TRADITION OF ORTHODOX CHANT
IN COURSE OE TIME English-Speaking Orthodox will doubtless evolve a musical tradition of their own, write the translators of the best collection of the texts of the Orthodox Divine services yet to be published in English, [Archimandrite Kalistos Ware and Mother Mary, The Festal Menaion. Faber and Faber, London, 1969, p.13.] “which will take its place alongside those of Greece, Russia, and the other Orthodox nations. As yet no such tradition has had time to develop; and Orthodox of English language must therefore draw for the present upon some existing musical heritage within Orthodoxy. The best adapted for this purpose seems to be that of Russia. Byzantine chant is too intricate: if it is to be used, then the stress and rhythm of the Greek original must be preserved almost exactly in English translation, and this raises insuperable difficulties. But Russian music is far more flexible; and in particular the simpler Russian monastic chants can easily be adapted to an English text. We have kept this possibility in mind as we made our translations."
This may come as something of a surprise to one who has heard the magnificent choirs of some of the Russian cathedrals, whether in Russia or abroad, with their elaborate renditions of recently-composed melodies; where is the “simple monastic chant” to be found in anything so complicated? In fact, however, a large part of what is sung even by cathedral choirs is merely a harmonization of more or less intact traditional melodies, and the basic tradition of Russian church music is indeed a simple chant. It is nevertheless true that the simplicity and expressiveness of the traditional liturgical chant are not often heard today, and the return to the use of this chant is an important part of Orthodox zealotry. Fortunately, in this as in the other aspects of Orthodox zealotry — traditional iconography, patristic theology, monastic spirituality, etc. <107> --the standard has already been set for us in the great flowering of traditional Orthodoxy in 19th-century Russia, and there is no need for us to speculate upon a lost tradition. The tradition of Russian liturgical chant is still alive, and there are books which contain its musical notation. A little study of the Russian traditional chant will reveal that it is not at all difficult to begin singing it (there being no “parts” to learn), and that it is admirably suited to the needs of the present-day Orthodox mission, affording the opportunity even for those with very little musical knowledge to take part in the Orthodox Divine services and thereby to be spiritually uplifted and enriched.
A brief history of Orthodox chant in Russia is presented in the introduction to one standard collection of notes for traditional chant, The Psalmists’ Companion, which was published in three editions in pre-Revolutionary Russia (up to 1916) and was reprinted abroad by Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, New York, in 1959 (second reprinting, 1971).
"The basic ecclesiastical chant which has been accepted by the Russian Church as the most faithful expression of the religious feelings of the praying Christian was worked on and poured out into a definitive form over the course of whole centuries; millions of people have sung it and trained their feelings in it... After the baptism of the holy Russian Prince Vladimir, the Russian land received the Orthodox Christian Faith from the Church of Byzantium — Greece —and together with the Faith it received the chant which was used in the Byzantine Greek Church, that is, the chant of the Eight Tones (Octoechos) which was brought into final form by St. John Damascene.
"The original Russian ecclesiastical chant which has been preserved in manuscripts beginning with the 11th and 12th centuries is known by the name of ‘Great Znamenny Chant,’ a name which it received from the ‘signs’ in which the musical notation was written without use of lines... From the 11th to the 17th centuries in Russia there was no chant except for the Znamenny... At the end of the 16th century the Great Znamenny Chant began to change and become simplified. This occurred independently in the north and in the south of Russia. In the north the simplified Znamenny Chant received the name ‘Lesser Znamenny,’ and in the south, ‘Kievan.’ In the second half of the 17th century to these chants were added those received from Orthodox countries: ‘Greek’ and ‘Bulgarian’ Chant... A yet more simplified and abbreviated <108> form of the Kievan, Greek, and Bulgarian Chants is known by the name of 'Ordinary Chant.’ In addition, each locality may have its own local Ordinary Chant with special local variations...
"The original form of Russian ecclesiastical chant was monophonic (unisonal). All the ancient manuscript notes for church music that have been preserved are only for one voice. Choral harmony was introduced into the practice of the Russian Church only in the 17th century, when the Church Authority, in the absence of any explicit directions regarding this in the Church’s Typicon, addressed the Eastern Patriarchs with a question concerning the permissibility of introducing harmonized singing into church practice; in 1668 a document permitting this was received from the Patriarchs. At the present time in the Russian Church it is permitted to use not only harmonized versions of the ancient chants, but also newly-composed works...
"Nonetheless, the basic hymnody of the Orthodox Russian Church remains, as before, the ancient hymnody of the Eight Tones, which is preserved in the Znamenny, Kievan, Greek and Bulgarian Chants."
One of the leading zealots for the restoration of the traditional Russian chanty which had become obscured owing to the fascination with choral music in the 18th and 19th centuries, was Metropolitan Arsenius of Novgorod, the New Martyr, who convoked several Conventions of church music teachers just before the Revolution and sponsored the publication of The Psalmist’s Companion. In another part of the introduction to this book he himself speaks of the need to return to the true Orthodox tradition of hymnody in the Russian Church:
“Go through the whole series of stichera in the Octoechos and the Triodia which are appointed for the feast days, and you will see what a rich treasure this is, which has been given to us as a testament from the Greek Church by her great chief hierarchs, the preservers of her dogmas and traditions, the skillful creators of her order of Divine services. And the people love to sing, read, and hear them, because the soul of the people draws from them instruction concerning the chief dogmas of the Christian faith. In the first centuries of Christianity they served as the chief weapon in the battle against the heretical teachings of the sectarians, who also used this means to spread their teachings among the people, by means of hymns and songs in their prayer meetings. The same means are used in our times also by the teachers of various mystical and rationalistic sects, who compose their own hymns in the form of incompetent adaptations from a foreign model. After this, can we disdain in our times this powerful means for the knowledge of the Faith and the repelling of every kind of sectarianism?...
“We have forgotten the very foundation of church singing: the Eight Tones. The Higher Ecclesiastical Authority in the person of the Holy Synod, as well as individual hierarchs, has fought from the beginning of the 19th century, and continues to fight, against this decline of church singing... Little by little we had lost the taste for the ancient chants... Not too long ago in Russian society a new interest in the ancient ecclesiastical chant was uncovered. Russian society has begun to understand that the only durable culture is one erected on the stable foundation of the past. Now schools have been opened to teach the ancient chants... But each one of us also must work in his own place so as to arouse interest in this chant.” <109>
And so, in fulfillment of this aim or the best tradition of Russian Orthodoxy, which has been reafirmed by the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Church Outside or Russia, let us in the Orthodox missionary held also strive to know and to arouse zeal for the authentic chant of Russian Orthodoxy. The present time is ideal for this, in that the missionary movement in English is little developed as yet and its communities are generally small, facts which facilitate the use of the traditional chant, which is so much simpler than the modern choral renditions of Russian church music. One need not, to be sure, adopt a tone of "super-zealousness” and condemn the common choral renditions as “un-Orthodox,” “uncanonical,” or whatever. It is enough to begin to know and to love the authentic ancient chant, perhaps at first in one of its simpler forms of recent centuries, and to keep in mind that, as Metropolitan Arsenius has noted, “in the hymns of the Divine services we must give preference to the melodic line above harmony: the latter pleases, but it does not evoke a prayerful attitude. With singing where the melody is emphasized, there is as it were a prayerful silence in church. Not so when harmony is emphasized.”
Those who advocate today a return to the ancient Russian chant do not insist on the absolute abolition of harmony in all cases, but only point out the monophonic ideal of traditional Russian church music, and also note that not only is harmony foreign to the spirit of this music, but even the particular form of harmony used in church music today is purely a product of the Western musical tradition and is quite different, for example, from the harmony employed in Russian folksongs. Leading scholars of the traditional chant have suggested a simplification, particularly in the conditions of the Russian Diaspora, whereby 3-part or even 2-part harmony would be used by church choirs, with the second voice following parallel to the melody a third above or below it, thereby abolishing any element of arbitrariness in the harmony. [See, for example, A. A. Swan, “Russian Church Singing,” in Orthodox Way for 1952 (Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, N.Y.), page 151; and I. Gardner, “on the Synodal Books of Notes for the Divine Services,” Orthodox Way for 1971, pp. 114-5. (Both in Russian.)] Monophony, of course, always remains the ideal, and even those whose ear has long been accustomed to harmony can sense the great beauty and power especially of the most ancient Znamenny Chant when it is properly sung monophonically. A number of pre-Revolutionary Russian churches preserved the monophonic tradition when singing Znamenny Chant, and even the Moscow Synodal Choir sang this Chant in unison.
The musical notation of Russian church chant which we shall give in later chapters will be for one voice only—the melodic line, which is the only part of the Church's musical tradition that has been handed down from the earliest times. The notation itself is not that of the standard music books of the modern West, but rather that of the official Moscow Synodal books of music which was used in die Russian Church from the 16th century until the Revolution. With a few words of explanation, this system of notation will be seen to be actually much simpler than the standard musical notation of today, and it is also better capable of expressing some characteristics of traditional Orthodox chant which do not exist in modern Western music.
