Ryan McGee
#0
Before I became Eastern Orthodox, I attended a Ruthenian Catholic parish for about 2 years. The hymnody was absolutely beautiful! And moreover, I felt that this was my heart praying to God. So, I ended up moving and attended an ACROD church. Their hymnody was pretty decent, and going from the Ruthenian church to the ACROD church was not much of a difference with the music. Some things were different, but it was mostly the same.
Now, I have moved again, and there is no ACROD church in this area. Only OCA churches. So, I\'m going to an OCA mission church that is just up the road. Great priest, friendly congregation, but it\'s got a different feel to it. The hymnody is much different, too. It\'s not bad, actually quite well done, but it sounds a lot different to my ears and heart.
I don\'t have any videos from my particular churches, but the following two videos give a pretty good example of the difference I\'m hearing:
ACROD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrpQHZIVbJU&feature=related
OCA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyS9sNKJ5MU
Again, I\'m not saying one is better than the other. Both are well-done chant, but I can really get my heart into the first one but not the second. I know the ACROD chant is Carpatho-Rusyn prostopinije. What is the second?
Are there any OCA churches that sound like the ACROD church?
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John Chan
#2
I wasn\'t sure what ACROD music sounded like, so I searched and found this:
[url=http://www.acrod.org/listen.html]listen to hymns from ACROD website here[/url]
The second video you linked is the Paschal hymn, minus the tenor and bass. Perhaps that\'s why it sounds a little \\"lacking\\".
There are links to OCA tones here:
[url=http://www.oca.org/mdmusic.asp?sid=13]OCA music downloads and samples[/url]
Our parish here in NY, as small as the choir is, does a fairly good run of different styles as far as we are able. Our choir director is really good at finding stuff that we can \'pull off\' and she avoids the things that our tiny choir just cannot do.
We recently returned from visiting the Monastery of St John of Shanghai - in Manton CA - where most of the hymns sung there are original compositions of Fr Martin.
[url=http://my.orthodoxcircle.com/profilefamily.php?id=OC/FrMartin&familyname=OC]Fr Martin[/url] \'s profile will open to a recording of his composition of \\"O Joyous Light\\" - give it a whirl.
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MK
#3
The OCA chant is usually Obikhod which just means common chant and began in Russia. heres another link that talks about it. http://commons.orthodoxwiki.org/The_Eight_Tones
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Donna Farley
#4
Check out the Pan-Orthodox Society for the Advancement of Liturgical Music group for expert help with all questions about Orthodox music of various traditions:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/OrthodoxPSALM/
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Paul Barrera
#1
The OCA uses several different chant traditions in any Divine Liturgy:
Obikhod (\\"Common\\" chant) is the standard of parishes with able choirs. Kievan is also used with parishes that have choirs developing liturgical experience. These chants are used for the stikhera in the services and ikos in canons.
Znamenny is usually used for the prokemenon and alleluia verses.
Other forms are used for special troparia - Moscow, \'imperial\' and lots of special composed hymns from 19th century Russia. Most of the 19th century music are variations on the flexibility of the Znamenny tradition, which has evolved, devolved, and changed very much over the last thousand years of Christianity in Eastern Europe.
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Ryan McGee
#5
authio wrote:
The OCA uses several different chant traditions in any Divine Liturgy:
Obikhod (\"Common\" chant) is the standard of parishes with able choirs. Kievan is also used with parishes that have choirs developing liturgical experience. These chants are used for the stikhera in the services and ikos in canons.
Znamenny is usually used for the prokemenon and alleluia verses.
Other forms are used for special troparia - Moscow, 'imperial' and lots of special composed hymns from 19th century Russia. Most of the 19th century music are variations on the flexibility of the Znamenny tradition, which has evolved, devolved, and changed very much over the last thousand years of Christianity in Eastern Europe.
Thanks for the details!
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Paul Barrera
#6
oh a couple things i left out...
Antiphons are often special compositions, but can be part of a chant tradition - esp. Kievan and Obikhod.
If the priest or deacon can harmonize, he will do the bass or tenor part of the chant tradition that parish uses during the priest/deacon parts. If it is a parish with Byzantine chant, he will almost always use Byzantine chant during the litanies, introits, and parts of the longer prayers, and this is very usually a beautiful and edifying thing.
When I consider why we do all of this, I always remember this adage:
\\"Beauty will save the universe.\\"
-Dostoevsky
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CB
#7
StGeorge wrote:
Before I became Eastern Orthodox, I attended a Ruthenian Catholic parish for about 2 years. The hymnody was absolutely beautiful! And moreover, I felt that this was my heart praying to God. So, I ended up moving and attended an ACROD church. Their hymnody was pretty decent, and going from the Ruthenian church to the ACROD church was not much of a difference with the music. Some things were different, but it was mostly the same.
Now, I have moved again, and there is no ACROD church in this area. Only OCA churches. So, I'm going to an OCA mission church that is just up the road. Great priest, friendly congregation, but it's got a different feel to it. The hymnody is much different, too. It's not bad, actually quite well done, but it sounds a lot different to my ears and heart.
I don't have any videos from my particular churches, but the following two videos give a pretty good example of the difference I'm hearing:
ACROD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrpQHZIVbJU&feature=related
OCA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyS9sNKJ5MU
Again, I'm not saying one is better than the other. Both are well-done chant, but I can really get my heart into the first one but not the second. I know the ACROD chant is Carpatho-Rusyn prostopinije. What is the second?
Are there any OCA churches that sound like the ACROD church?
I live in Pennsylvania, in the middle of ACROD/Ruthenian Land (the national ACROD cathedral is only 60 miles from here), and our local parish is OCA. We use some ACROD music, yes, because it\'s a pan-ethnic parish, and there are lots of Rusyns here. I suspect that that\'s a local parish thing, though.
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