There are few
ministries of the Church that require the devotion and the dedication that
church singing does. You who lead the singing as well as you who follow the
leader are precious gifts to your parishes. You are as important to the parish
as is the holy table itself. As there can be no liturgy without the holy table,
there can be no liturgy without you. This is not to compliment you or increase
your pride, but rather to put a little fear and awe in you, so you know what
your responsibilities are. Church singing is not a hobby. Being a choir
director is not something one does for personal fulfillment. It is first and
foremost a duty, a duty of those to whom God has given musical talents. It is
sinful, in my opinion, for someone not to sing who has been given the gift to
sing. Sinful! You join the angels, and do that which the angels do perpetually.
That’s not an interest, avocation, or a hobby; it is a duty. Angels were
created to serve and to praise, and you have been given voices for that same
purpose.
I love to remind
our church singers of the fact that we physically jump into something that goes
on perpetually. We jump in and join with the angels for a couple of hours, and
then we jump back out. The liturgy does not begin with “Blessed is the Kingdom”
and your “Amen,” and it doesn’t end with “Through the prayers of our Holy
Fathers” and your “Amen.” Those phrases only define the time that we
participate in the liturgy which goes on perpetually before the throne of God.
St. John Chrysostom
tells us that while the priesthood is something that takes place here on earth,
and is an ordinance established here on earth, yet it is something that is
super-heaven, because the priest and the deacon do that which angels dare not
do. The angels stand in awe, not at the priest or bishop or deacon, but at what
they’ve been permitted to do by God’s grace. If John Chrysostom wrote a book on
choirs, as he did on the priesthood, I’m sure he would say that while being a
choir member, cantor, or reader is something earthly, it is also something
heavenly. That the angels stand there, perhaps not in awe, but at least with a
little bit of jealousy, because you who are flesh and blood have been called
upon to serve in the same ministry that they have been created for.
We jump in and we
jump out. Some of us jump in on time and some of us jump in a little bit late.
In my opinion, being in church for that first “Amen” is a sign, an indication
of one’s humility. And where humility is, indeed, a virtue, its opposite is a
sin. The sin is not disturbing other people. The other people in the church are
not the object of our worship. It is rude, but not necessarily sinful, to
disturb other people. But it is sinful to be presumptuous and prideful that one
can jump in and sing with thousands of archangels and ten-thousands of angels
at one’s own whim. “This Sunday I feel like singing, and next Sunday I won’t
sing. I want to sit with my wife.” Leave that Hallmark—card kind of
sentimentality for restaurants, concerts, and cinemas. You sing with angels,
that’s secondary to sitting with any husband or wife or children. We stand
before the throne of God, and when we realize that, every other consideration,
all of our own personal likes and dislikes, become secondary. I’m giving my
opinion now, and hopefully it humbles all of us. It’s a humiliation, that in
its end, should be something that elevates us, that exalts us, something that
gives us wing.
Now, I would like
to share with you some of the writings of the Fathers of the Church, and some
homilies on the canons about chanting in Church.
The choir leads the
congregation in prayer. The invitation to prayer is put out by the deacon or
archdeacon. The deacon invites prayer, but the choir leads the congregation in
the prayer itself. First I will share the words of St. Meletios the Confessor.
He says:
“Prayer with
musical chants and melodies, loudly voiced tumult and shouting is heard by men;
but before God our Maker, the prayer which proceeds from a man’s conscience and
God-imbued intellect stands before God as a welcome guest, while the former is
cast out.”
There are choirs
which make “loudly voiced tumult and shouting.” Yet I do not wish to imply, and
I know that St. Meletios does not imply, that aesthetic beauty is the only
criterion for chanting. Here is a little story. Once upon a time there was a
Monastery of St. George, and the Abbott was blessed with monks that did not
have such wonderful voices. The annual pilgrimage on the Feast Day of St.
George was not all that impressive with the rather awful sounds coming from the
choir. So the Abbott called together all the monks and said, “Look this year I
am going to invite the famous choir from the cathedral for the Feast.” Word
went out and thousands of people came to St. George Monastery for the feast day
and it was a glorious day. The famous choir from the cathedral was in great
form and used its best voices. The Abbott was thrilled and even the humble
monks who were not allowed to sing that day were thrilled. Following the day’s
festivities the monks went off to sleep, and the Abbott was sound asleep after
all the excitement of the day. St. George came to him in his sleep and said,
“Father, I think you missed my feast day! Today is my feast day and here you
are, you didn’t do anything. Have I not blessed you this past year?” And the Abbott
said, “Oh, Saint George, I do not know where you were, but we had a glorious
feast today. How could you not be here?” St. George said, “I was in the church
and I saw a great multitude of people, but I heard nothing.”
Here is a quote
from St. Anatoloy Zertsaley of Optina, written to a new choir member:
“The fact that you
have started to chant is not important. The roosters out on the farm sing like
anything. They will drown you out right away. But you are not a rooster, and
you are not a hen. You have to remember that your singing should not be like
that of a rooster, but like that of angels, that is done, with humility, fear,
ardent love, and self reproach. Such is true and God-pleasing chanting. But the
vainglorious kind, designed to please not God but men, is worse than those of
roosters. And this is precisely what you did not specify for me, that is, whom
did you come closer to in imitating, when you chant, the angels or a hen?”
St. Simon the
founder of Simones Petras Monastery on Mt. Athos says that “at the church
services we should chant with solemnity and devoutness, and not with disorderly
vociferation.”
And St. Nikodemos
of the Holy Mountain counsels us, saying,
According to Saint
Nikodemos, a sign of humility and contrition is that one does not chant or pray
with an “unduly loud voice” interpreting the text. He says, “Chanters should
psalmodize in a reverent and orderly manner, with fear of God and piety and
contrition.”
"Pray gently
and calmly. Sing with understanding and rhythm. Then you will soar like a young
eagle, high in the heavens," wrote St. Evagrios.
“He, the church
singer, should chant without hurrying and without dragging, and he should
pronounce the words clearly and distinctly. He should chant simply and
reverently in a monotone, without expressing his feelings by modulations and
changes of voice. Let us leave the holy prayers to act on the listeners by
their own spiritual power. The desire to convey to the bystanders one’s own
feelings is a sign of vanity and pride.”
St. Elias the
Presbyter counsels us, saying, “When through continuous prayer the words of the
psalms and hymns are brought down into the heart, then the heart like good soil
begins to produce by itself, various flowers: roses, the vision of the
incorporeal realities; lilies, the luminosity of corporeal realities; and
violets, the many judgments of God, difficult to understand.” There are the
gifts, the graces that come to the church singer who sings with humility and
contrition, who leaves aside his or her own personality and idiosyncrasies.
Source: http://www.antiochian.org/node/22680
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