Thy Resurrection, O Christ our Savior, the
angels in heaven hymn.
Enable us also on earth to glorify Thee in
purity of heart.
In trying
to discern some of the truth about the phenomenon of Orthodox sacred music, it
helps to start at the beginning. Where does sacred music begin? For Orthodox
Christians who with a simple faith accept the authority of Holy Scripture and
Holy Tradition, the true origin of sacred music is not to be discovered in
ancient liturgical manuscripts or in passing references to psalmody in the New
Testament and early Fathers, but is to be found in the singing of the angelic
choir, those first-created beings who have been chanting fitting praises to God
since before the beginning of the visible creation. Herein, according to the
witness of Scripture and the Saints throughout the ages, lies the archetypal
pattern of sacred music. It is as a participant in the angelic singing that
mankind — by virtue of Christ’s Incarnation, whereby ‘the things of earth join
chorus with the heavens, — becomes able once again to offer right worship
(orthodoxia) to the Creator in purity of heart. I suggest, therefore, that we
use the singing of the angels — and, specifically, three essential
characteristics of it — as a starting point for our ‘small entrance’ into understanding
the phenomenon of Orthodox sacred music.
One
essential characteristic of angelic song that is evident in Scripture is that
the music of the angels is exclusively vocal, that it is sung in some manner,
usually with discernible words, and that it is thus a direct musical offering
of the angels’ bodily and rational nature (according to the angelic sense of a
‘body’). The popular Western concept of angels accompanying their singing with
harps and other instruments is unknown in Scripture and Orthodox tradition.
This is important because, in exclusively singing the praises of God, the
angels offer Him something essential to themselves rather than making an
offering by way of a medium extrinsic to their nature. This is one key reason
why Orthodox Christian liturgical tradition (including that of the West, until
the Middle Ages) does not permit the use of musical instruments in the divine
services.
For us
humans, this exclusively vocal aspect of sacred music is all the more
important, because the added dimension of our fleshly and fallen psychosomatic
nature — i.e., ‘I’m tired;’ ‘I’m sick;’ ‘My voice isn’t warmed up;’ ‘I don’t
read music;’ — makes it singularly difficult to sing well without the aid of
instruments. Every church singer knows this. Thus, the concerted effort
involved in uniting mind and body in order to praise God with the voice alone
becomes an important ascetical labor, one which serves to purify and strengthen
church singers in their work — provided they have the will to rise towards
angelic perfection.
We can
also see from Scripture and Holy Tradition that in addition to being vocal,
angelic music is devotional in nature; it is a direct movement of the angels’
inner being towards God, an expression of their zeal, reverence, ardor, and
love for their Maker. This means, among other things, that the angels do not
offer praise to God mechanically or out of mere necessity (‘I just sing because
there’s no one else to do it!’), but from a free and willing spirit. God may
have created the angels to serve Him and praise Him — this is also why He
created man — but He endowed them with the
freedom to choose not to do this, as we will see shortly. In other words, the
angels sing praises to God because they actively love Him and wish to honor
Him, not just because it’s their job, or because they happen to like singing,
or because it’s what they’ve ‘always done.’
It is a
sad fact that, all too often, musicians in churches today fall far short of
this heartfelt angelic devotion in their musical offerings to God, singing
bland music in a mechanical, lackadaisical, and inattentive manner, doing what
they do mostly out of habit or mere practical necessity, making but little
effort to imbue their singing with zeal, reverence, divine ardor, and love. If
our songs are to be truly sacred, we must struggle against this kind of
spiritual inertia — both in the style of music we sing and the manner in which
we sing it — offering to God instead the first-fruits of our energies with
eagerness and warmth of heart.
In
addition to the two aforementioned characteristics, angelic song possesses a
third all-important quality which is deserving of our attention and emulation:
watchfulness. For human beings, this watchfulness encompasses many aspects of
music-making, from the proper composition of church hymns to being on guard
against the inattentiveness and indifference that we were just speaking about
before. We’ll explore some of these aspects in a more focused way in another
chapter. However, in relation to the angels — and vital for us as well — the
quality of watchfulness that must be mentioned here is watchfulness
specifically against vainglory. Let us look for a moment at a passage from the
Synaxarion for November 8, the feast of the Holy Archangels, that deals
directly with this subject:
In the
first moments of the creation of the invisible world, the whole celestial
hierarchy, a number beyond all telling, was rejoicing in the divine light and
leading a sacred round, simple and without end, while chanting with a mighty
voice: Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts: heaven and earth are full of His
glory (Is. 6:3). But then Lucifer, the heavenly spirit of highest rank who was
nearest to God and all-shining with His light, became proud of the advantages
he had been given and wanted to be equal to God. He said within himself: I will
ascend into heaven; I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will
ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High (Is.
14:13–14). He was not evil by nature but, in his pride, chose to revolt against
Him who brought him into being. He was the first to refuse the good and to
choose evil. He turned away from the light to sink into the darkness of
godlesseness. As soon as he uttered these words, he was cast down into the
depths of Hell, tearing asunder the heavens as he fell and carrying down with
him a multitude of angels of every order, whose chief he became. But the
Archangel Michael, Prince of the Heavenly Hosts, was strengthened mightily in
the divine light by reason of his humility and due deference to his Creator. On
seeing the dreadful gap left in the heavens by the fall of so great a
multitude, the Archangel leapt into the breach and rallied the faithful Angels with
the cry: Let us attend! That is to say: ‘Let us be on our guard! Let us be
vigilant; for we, who have been raised up to stand before God, are of His
making! Let us remember that we are servants! Let us strive for self-knowledge,
seeing what a fall those who wanted to be equal to God have had!
We see
here that with the fall of Lucifer and his minions the angels learned the
necessity of being watchful over their thoughts, of being on guard against
pride and vainglory. Lucifer’s sin was that he chose to worship himself in
place of God, to ascribe glory to himself rather than to Him that had endowed
him with glory. Thus the angels learned that no matter how radiant and glorious
they may be, no matter how perfect their song, they must always acknowledge
that they did not bring themselves or any of their good qualities into being,
and they are ever watchful against any thought that may distract them from this
awareness. How vital this is for those whose duty it is to sing in church! It
is a constant temptation for any church musician who enjoys even the smallest
measure of apparent success in his musical endeavors to ascribe the glory to
his own efforts. Such vainglory is a spiritual poison, and it will render our
efforts useless more swiftly than anything else. The lesson of the Archangel
Michael bears frequent and emphatic repetition: ‘Let us attend! Let us be on
our guard! Let us be vigilant; for we, who have been raised up to stand before
God [as every singer has been who offers praise in the divine services], are of
His making! Let us remember that we are servants!’
The three
essential qualities, then, that typify angelic song — and consequently the
Orthodox Christian tradition of liturgical singing patterned after it — are:
- it is exclusively vocal, and is thus
connected in an unmediated way with a creature’s bodily and rational nature;
- it arises out of a free and genuine devotion
to God, and is not a product of indifference, self-interest, or mere necessity;
and
- it is imbued with an all-pervasive spirit of
watchfulness, lest the worship of God be distorted into idolatry and
self-worship, becoming (at best) fruitless, and (at worst) spiritually harmful
to oneself and others.
Aside
from conforming to Orthodox Tradition in an external canonical sense (that is,
for example, a hymn uses a canonical liturgical text), I assert that if any
liturgical music is to be considered ‘sacred’ in the full spiritual sense —
that is, God-pleasing and God-befitting, as well as possessing the power to
‘fan the spark’ of divine grace within the heart — it must possess all three of
these qualities without exception, both in the style of its composition and in
the manner of its execution. Any liturgical singing that purports to be sacred
music and yet lacks or distorts one of these three essential qualities
necessarily falls short of the archetypal primordial song of the angels. Such
music, though it may possess many admirable qualities, must be considered a
‘song of men,’ and not in harmony with the true Orthodox tradition of angelic
sacred music that has been resounding before the throne of God since the
foundation of the world.
Source: https://www.orthodoxartsjournal.org/a-small-entrance-into-orthodox-christian-sacred-music-the-song-of-the-angels/
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