There Must not Be Trickery in the Church
An interview with Matushka Olga Sholkova, the
precentor of the Parish Choir of the Church in honour of Pantanassa icon of
Theotokos (Minsk), which has participated in the Royal Voice Festival that year.
Matushka Olga, first of all please tell us
about yourself. Are you a professional musician?
Yes, I
am. I studied in a specialised music school at the Belarusian State Academy of
Music first. The Lord must have brought me there because I had lived in a small
town called Liachavičy, BR, with my grandmother. One day a commission from that
school visited our nursery school. They listened to me and other children and
invited to Minsk to study in that school. My mum is a piano teacher. She had
not taught me to read music but I taught myself to play Beethoven’s Moonlight
Sonata when I was 7.
I studied
in the specialised school until Year 8. Nun Juliania (who was known as Irina
Denisova at that time) was our homeroom teacher all those years. She is a
lively, talented, and creative person. Perhaps, the most essential quality of a
teacher is not just to teach music to children but also to help them to fall in
love with music. We liked our homeroom teacher and everything she was doing. We
are very grateful to her.
After my
graduation from the music college I went on to study in the Academy of Music as
a violinist, and I was invited to play in Minsk Orchestra when I was a
third-year student. It was there that I met my future husband. It must be noted
that both of us had already been attending church services, albeit in different
parishes.
At the
beginning of our family life, our friends invited us to a small St Nicholas
Church located on the outskirts of Minsk, in a suburb called Sokol. There was
an amazing priest — young, ardent, and very enthusiastic — who served in this
railroad carriage cushioned in bricks and made into a church… Father Sergius
Komlik was singing the Akathist to St Nicholas together with the parishioners
one evening. He heard me singing and invited me to sing in the parish choir. It
happened twenty years ago.
There was
a “formidable” book in Church Slavonic called The Octoechos. I was very afraid
of it and I didn’t know how to sing (and even read) it. Little by little I
started learning it, looking for sheet music, learning the tone system and
teaching the girls who sang in the choir, and they in turn taught me. My
academic knowledge wasn’t actually useful here, especially with regard to the
Church rubrics.
How did the choir you are in charge of now
came to be?
When I
realised that my music majors weren’t enough, I went to Minsk Theological
College to become a precentor of a church choir. It seems to me that education
is important in every field. The Theological College provides a knowledge base
that allows us to see the field you specialise in as a single whole: you have
studied theology, liturgics, worship rubrics, and special music subjects.
Studies of theology gave me necessary knowledge to support my ministry as a
choir director, and I am very grateful to my teachers for their hard work,
patience, and love…
After my
husband was made a priest, I continued to sing in St Nicholas Church for
several years. I have been singing in church choir in the Parish in honour of
the Pantanassa icon of Theotokos, where my husband serves as the parish priest,
since 2013.
How did you organise the new choir? How did
you find the singers?
At the
time when our parish was founded, I was Deputy Principal of Minsk Theological
College, so it wasn’t difficult to find the singers — my students helped me.
Later, I was looking for young people who wanted to sing in church. Girls
started coming to our choir first, and then, when I cried unto the Lord, He
sent boys who came to sing with us. Of course, I am very glad to work with
young people, and I thank God for this opportunity.
Who sings in your choir now?
Two girls
have graduated from the Academy of Music where they majored in choir singing.
Two other members of our choir still continue to study in the Academy… There
are singers who do not have a special music education. Thing is, education
isn’t the only requirement, although it is very welcome… I consider my task as
a precentor to not just praise the Lord but also teach my singers proper church
singing.
What do you mean when you speak of “proper
church singing”?
It
appears to me that the singers must learn not just to sing to score but also to
understand what they sing about and to pray during the singing and reading.
First of all, we should teach them the basics of the church singing of the
Russian Orthodox Church – the authentic Russian singing tradition, not author
treatments of church chants. There are church choirs that base their
repertoires on one-part znamenny or Byzantine chant. Our choir was raised on
four-part obikhod chant. We have to be context-aware: there are people with
severe illnesses among our parishioners, so concert singing during worship
doesn’t suit them. In addition, our church is small and wooden. Its
architecture itself prevents us from singing concert-like chants. The singing
style and the architecture of a church must be mutually compatible. It would be
wrong to perform concert scores in a small wooden church with a low ceiling. It
is imbalanced and un-harmonious. There have been many precentor conferences
where choirs are called to sing simpler! With that said, we should sing very
well and be aware of what we sing and for whom we sing it.
Sometimes
we admit non-religious singers to our choir. My task as the precentor is to
really introduce them to the Church. Some of them took communion and started
their spiritual life in our church for the first time.
Is it absolutely impossible to sing in church
without faith?
People
like those will not be able to fit in our choir. We are united around one
common cause; we share common goals and convictions. We are comrades because
one must sing to God “with one mouth”. How can we sing together if we think,
live, and believe in different things? We are not just a choir but a family.
Each person is loved, cherished, and deemed absolutely precious.
That is, church choir is not merely a job for
your singers, is it?
It is an
honour to become a member of the choir. Beside that, it is a great pleasure,
responsibility, and joy.
I can’t
agree with you more, but there are so many professional singers who were taught
in recent years, that it is hardly possible to start singing in a church choir
in Minsk for a newcomer.
Of
course, we precentors in the capital have the chance to select singers for the
choir. However, there is an alternative, too: for instance, all people can sing
the Akathist to the Pantanassa icon of Theotokos together in our church.
Neither a deacon nor a precentor lead the singing. It’s just a priest and all
parishioners singing together. When all people sing and pray together, it
sounds good, consistent, and prayerful.
People
sing in Ss Peter and Paul Cathedral every Sunday. However, when I hear their
singing, although it does give me an impression of unity and community, I would
still prefer a good choir performing a prayerful ancient chant. It makes me
more inclined towards prayer.
The
majority of our singers are females, and most of them are professional singers.
They cannot always perform znamenny chant or Byzantine chant with voices like
theirs. I have to take it into account when choosing the chants for them to
perform. Ancient chants are great for perception and for prayer, especially
when they are performed by male voices. Our choir does sing one-part chants
with ison (as a rule), though very seldom, mostly during the Great Lent.
You are a
precentor and a teacher with big experience, so I would like to ask for your
opinion: what kinds of chants must be dominant in the church? What kind of
singing will help to make every service a worship pleasing unto God. Can there
be various alternatives?
The Lord
has plenty of everything, and all this diversity is wonderful. The fact that
choirs use various traditions and sing in different styles is good. There is an
emphasis on traditional church singing nowadays, instead of concert-like style.
However, church classics is very diverse and rich. On the one hand, author
chants can be unfit for singing in church. On the other hand, there are
excellent pieces, as well as harmonisations of traditional chants, made by
composers, which are beneficial for prayer. It depends on the precentor: her
taste, her abilities, and her spiritual state. Properly speaking, the tandem of
the parish priest and the precentor determines the chants that will be
performed. Some priest dislike polyphonic singing, while others don’t like
simple or monophonic singing. The precentor should obey the priest because she
together with the choir has to create an atmosphere of prayer so that the
priest could lead the worship.
We must
have love between us. Everyone should be in agreement, like a family, instead
of the choir singing as they want, the sanctuary praying as they please, and
the parishioners left alone. There has to be a dialogue of some kind between
the priests and the choir – without breaks or bellyaching, without haste. It’s
our common worship.
The choir
can help to pray, and it can also hinder the prayer. We must not sing to
attract the parishioners’ attention. When people start whispering or looking at
the choir, it means that they do not pray and instead are listening to the
singing, to the singers’ voices or to a new chant… It means that the choir,
frankly speaking, has failed to meet its purpose.
Alternatively,
if there is a celebration of one of twelve major feasts or a patron saint’s day
in your parish, you can choose a chant that fits the solemn moment well. This
is what church education is for: the precentor must be well-versed to know what
and when to sing. This is even more important when you have a small choir or a
trio. You cannot sing something complex and big because it will sound worse
than intended or just plain bizarre.
How many singers are there in your choir?
Most of
the time, there are eight or nine singers. Our choir is small, like our church,
so there is not enough space for many singers. There is a live broadcast of the
service to the church yard for those parishioners who cannot get into the
church. For instance, there were over 300 people who came to church on our
patron’s day (August 30).
Has your choir participated in any contests?
Has it sung anywhere except church services?
We do not
take part in contests, and it’s our deeply held position. We are a
worship-oriented choir. We sing in the Church in honour of the Pantanassa icon
of the Mother of God, and there are quite a few services in our parish every
week. We also sing during services held for the patients of the Oncology Clinic
of the First Clinical Hospital in a designated chapel three times a week.
We seldom
take part in concerts but when we do, we have a definite purpose, such as
collecting donations or promoting spirituality or supporting the volunteers who
cater to cancer patients. Their movement is very active in our parish. We also
sing for patients who stay in hospitals and hospices…
We have
already mentioned that some services in your parish are sung by the flock.
Couldn’t they sing all the services, like they did in ancient times?
According
to the Canon Law of the Church, there have always been special people who sang
in the choir, even in ancient times. There indeed are invariable chants, which
the parishioners can sing during the service. Nevertheless, there are chants
like stichera, troparia, and irmoses, which are variable. The parishioners will
not be capable of singing them. They simply lack knowledge and skills. We
analyse Church Slavonic texts, translate the words and expressions that we
don’t know into contemporary Russian, and learn the rubrics in the choir. That
is, a precentor must also know Church history…
Isn’t it too much responsibility for a
precentor? Is she really so important?
Musicians
are accustomed to criticising each other. They are eager to criticise other
musicians and the conductors and judge if they are good or bad. It is
inappropriate to do so in the Church because the precentor is the main figure
in the church choir and he is responsible for everything: for the selection of
pieces to be performed, for the performance style, and for the overall
character of the service. He is fully responsible before God for the worship
and for the singers. No one must look at someone else with criticism and rebuke
others. Everyone must do what they do to the best of their abilities and with
love but in the end, it’s the precentor who carries the burden of
responsibility for the service. If the choir members aren’t obedient, proper
church singing is impossible. The choir might sound very nice and correct; the
choir may consist of professionals and perform concert-like pieces, but there
will never be a true prayerful singing the way it must be in the Church.
In fact,
singing in a church choir is special. If singers in the choir consider
performance clarity and quality to be more important than the interaction of
the entire choir, than singing “with one mouth”, that’s bad. In my opinion,
peace within the choir is more important than professionalism. The
relationships in the choir are special: one should make concessions and tune
down his selfishness and pride. You can’t have prayer without peace. You cannot
sing in the choir without real Christian relationships. It will be a deception,
and there is no place for deception and trickery in the Church!
St. Elisabeth
Convent
October 13, 2017
