We have all seen the prolific “Coexist” bumper sticker with the Star of David, a Cross, and various other religious/belief system symbols, and I guess most of us would agree that coexisting with others is a good thing. However, FEAR THE FALSE WISDOM OF THE BUMPER STICKER!

Coexist? That means that you are only existing with others doing only the same. Existing is just being, neither going forward or backward, and so to coexist is to co-be. What a simple and trite solution. Christ did not say “Coexist,” he said “Love thy neighbor,” asking us not to just live in a flat state of being, but to love our neighbor as ourselves. Funny how this higher calling doesn’t get on bumpers as much…

In the United States, the Liturgical music tradition seems to be almost unanimous in that there are Western choirs and Byzantine chanters. Only in rare cases are there slight deviations. Both groups are usually anemic or at most they are average musical groups, although there are a rare few who are good. Don’t be offended. It’s ok your choir does not sound like the three tenors, or a Catholic boys choir. Most communities don’t, but that’s not what is important here.

In the communities I have been in or visited, I have seen a very common theme throughout: There are choir people and there are chanter people. There is coexisting and nothing more all around the county. Why this has come to be is another completely different post, but the way to deal with it is simple. You must encourage one another with love. Sure, one side from the other is different. Sure, some may prefer to sing with only one group or the other, but you must do more than coexist or your groups will be doomed to the wisdom of the bumper sticker. Drop your ego, encourage and love your neighbor, and realize that we can do more and can do better than a bumper sticker.

Thank you for reading! As always, you can find me on facebook (please message me and let me know you found me here), twitter, or by email at david@ecclesiasticalconsulting.com

If you have been following the church calendar and have been looking ahead, you may notice we only have one more Sunday until the Triodion. It sets up one of the most intense and sometimes most difficult time of the year: Great Lent. The Triodion, with the tiered fasting and Biblical lessons, allows us to pull the great fast into focus. Yet for church musicians, part of our focus in the fast is on the various musical/liturgical challenges throughout lent and Holy week.

My lesson today is simple: it is time to prepare! The triodion itself should be prepared for, and the variability of hymns including the exhausting-ness of Holy Week, are in our sights. Your weekly rehearsals (you’re having weekly rehearsals right?) should start focusing more and more on the coming months. Chipping away at it slowly over weeks is the only way to be successful. So this week, work on whatever you usually work on, but budget a significant amount of time to The Triodion and Great Lent. You, your priest, and your community will be so thankful and more spiritually enriched. Well-performed Lenten music can be some of the most spiritually edifying of the year.

Thank you again for reading! As always, you can find me on facebook (please message me and let me know you found me here), twitter, or by email at david@ecclesiasticalconsulting.com

This week, I started a new beginners’ class at our church. We had a decent turn-out and at the end of the class, I had the students hold ison (the moveable “drone” of chant) to a few hymns (Doxolgy in tone 1 and Agios o Theos in mode 2) and it got me thinking. Most parishioners, and even some clergy (and dare I say chanters!?) do not understand the immense importance or role of the ison (isokratema). I thought I would tell you, the EC reader, briefly about its importance to us as Orthodox Christians. It may be more interesting than you think.

The basic idea/theory of Ison is simple, although its further intricacies can become more complex. Yet, the general idea is that you hold the note the tone starts on, and only change it when the melody moves a specifc way (this is tetrachordal movement, but for the sake of the novice, I’m going to gloss over all of this). So why is this held note so important?

Historically, it is because the very first type of Christian services, which came from the Jewish tradition, consisted of reciting psalms, which became increasingly complex, however the idea of singing one or only a few notes close to each other is extremely old.

Theologically, the isokratema is said to represent the unwavering nature (“one in two persons”) of Christ. It is also appropriate that Byzantine chant has two voices, one melody (melos), and one bass (ison) to show the 100% importance of both unwavering natures of Christ.

Modernly in America, the ison is the key to sounding Byzantine. Sure, there are microtonal demands in true Byzantine scales, but having perfect Byzantine intervals is not the key to sounding Byzantine in my opinion. It’s the ison! True intervals of certain Byzantine modes are extremely difficult to train on and can take an American even longer since our music is so freakishly equal temperament that we can’t get by one day without hearing something auto-tuned.

So, use isokratema. It’s important. Your icons are Byzantine right? So how about your music? Saint Anthony’s music in WESTERN NOTATION writes in these ison notes. They understand just how valuable they are.

Thank you for reading! As always, you can find me on facebook (please message me and let me know you found me here), twitter, or by email at david@ecclesiasticalconsulting.com

This weekend, the Metropolitan visited my church for several days. He came for the feast day of Saint John the Baptist and presided over two Vespers services and two Liturgies. Given that I have only lead the chanting with a presiding hierarch once at another mission church, it was quite a learning experience. I thought I would share what I learned from it and see what you think.

First, His Eminence’s grace and patience with services was fully appreciated. As you may or may not know, in Vespers some things are read by the Bishop instead of the Priest, Deacon, or Head chanter. When these times came up, the Metropolitan was calm and graceful about either reading or not reading these texts. I felt completely relaxed and unafraid of a possible slip-up.  Having a Hierarch that is relaxed at services, and understand their possible stress is awesome!

Second, and on that note, we prepared quite a bit to avoid any slip-ups! If you are a chanter or choir director, you must-must-must clarify with your priest, all that is going on, and what happens when. Hosting a hierarch can be stressful and the last thing you want is for something Liturgically to go awry in front of the congregation and add to that stress.  Prepare, prepare, prepare, and then relax.

Thirdly, I was reminded that you can never know too much. Given the heavy amount of festal hymning, this weekend was a reminder, similar to Holy Week, at the density of hymnology in the church, and the amazing gaps that still exist in English. Thank God for Saint Anthony Monastery’s Theophany hymns, as they made the services possible. Hymnology in other languages has had a couple hundred (or a thousand) years start on America, but thanks to these efforts, the situation is getting better.  The point being, never ever stop learning or pursuing a way to make it better.

So those are my three somewhat generic conclusions that may help you in a time of a Hierarchical service.  I’ll repeat them for added clarity.

Having a Hierarch that is relaxed at services, and understand their possible stress is awesome!

Prepare, prepare, prepare, and then relax.

Never ever stop learning or pursuing a way to make it better.

That’s it. Tell me what you think about these observations!

Thank you for reading! As always, you can find me on facebook (please message me and let me know you found me here), twitter, or by email at david@ecclesiasticalconsulting.com

Happy New Year!

With two minutes remaining before the ball dropped in Times Square, Cee Lo Green, the artist whose hijacked motown style in his hit song “F**K you!” has swept the nation, sang a sentimental song as a prelude to the ball drop initiated by Lady Gaga and Mayor Bloomberg. It sure was a sight to see.

The song for bringing in the new year: “Imagine” by John Lennon. With its first words, “Imagine there’s no heaven,” the song continues, even with Cee Lo’s breaching change of the lyrics, to display an atheist view of the world. Now I am not saying something ridiculous like there should have been a rendition of Axion Estin or similar Orthodox hymn, but why was “Imagine” even chosen? Why not a song about love, or New York, or new beginnings? The choice to sing a song who’s first words negate the entire purpose of Christianity, or even the fact that a song was chosen that is even remotely religious, is distressing to say the least. America was created for separation of church and state, not the tearing-down of religion or the state (both of which “Imagine” does by the way). Without doubt, it was a tremendous display of American popularism.

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I have been writing with Father Michael for a little while now, and what can I say, a little bit of his ideas have rubbed off on me. We talk so much in our church about stewardship, in which I usually speak of talent, and time.  I usually stay away from treasure because it is not related to my music consulting. Or is it?

Most people are drawn to activities or events like sports that they enjoy because of the experience they have while they are there. This element of human nature is not so different for Orthodox Christians. Simply put, cradle and convert are both drawn to the church because of the Orthodox experience in their lives, and there is no bigger part to the Orthodox lifestyle than the Liturgy. We Christians come for communion, prayer, and the hymns of saints as a way to experience the trueness of God’s nature, love, and sacrifice. In Holy Week on Great Thursday, the priest carries the cross around the entire church. This is not just thinly practiced symbolism, but a true experience by the priest, who is to emulate Christ the most in our church. So, the question now arises… what kind of experience do you have established at your church?

I bet you would care more if you thought it brought in more capital.

To be painfully blunt, the better the music is, the more your financial situation at your church will improve. The more people are drawn to the experience to the church, the more people will be there to donate their treasure. Don’t get me wrong, Liturgical music is not a production or a show, but when the music is appropriately chosen, rehearsed, and performed, it adds to the Liturgical experience. Contrite and holy music that is appropriate to the prayer of the text can permeate our being, and it can add a crucial element to your church that keeps people coming back. If we come to Liturgy to experience Christ and his church, why would you surround that experience with poorly performed, rehearsed, composed music?  Of course, the music is not the most important element to the Divine Liturgy, but even my grandmother (a presvytera) admits to the importance of music in church, and its aid in retention of members.

So, what we know is this: The world revels in its ability to force out any concept of the church, or at the very least, makes you feel like something is wrong with you for being a believer. The liturgical experience is enhanced by appropriate and contrite music, which brings and keeps more people in the church. It sounds to me that we all should realize the important necessity of Orthodox Christian music in our churches and in the world. May the new year be filled with the singing of our blessed hymnology!

Thank you for reading! As always, you can find me on facebook (please message me and let me know you found me here), twitter, or by email at david@ecclesiasticalconsulting.com

Merry Christmas!  I had started writing this post several weeks ago and am glad it has delayed since I have had some wonderful conversations on this very topic more recently.

Now that finals and Christmas have passed, I can get back into the swing of things!

Last post, we discussed Don Chihuly and his amazing glasswork as a way of looking at different types of experience, and what those have to do with success. Today, we will talk more specifically about the challenges in the Orthodox church and what it means to be a life-long learner of music in the Orthodox faith using the most fundamental resource to any church musician: The Great Typikon.

If you are reading this, you likely fall into one (or more) of three categories: chanter/director, choir member/director, or clergy. Yet, if you are in the first three of these categories, I pose a question to you.

What do you know about, or are familiar with, the Typikon of the Orthodox church?

The Typikon, in a nutshell, is the rubrics for the different services of the Orthodox Church. It is quite dense, like anything in the Orthodox Church, and can be extremely difficult to understand depending on the festal season and your experience. The Patriarchate of Constantinople issues an Imerologion (more on this in a coming post!) to each community that lists the specific typikon rubrics for the calendar year. It is much easier to reference what hymns/readings are needed for the day than knowing each Typikon rule by heart.

Understanding what hymns go where in the services, how they change with the season, and how they all make perfect theological sense, is a challenge. Remember though, that it is not how much experience, but what kind of experience that shapes you. For those who chanted and sang Orthros and Vespers during this last week through Christmas, with Christmas falling on a Sunday, you hopefully understand much more not just about orders and rubrics, but about the theology of Christmas itself. Chanters or choir members, and especially directors, have to understand and dedicate themselves to a furthering of their knowledge in the services of the Orthodox Church.

The Great Typikon takes years and years to really understand and even for well-educated priests, each year seems to have a few surprises.  Just remember though, what kind of experience you have, and a dedication to being a life-long learner, will lead you to a deeper understanding of the Orthodox Church and its hymnology.

Next week, we will talk more in depth about the Typikon and the resources I use to chant with.  Until then, Happy New Year!

Thank you for reading! As always, you can find me on facebook (please message me and let me know you found me here), twitter, or by email at david@ecclesiasticalconsulting.com

Do you want to know a secret?  It is a truth of the world that no one else will tell you and yet, it is important in everything from the ancient art of glass-blowing, to Liturgical music.  No one will tell you because either they do not know it, or because they are afraid of it.  ”Afraid of what?” you may ask.  Well, let’s take it one step at a time.  Let me first give you the secret truth equation.

Amount of experience is not equal to success.

I learned this in college, not from a professor, but from watching masterful and woefully un-masterful teachers.  Yet, I see it everywhere in business, music, and yes, our churches.

You cry foul!  ”Experience is what separates an apprentice from a master!”  Alas, it does not.  It is the kind of experience that shapes, guides, and fortifies knowledge into mastery.  Let me explain:

Dale Chihuly is an artist, inventor, and visionary in a what was considered a mostly unwavering art form.  Glass-blowing has been around for millennia, but has stayed relatively the same in its artistic contributions.  Glass art is often functional, whether it be a vases or bowls or similar decorative/functional objects.  Sure, there have been pieces of glass purely for art, but Dale Chihuly changed everything about what glass, and the art of glass could do.  Watch the short CBS video here to see what I mean.

So what in the world does this have to do with Liturgical Music?  Well it has less to do with the music, and more to do with direction.  Let me ask a question now that you have watched the Chihuly video.  Do you think it would be more advantageous to study with a traditional glass-blowing artist for 10 years, or Chihuly for 9 months?  I think we both know the answer.

In Liturgical music, no matter what style we do, we must always be improving, always be learning, and pass this down to the members of our groups.  We cannot go forward if we are not in motion, and we must be life-long learners about church music and its organizational processes.  Even if you are not a director/leader in your specific choir, you can not do harm by learning about what you are singing.

To put it briefly, we never master an ancient art.  We only improve our interpretation of it.

Next week in part 2, we will look at more specifically the Typikon and Herimologion in our discussion about life-long learners in the Orthodox Church.

Thank you for reading! As always, you can find me on facebook (please message me and let me know you found me here), twitter, or by email at david@ecclesiasticalconsulting.com

I am thankful for much, and strive to always remember what I am thankful for.  Today, I will tell you of one of the most memorable Thanksgivings that happened thousands of miles away in Athena, Greece.

My cousin, who is my only true life-long friend and a brilliant chanter, moved to Greece for the fall months of 2006 to study Byzantine Chant with the Archon Protopsaltis Mr. Lycourgos Angelopoulos. (more on this later)  It also just so happened, that my mother-in-law, who always finds great deals, decided to graciously fly out the family for about a week’s stay in Athens.  Posing as a kind cousin who would send Sam a thanksgiving package, I got his address for the apartment he was living in.  Needless to say, he was completely surprised (or even disoriented) when we showed up at his Athens apartment door on Thanksgiving day.

That’s the setup, and although the rest of the trip was magnificent, this is anecdotal and by definition, ancecdotes must stay short.   Now to the music.

For those who do not know, an Archon Protopsaltis is the highest rank the Patriarchate of Constantinople can give to a chanter.  Mr. Lycourgos Angelopoulos has not only being given this distinction, but as the director of the Byzantine Choir of Greece (EBX), he has completely changed the world of Byzantine music and its education.  He loves passing his music along to others, and took my cousin Sam in with open and welcome arms.  When I arrived, Mr. Angelopoulos’s hospitality was no different.

I went to a rehearsal for EBX, in a small hallway of a room in a small flat, up the elevator.  Who knows where the heck I was.  Although there were a few missing from his normal group since they had just finished a tour in Europe, I was still able to see how the master worked with professionals.  It was incredible.  Many pieces were 15 minutes long, and simply started and ended.  There were not long stops for checking errors, but continuous chanting by incredible psalti.  Everyone was fantastic and knew their part prior to rehearsal.  There was an occasional error, but only small ones in these long complex hymns.  Once however, he stopped after a chanter made a mistake and gave a shout “VODI! VODI!” which means cow, and had the offender get an inconspicuous box from on top of a cabinet.  The somewhat cautious chanter pulled out a small plastic yellow cow head.  Everyone erupted in laughter including Mr. Angelopoulos.  He is an amazingly funny and optimistic person, but make no mistake, he demanded excellence.

The entire family went to hear him chant at Agia Irini in Athens.  He actually invited me to chant with him, since Sam was one of his students.  There were roughly 30 chanters there every Sunday for both Orthros and Liturgy.  Sam and I sang a verse of Ayios o Theos together in English, which was an honor.  We sang with him the rest of the service, and one idea struck me:  although this choir of chanters is amazing, there are mistakes-unlike the EBX.  The reason was simple, Mr. Angelopoulos knew that mistakes happen in services, and valued learning above all.  He didn’t need the needle and thread precision of the Greek Byzantine Choir with those in the learning process, although many were phenomenal.  He knew exactly what to expect from his conglomerate group of advanced and beginner chanters.

You may notice that I left out when/how I first met him.  This is purposeful.  The first time I met Mr. Angelopoulos was to see him teach at a conservatory in Athens.  Conservatory for non musicians can be misnomer, since the teaching space was just a room, with a desk and chairs, and not much else.  Every student had a tape recorder as Angelopoulos explained some, sang for, and sang with the students.  I even sang some for Mr. Angelopoulos, as he kindly prompted me “Ayios O Theos.”  I sometimes think to myself, “was I really blessed enough to sing Ayios o Theos to one of the single greatest musicians and educators ever in Byzantine music?” I’ll never forget that moment.  He appreciated hearing another American sing correctly in the sacred tradition.

The last memory I will share is from this class.  I could easily share at least ten more.

At this specific class, Mr. Angelopoulos’s age started to show, as while singing a hymn by himself, on more than one occasion, he would doze off while singing.  The miraculous thing about this is that when he would come out of his brief slump, he would pick up exactly where he left off.  The hymns of the saints runs through him and cannot ever be separated from who he is.  Even in sleep, he is a psalti and a teacher.  He is a man that truly lives by the Psalms “I will chant to my God for as long as I have my being.”

I am thankful for meeting and interacting with Mr. Angelopoulos and of course, for Byzantine Chant.

Thank you for reading.  Thank you for being involved in church music, and let us always sing to God for as long as we have our being.

Thank you for reading! As always, you can find me on facebook (please message me and let me know you found me here), twitter, or by email at david@ecclesiasticalconsulting.com

Myself, Mr. Angelopoulos, and my cousin Sam.

The murmur of the crowd of thousands of people turns into unified cheering.  ”BRUUUUUCCCCEE!” is shouted as the Boss makes his way through the backstage of the arena.  Lights are flashing all around and the anxiousness of the crowd is palpable.  Finally the lights fade, and the Boss takes his place on stage while cheers become louder.  The drums kick, the lights flash, and Bruce Springsteen begins his performance.

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The quiet is deafening because that’s all you can hear.  Maybe a few brief “hello”s are exchanged, but besides that, just silence.  A flipping of pages, a setting up of books, a blessing from the Priest.  Then the anticipated words chanted aloud by the priest “Blessed is our God always now and forever, and to the ages of ages”  start the Orthros service.

These two analogies are obviously completely different, but they can provide a little insight into a very misunderstood word.  That word is performance.

I usually am annoyed by articles/essays that use dictionary definitions, but realize that the word performance does not just apply to “a person’s rendering of a dramatic role, song, or piece of music,” but also “ the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function.” (New Oxford Dictionary)  Ask any priest about the Liturgy, which comes from the Greek to mean roughly “public work,” and they’ll tell you that we perform the Liturgy.  As Psalm 102 (103) says, “The Lord performs deeds of mercy…”

The main reason to bring this syntactical misunderstanding up, is that whenever it is necessary to use the word performance in teaching or discussing a Liturgical music group, one feels like they are walking on egg shells, waiting for someone to snap “BUT SINGING IN CHURCH IS NOT A PERFORMANCE!”

So is singing in church a performance?  Let me ask another question.  Is iconography art?

The answer is yes.  You just can’t perform the music like Bruce Springsteen does at a concert, or the art like Monet.  You must give all that desire to be noticed that can sometimes infiltrate the arts, and I think is usually mishandled in the secular arts, and give it to the creator.

The Orthodox church demands our best, and our discipline.  The arts are an embodiment of that.  We don’t use sheetrock for a church, but stone and marble.  We do not use pictures of icons or simple drawings of Christ and the saints, but hand-crafted writing of icons and gilding of many items in gold.  We also, do not provide unrehearsed or poorly planned music to the creator of sound. All these are a way to perform with our talents the same way we as a congregation, with our priest, perform the Liturgy.

So let us be unafraid of the word.  Let us embrace it, but with a clear understanding of to whom we are performing.

Thank you for reading! As always, you can find me on facebook (please message me and let me know you found me here), twitter, or by email atdavid@ecclesiasticalconsulting.com

Since there are a variety of topics I cover, I have decided to title all those pertaining to Orthodox culture and ancestry, as “Know your community.”  For this post, we are going to look at how much of what language is appropriate in your services, and why.  It is a topic not easily tread, and one that sometimes meets great passion.  This is a good thing.  Where there is passion, there is care, but fear not!  There is a relatively easy litmus test to make conclusions from.

One of my favorite quotes from my father is “people show their support with their feet.”  If people are committed enough to something, then they will show up.  Although this idea could be used to describe many situations in the church, I will use it today to describe my viewpoint on how much of what language to use in church.  Who and how many are “showing up” for certain hymns/prayers?

Usually, no matter what jurisdiction, there are only two languages to debate about being in a church.  One is English, and one is the native tongue from the heritage of the church.  For the sake of argument, I will just use Greek and English since I am in the GOC.

How do we know how much of Greek/English to use in our services?  What is a good balance?  One must be extremely careful, because on one hand you can be neglecting a tradition, and on the other you can be neglecting your congregation.  It is not an easy challenge to fix.  Yet, we can test our market, so to speak, by using what is already in the Divine Liturgy: The Nicene Creed.

Now, some of you may think this is too obvious (and it is somewhat), but let us dig deeper.  The Creed is a beautiful way to show us how to connect with our community even more.  Here are some examples of what I am talking about:  Let’s say that you are in NYC in one of the churches where most, if not the entire community has such strong Greek ancestry that nearly everyone has spoken the language their whole life.  Now, when it is time to recite the Creed in Greek, 96% of the congregation rattles off the Creed effortlessly.  It seems simple, but my opinion is that roughly 96% of each service should be in Greek.  If you have 2%Romanians, 1% American, and 1% Russian, then maybe a petition, hymn, or lord have mercy is done in those languages.  A proportionate amount is quite appropriate and reasonable.

It works the other way too.  In the south, many communities are made up quite differently than the north.  There are churches where there are enough with Greek ancestry to rattle off the Creed in similar fashion to the northern church, but usually in a smaller percentage.  There are also churches where a Creed in Greek barely gets off the ground.  If you are one of those churches pulling in about 3% who can recite the Creed in the mother tongue, and your services, especially the Liturgy, are done in those tongues, you may want to reevaluate how much of what languages you are singing in.  You may be leading the music of a community, but just not the one you are in.

However,  before this crazy idea of proportionate language use causes an Occupy David’s House movement, realize that there is always wiggle room.  My personal opinion is I do not think it is completely appropriate for a community to neglect a mother tongue in its entirety because “everyone is a convert” or for a community in America to ignore English because “everyone is Greek/Russian/Arabic/Romanian/Bulgarian ect.”  It is just important to see how many pairs of feet there are in the right places.

Language in the Orthodox church is not a barrier, but a door.  We just have to constantly be aware of which doors we are opening up.

As always, you can find me on facebook (please message me and let me know you found me here), twitter, or by email at david@ecclesiasticalconsulting.com