South of the Thames is the marvelous Anglo-Catholic parish All Saints Margaret Street, which has a superb choir which has published many albums; recently they recorded a new setting of Choral Evensong to
@Paidiske ’s favorite bit of Eastern church music, Rachmaninoff’s All Night Vigils, and Holy Communion to his Divine Liturgy, which is remarkably successful given the words are completely different.
Likewise, a Ukrainian bishop set the Divine Liturgy of St. Chrysostom to the music of the popular Gregorian mass setting Missa di Angelis, which was originally composed by the Franciscans, but is authentic Gregorian chant, and along with Rorate Caeli, is one of my two favorite Gregorian Rite mass settings. This was recorded by the Kyiv Chamber Choir, which is my favorite church choir in the Ukrainian-Russian-Belarussian-Bulgarian-Polish-Baltic-Finnish continuum of Church Slavonic music in four part harmony (the Serbian Orthodox have their own composers and a different style, while both the Serbians and the Bulgarians originally sang Byzantine Chant, and a congregational form of singing called Prostopininje is traditional a,onf the Carpatho-Rusyns and Lemkos, who are predominant in the Czech-Slovak Orthodox Church and comprise much of the Orthodox population of Poland, Belarus and Western Ukraine, and also much of the emigre population in central Pennsylvania (where the town of Wilkes-Barre is jokingly nicknamed “Fourth Rome”, because of the idea that due to a Romanov marrying a Byzantine princess, Moscow was the Third Rome, until 1917 at least, and Constantinople is still officially regarded as New Rome by Orthodox religious texts, as it was by the Byzantine Government). I believe some of the more idiosyncratic Moravian hymns are influenced by Prostopinije; sadly these are much less commonly heard than in the past, with the 1969 Hymnal and Liturgies of the Moravian Church in America retiring many*, a trend which I believe has continued in more recent hymnals (not sure about the UK, however, if you look at the 1908, 1923 or even 1969 Moravian Hymnal and Liturgies, you will see a lot of hymns not found in a typical Lutheran, Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian or Congregationalist hymnal from the period, hymns which often have unusual melodies, and that is in part due to the influence of Prostopinije, which was the dominant form of music in Moravia and Bohemia and the rest of Czechia and Slovakia, before the Archduchy of Austria invaded and imposed Roman Rite Catholicism, at which time the dominant style became Gregorian Chant.
The main traditional style of Ukraine and Russia consists of a local derivative of Byzantine Chant, Znamenny Chant, which was generally prevalent until the introduction of four part harmony in Ukraine in the 17th century by Italian composers, which led to two styles of simple chant, Kievan Chant and Greek Chant (which is not Greek), and some more complex styles, such as Imperial Court Chant, which were the basis of the works of great composers such as Bortniansky, Chesnokov, Vedel, Archangelsky, Gretchinov, Nikolsky, Stankovych and of course, Rachmaninoff, and many others in what we might call the Kievan-Minsky-Muscovite-Petrogradsky-Sofian school, including recent composers such as the Estonian Orthodox Avro Part, the Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, the American Russian Orthodox conwertsy Kurt Sander, and the Ukrainian-American Greek Catholic composer Roman Hurko.
The interesting thing about Znamenny Chant and Prostopinije is that they lead themselves extremely well to congregational singing, unlike many forms of Eastern church music or traditional chant (the 1965 Methodist Episcopal Hymnal, the 1941 Lutheran Hymnal, the 1982 Episcopal Hymnal, and several others have tried to teach congregations how to sing Anglican Chant, but the use of Anglican Chant in the US is still extremely rare (I think even the 2006 Lutheran Service Book has a chapter on it), which is unfortunate, because it means that Psalms and Responsorial Readings tend to be read, which is fine at a Said Service but does nothing to provide the kind of liturgical beauty desirable at a Choral Liturgy. Also, while Handbell Choirs are lovely, I feel they are being overused as a bandaid on traditional services to provide a means for active congregational participation which requires a minimum of effort.
Which does not mean I wish to see them done away with, but three things are missing from American liturgics: firstly a proper respect for the reverence and solemnity required to ensure everything is done, as St. Paul commands, decently and in order (if this existed there would be no such thing as praise and worship music). Secondly, high expectations for laity who are inclined to actively participate, so that children would worship with their parents like in Orthodox churches, and receive the Eucharist regardless of age, with Sunday School being a post-liturgical service along with fellowship and bible study for adults, and older childrennot be patronized by departures from the service which older children and adults find equally awkward, but rather taught how to worship, and actively involved in choirs and altar service, so that every boy and girl of grade school age who is in good health and has the proper disposition (behaviorally and in other respects) should instead be actively involved in part of the liturgy, at least part of the time, whether that is singing in the choir or as altar servers or acolytes, and this should be integrated with church-organized scouting, with older boys and girls helping to teach younger boys and girls, and among adults, likewise, an expectation that those who involve themselves in the music programs really commit (I think handbell choirs might be something to reserve for youths and adults who want to learn to read music, which due to the severe cuts imposed on music education in American schools, has gone from being widely known in the early 20th century to the brink of obscurity in the early 21st century, hence the proliferation of illiterate forms of music), and thirdly, a greater respect for interior participation and silence, which are encouraged by the Tridentine Mass, traditional Anglo-Catholic liturgics, and the Eastern liturgies, where even when congregational singing is used, one does not have to join in (even in the Russian Old Rite, where chairs around the nave provide seating for anyone who is elderly, disabled or recovering from an illness, or not familiar with the hymns; those who can form two choirs, the men on one side and the women on the other, each led by a pair of cantors, one man and one woman, using subtle gestures to avoid distractions from the worship, and people standing in order of their singing ability at that particular moment. But there is a lot to be said for completely passive interior participation, which has been systematically devalued, deprecated and deleted from worship since sometime prior to the 1940s, when the Liturgical Movement arguably shifted focus.
* The preface of the 1969 Moravian Hymnal, which is the abbreviated title, and which is in the public domain and downloadable from the Internet Archive, states: “In comparison with the hymnal of 1923, the number of hymns has been reduced, many having been eliminated because they were not being used. The new hymnals of the British, German, and Czechoslovakian provinces of the Unity have yielded a number of selections. Sustained efforts likewise have been made to move within the mainstream of American Christianity by following the trends in new hymnals of leading denominations. Careful consideration has been given to contemporary hymn-writers and composers.”
