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Full Congregational Participation

 

David Drillock
"LITURGICAL SONG IN THE WORSHIP OF THE CHURCH"

in
ISSN 0036-3227
VOLUME 41
NUMBERS 2-3, 1997
ST. VLADIMIR’S THEOLOGICAL QUARTERLY

pages 204-205

quoting


Johann A. von Gardner, Liturgical Singing of the Russian Orthodox Church (in
Russian) (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1977, 1981), vol. 2, 102,
footnote 211.

 
The choir, not only in cathedral churches and large city churches, but even in small, village churches, actually became a substitute for “all the people,” to the point that nothing at all was sung by the congregation. The very few exceptions were in churches located in the Carpathian region of Rus’. Among the Galicians, Volhynians, and Ruthenians the practice of full congregational participation was still evident in ... churches at the beginning of the twentieth century. Following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, Johann von Gardner, the eminent scholar of Russian neumatic chant, lived in this area for a period of four years. He describes his encounter with this form of singing in the following way:






In Subcarpathian Rus’ in all the villages both among the Uniates and also among Orthodox, there was always practiced only congregational singing of the complete services, not excluding the changeable (proper) hymns in all the varied chants. They sang according to the ‘Great Zbornik’ (collection of prayers and liturgical texts) containing every necessary text. The numerous chants (not excluding all the podobny, not even found in the Synodal notated liturgical books) were known by everyone, even the children of school age. The leader of song — the most experienced singer from the parishes—standing at the kliros sang the chant. As soon as the worshippers would hear the hymn, they would join in the chant and the entire church sang all the stichiry, all the tropars, all the irmosy—in a word, everyone sang properly according to the established canonical parts of the Liturgy.  They sang in unison and whoever could, imitated or reinforced the bass. The impression proved to be overwhelmingly strong.
Another comment found in:

THE PLAINCHANT TRADITION OF SOUTHWESTERN RUS

JOAN L. ROCCASALVO

EAST EUROPEAN MONOGRAPHS, BOULDER DISTRIBUTED BY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, NEW YORK 1986

pages 24-26
In an article written almost fifty years ago but published only recently,[10] Johann von Gardner (1898-1984) stressed the importance of studying the Rusin tradition:

The question of Carpatho-Russian church chant is of tremendous interest to the specialist and should become the subject of particular investigation and research.[11]

Gardner was considered "one of the most erudite scholars of Russian neumatic chant of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries."[12]  After 1917, Gardner lived in Subcarpathian Rus’for about four years,[13] and during his brief sojourn there, the people extended their warmest hospitality to him an experience not to be forgotten.[14] As a young man, Gardner had learned the Znamenny chants from the Old Believers, and he had also acquired a vast knowledge of Slavonic and Byzantine chant. He collected material for a history of the chant tradition of Subcarpathian Rus’, but his library was destroyed during World War II, and his work was never completed.[15] While Gardner wrote little about Rusin chant after the war, his detailed eyewitness accounts describe his experience of congregational liturgical singing while he lived in Subcarpathian Rus’. First, he established the fact of the presence of the so-called 1700 Irmologion and its later editions in southwestern Rus’. They had "enormous significance for the people of Galicia, Volhynia, and for the Ruteni" among whom these chant collections had a wide circulation.[16]   He continues

[Here she includes the comments of von Gardner quoted above by Drillock. She continues:]

At a later time, Gardner states that the people sang "sometimes not in unison but in three voices."[18] The passage quoted above indicates that the people of Subcarpathian Rus’, with their cantors as teachers and guides, thoroughly knew the chants in the printed irmologia that reached the area in the early eighteenth century. Music sung by Russian choirs, that is composed choir music, was not admitted into Subcarpathian Rus’.[19]  In addition to singing with "one voice". . . and "with one heart,"[20] Gardner concludes:

During my stay in Subcarpathian Rus’[ca.1930s] I was amazed at the theological information of the simple peasants. It was genuine dogma, quoted by heart from any place in the sung verse." [21].

FOOTNOTES  pages 156-157.

10. Stephen Reynolds, A Personal Letter (July 29, 1980). See Appendix I.

11. Gardner, "A Few Words on Church Chant in Carpatho Russia," Orthodox Life; XXX, No. 1 (Jan.-Feb., 1980): 46. Translator not cited. In his letter of 1980 (n. 10) Reynolds says that this article was originally published in the 1930s but appeared in English only in 1980.

12. Velimirovic', "The Present Status of Research in Slavic Chant," p. 238.

13. Gardner, "Nieskolko soobrazhenii ob obshchem pienii za bogosluzheniem" [Some Observations about Congregational Singing in Subcarpathian Rus*] ,PravoslavnayaRus*, No. 10 (1969): 5.

14. Idem, L iturgical Singing of theRussian Orthodox Church, II, 102, n.21l.

15. Reynolds, "Carpatho-Ruthenian Liturgical Music," Tape-Lecture presented at a cultural seminar at Mt. St. Macrina, Uniontown, Pa., August 11-12, 1975.

16. Gardner, Liturgical Singing of the Russian Orthodox Church, II:102.

17. Idem. "Some Observations," p. 4.

18. Idem. Liturgical Singing of the Russian Orthodox Church, II: 62,no. 120.

19. Ibid.

20. Idem. "Some Observations," p. 5.

21. Ibid.
page 116

Our Ruthenian chant is our lifeline to the past.

                                       Bishop Michael J. Dudick

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