I Served in Church
By Brother Marc
When I was a youngster our family would sit around the kitchen table on Saturday mornings for a late breakfast and to listen to the radio. This was a good family moment, a pause before our weekend chores and baking bread or gardening (for three seasons). We heard the news of the day and enjoyed a weekly program from KDKA Pittsburgh—a chorale of young men and women sang the great tunes and lush harmonies popular in the nineteen-fifties.
Sundays we attended 11:00 o’clock mass at the local parish. We caught the end of an earlier service, the men and boys’ choir singing Gregorian chant. Our liturgy used the usual parish music of the times, often with a soloist and organ, not so compelling to me as the chant was.
From early grade school until the end of high school, twice a day almost every day, I served in the double-church at the Felician Sisters’ convent (one of their main headquarters, with over a hundred sisters living there). The spacious sanctuary had a towering carved reredos in the center with altars on the front and back. These looked out in opposite directions at two identical church naves—one for the nuns, the opposite one for lay people. Carved life-size figures of saints and angels stood on the sides of the altars and gave a feeling of the presence of heavenly choirs. Attendance at Christmas and Easter midnight celebrations was overflowing in both churches, with the sisters out of public view on their side and the lay people on theirs. We were all fortunate there at the time to be immersed in the best pre–Vatican II hymns, chants, and sacred harmonies.
The sisters sang the divine offices (hours) on a single straight tone—getting back on pitch every few minutes. A large choir from the attached girl’s academy sang the liturgies. The accompanying sounds of the huge pipe organ, and afterwards the haunting Polish music of the Litany of the Saints, were mesmerizing and unforgettable for me.
In my preparatory high school for seminary we used the Liber Usualis for chanting, with its distinctive staves with ancient square neumes/notations and medieval Latin texts. My favorite hymn was the terrifying Dies Irae Sequence from the classic requiem mass, a fantastic description of the final judgment, ending with a gentle and heart-felt appeal for the departed: “Grant me a place among the sheep, and take me out from among the goats, setting me on the right side…Merciful Lord Jesus, grant them rest.”
The other parts of the mass for the dead, and the daily and festival chants we sang, felt joyful and serene. I knew much of it by heart, and I shared with my folks an appreciation for this uplifting and energizing atmosphere.
More recently some of us at New Skete were excited to participate in the Cambridge Battenkill Chorale by singing the Mozart and other Requiem masses. I was transported by the Latin and the spiritual mindset back to those distant seminary days.
In an abrupt change of direction, I entered the Ukrainian Seminary in Stamford, Connecticut, for college and was introduced not only to the Eastern liturgies but to Ukrainian Galician chant as well as Ukrainian choral music and Christmas carols. We still sing some of these here today in English.
Several of us at the time explored the Orthodox Church’s Slavonic Kievan chants and ancient Znamenny chants, which were originally written down without any musical notation. It takes a lot of work to interpret their signs and marks, which was beyond us. We first heard of these chants from our music instructors, including recently deceased Major Archbishop Lyubomir Huzar and Professor Zadorozhny, who described to us the majestic and haunting sounds of these and also early Byzantine chants. In private, we listened to a rare find at the time, a German choral recording of Rachmaninoff’s famous All-Night Vigil and its iconic chant for “Holy God.” How much better can it get!
Later, in the monastery, we learned Carpatho-Rusyn plainchant, sung by cantors and entire congregations in one voice or harmonized in thirds. The language was Church Slavonic, Hungarian, and now English. This is a truly distinctive chant of the people. The congregations knew their parts by heart and sang very slowly with full volume, filling the church and echoing outdoors. Early-American shape-note music, now experiencing a revival, and which we have heard and experienced, uses a similar unabashed full-throated sound.
For our services at New Skete, we translated and harmonized many traditional Orthodox and Eastern Catholic pieces and wrote some new musical compositions and free-style psalm refrains. We also use a modest selection of new music by Orthodox composers. In the past we recorded many tapes and CD’s, and recently we put together a 50th-anniversary CD set of selections from them. Our large monastic choir including our chapel community members is much smaller now, but we retain as much of our regular music and chant as we can, while also including simpler music, in our Sunday services.
We have all shared with each other our love and knowledge of classical music, native folk music from around the world (from old vinyl recordings), opera and contemporary choral music, popular music and jazz, and the unique and powerful ancient church music from many cultures. Great Church music gives me a profound sense of inspiration and brings a truly welcome relief from the stresses, anxieties, and busy pace of everyday life. As with the sacred icons of the Eastern churches, this music and this chant lift us to a world larger than the ordinary, beyond words, in an experience deeply human and even divine.
