Fundamental Considerations

Greetings, my fellow colleagues!

It is a pleasure to begin working with you all on a project that will hopefully bring some measure of success in adapting musical settings of Znamenny Chant to accompany English texts. There are a number of different areas that we will need to address in accomplishing this project, and each area may have a number of different angles, depending on different needs. I will attempt to address some of these issues here.

What defines “Znamenny Chant”?

The first topic that we should discuss is the definition of Russian “Znamenny Chant”. In English translation, this is a rather ambiguous term, often evoking some grand and exotic repertoire or style of singing; the term is often used as a categorizing or labelling concept for any melodies of early Russian liturgical music. (The same usage happens in Russia, but not quite as frequently.) In reality, the general term "Znamennoe penie" (знаменное пение) translates as “sign singing”, signifying that it is a way of singing according to signs, symbols or “neumes”, a type of notation derived from Middle-Byzantine era musical notation, and developed over the centuries into an independent system of notation; however, just because one sings from neumatic notation does not necessarily follow that the melodies themselves are part of an established repertoire (although this is true most of the time).

The Russian word that specifies an established and well-defined “musical repertoire” is “raspév” (распев), and when writing about the mainstream written and oral tradition of church singing which is notated in church singing books, many amateur writers in the past have used the vague general term “знаменный распев” (Znamenny repertoire), which unfortunately has become a frequently-encountered term. However, "Znamenny Chant" is in truth a collection or collision of several different "respévy" (melodic repertoires), and thus this misleading term is a misnomer and should be avoided. On the other hand, it is entirely accurate and appropriate to use this term in the plural form (“знаменные распевы” - Znamenny Chants, Neumatic repertoires).

The Russian term which is specifically used for the system of notation is “Známenny notation” (знаменная нотация), and each symbol or neumes is called a “знамя” (známya).

Although the term is not so popular, “stolp chant” (столповой распев, “column repertoire”) signifies the established repertoire of medieval Russian melodies according to the eight Tones, where the term “stolp” suggests that each Tone is a column in the structure of octotonal (осмогласие) singing.

However, the “Znamenny Chant” is not confined to 8-Tone melodies (unlike Byzantine Chant, where all music must fit within a known scales system), but also includes melodies for parts of the service that do not use the system of Tones, such as the common responses and most of the lengthy hymns of the Vigil and Liturgy.

Moreover, the “Znamenny notation” is used to record or notate a number of separate genres and repertoires (raspevy) of singing that were used in the medieval Russian church services:

a) The “Stolp Chant” is the full melodic tradition of singing the hymns of the 8 Tones (Octoechos), particularly “Lord, I have cried”, stichera, doxastica, theotokia, “God is the Lord”, anabathmoi/antiphons, heirmoi, prokeimena, etc. Most hymns for feasts and the Triodion and Pentecostarion cycle are also sung according to the "Stolp Chant".

b) The “Common Chant” is used for singing litanies, liturgical dialogues, the Cherubicon, the Anaphora, Communion Hymns, and many other examples. These melodies are for the most part not sung according to identified motifs of the Octoechos.

c) The “Small Znamenny Chant” (also labeled by the misnomer “Samoglásny”) is the rapid, simple singing of stichera and troparia according to generic formulas in each of the 8 Tones. The Small Znamenny melodies are intended for the singing of stichera (mostly non-festal), but they may be used in limited circumstances for singing troparia. (The “Kievan Chant” formula melodies for stichera are a later regional variant of the Small Znamenny Chant formulas; troparia in the post-Nikonian era are sung according to formulas taken from a range of sources, including the so-called Russian “Greek Chant”.)

d) “Podóbny” (Prosómoia) hymnody is the singing of hymns according to a repertoire of common hymn melodies (all of which are formulaic, similar to the manner of singing the Small Znamenny Chant). Many people make the mistake of considering these to be “special melodies”, but rather they are “common melodies”, such as for such categories of hymns for martyrs or monastics or the Cross.

e) The “Great Znamenny Chant” or “Great Repertoire” (большой распев) is an expanded variety of the mainstream “Stolp Chant” in the eight Tones. The “Great Chant” is essentially a re-imaging of the repertoire of “popévki” or stock musical phrases, where each of the sequences of neumes that represents a fixed musical pattern has been melodically re-interpreted with an augmented version of the melody that is represented by those neumes; but rather than being an entirely new composition, each musical setting of hymns in the “Great Chant” still employs the very same sequence of popevki that are found in the original Stolp musical settings. Thus, the “Great Chant” is more of a system of 1-to-1 substitution of augmented musical phrases than a new mode of composition.

f) The “Put’ Chant” (путевой распев) is an entirely separate repertoire of chant melodies that emerged in the mid-1500s and flourished until the late 1600s, disappearing from common use except among the Old Believers. In the last phase of its development, 3-part and 4-part compositions can be found, which use native Russian polyphony that often sounds rather dissonant to western ears. The melodies also make use of a great deal of syncopated rhythms and formal breaking points to allow the pitches to be re-established. The repertoire was used solely for festal hymns at points of the service that called for greater liturgical ceremony, particularly Doxastica, Theotokia, Magnifications (Velichanii), Megalynaria, Cherubica, etc. Put' Chant was notated with both the received notational system, as well as well as its own variant notational system, called "Kazan notation".

g) “Deméstvenny Chant” is used for hierarchical services and highlights of the Great Feasts, and is notated with both the received notational system, as well as it has a variant hybrid system of Demestvenny Notation (also called "Kazan notation"), which was likewise used with some early examples of the short-lived native Russian polyphonic singing (строчно́е пение, Strochnyi singing). The term “demestvenny” indicates that it was sung primarily by the “domestikói”, a Greek term indicating highly trained chanters who traveled with bishops as part of their household or retinue, and who frequently performed the difficult parts of the hierarchical services when such points of ritual were too complicated for typical parish choirs.

h) Composed Chants are few in number and have very limited use in the Russian Old Rite. However, there are a small number of monastery settings of “It is truly meet” which were obviously composed by individuals, but such composers or arrangers have never been identified. The same can be said for the so-called “Bulgarian” settings of the Cherubic Hymn and Anaphora, and the “Irgíz” melody for the Cherubic Hymn. A setting of the Lord’s Prayer in Tone 7 “stolp” chant is used throughout most of the priested Old Believer communities at the Liturgy, and it has been identified as a post-Nikonian setting in the central-Russian Guslitskii tradition; its compositional style is so traditional that is difficult to categorize it as a genuine “composition”. There is also a lengthy setting of the Trisagion sung at the procession of the Cross and at funeral processions that has been identified as a composition of someone at the Opekalov Monastery, but the name of composer is not known. In the late 1500s a monk known as “Markel the Beardless” composed a set of 11 Gospel Stichera in the “Great Chant” (see above), but due to their length it is doubtful that they were ever used very much; they are difficult to transcribe since they originally lacked enough red marks to clearly identify pitches. A few other compositions have been identified, but naming them all is outside the scope of this introduction.

Fortunately, the “bandwidth” of musical selections which we will need to adapt for English texts is mostly confirmed to the first three genres, and we will not need to utilize the full repertoire of melodies in each of these genres.

As a footnote to the definition of “Znamenny Chant”, I feel somewhat obligated to touch on the sensitive topic of “what is NOT Znamenny Chant”. In the past couple hundred years, a few well-meaning composers have decided to compose traditional-sounding melodies and circulate them, calling them “Znamenny Chant”, perhaps to garner support and acceptance of these settings among their peers for liturgical use and publication, sometimes with a measure of success. This practice was seen initially in Russia, but criticism from trained musicologists has mostly “nipped this in the bud”. However, outside Russia (and particularly in the U.S.) we have seen numerous well-meaning individuals who have decided to label their personal compositions as “Znamenny Chant”, not fully aware that they were perpetuating a type of hoax or deception upon those who do not know better. Undoubtedly this is due to the composers themselves not understanding that “Znamenny Chant” has a very fixed and long-established repertoire of melodies, deriving its conception from melodies that were set down in the era when neumatic notation was used to record them on paper. While I do wish to stress very strongly that such composers had noble intentions at the time (or thought they were being "cool"), these “pseudo-Znamenny” or "Znamenny-inspired" compositions in modern times are NOT "Znamenny", and to call them such is an unfortunate deception and dishonesty (even if they didn't fully realize that they were doing anything wrong). However, those of us who are educated as musicologists or specialists in liturgical chant typically take issue with the moral and ethical side of labeling something other than what it really is, and it is essential that we use discernment in such cases. Even the use of the vague label “Znamenny-inspired” can be rather disingenuous, as it leads people to unwittingly assume that the genuine Znamenny repertoire is somehow utilized in the composition. (If anyone takes offense at my critique of the situation, I humbly ask for your forgiveness. This assessment is not directed towards any particular individual, but rather towards the dubious practice itself.)

While I am on the topic of "controversial practices"... There have been attempts to sing Znamenny Chant melodies with a Greek ison (or "drone") accompaniment. This is the sort of stuff that makes musicologists cringe, as it is abundantly obvious that two entirely separate cultural practices are being blended together and presented as an established practice. (I compare this to putting salsa on pierogis. Just because it tastes good doesn't make it "traditional" or "authentic".)

Likewise, several composers in 18th and 19th century Russia tried to harmonize traditional Znamenny melodies (especially the Dogmatica and other oft-used melodies of the Octoechos), using modern western polyphonic chord progressions, with results that are for the most part quite cringe-worthy and leaves one feeling rather unsettled. It begs the question: "WHY was this done?". Perhaps these are failed experiments or assignments from music teachers to their students. I personally prefer to leave these alone and let them be forgotten in the dusty archives of Russian history.

What is the "essense" of Znamenny Chant?

I recently read a nebulous quote by a modern Russian choral conductor that... "Znamenny chant must be sung in such a way that people would want to listen to it." This person seems to suggest that it has to be sung "aesthetically", but we know from the historical model of church singing and its melodies that the traditional systems of church singing are primarily meant to be vehicles of prayer and an ascetic discipline. Take a look at Byzantine Chant, especially the older melodies that we see transcribed by various musicologists studying the early and middle Byzantine eras. Znamenny Chant is precisely the same in this respect. I have rarely encountered anyone who uses Znamenny Chant for regular church worship to express an interest in listening to it just for its entertainment or aesthetic value. And despite having been a scholar of Znamenny Chant for five decades, even I personally don't consider it a delight to listen to. However, it is an ideal vehicle for communal prayer, as it is both ascetic and passionless (for the most part). It rarely stimulates a sense of emotionality, and it does not impose feelings of excitement and delight on the listener, although at times it does add grandeur to parts of the service that it accompanies. It allows us to offer our prayers to God simply, rationally and without sentimentality, artificial over-stimulus for compunction, ecstasy, and a level of concentration on aesthetics and harmonies which distract us from the Orthodox communal and personal prayer experience. Again I say, Znamenny and Byzantine Chants are first and foremost an ascetical discipline, and secondly they are a noble art form that should be performed in a manner that is free from emotions and passions, just as we approach Orthodox iconography. To view a "revival" or "adaptation" of Znamenny Chant as a magnificent and sublime system of church singing may be a noble cause, but to inject it with modern aesthetics and "feelings" is both inauthentic to the tradition and, quite frankly speaking, a misconceived fantasy.

So many people come to Orthodoxy seeking a sumptuous choral fantasia, but this is NOT what the timeless tradition of Orthodoxy has to offer. It offer us salvation through repentance, an opportunity to cleanse our hearts, to worship God, and to pray for all who are sick and suffering and in need of God's abundant mercies.

Language and Text

The third area we should discuss is the use of liturgical TEXT. Since we are dealing with original sources used by the Russian Church, we know that we must be fairly familiar with Church Slavonic to see how it is expressed in musical settings, in terms of melody, tempo, phrasing and other practical features. But working with Znamenny Chant paired with Slavonic text is not a task that is as simple as it may sound. Indeed, the Slavonic language has gone through a number of different stages in its development.

a) Old Church Slavonic was a semi-artificial South-Slavic language designed to express the vocabulary and grammar of biblical and patristic Greek, suitable as both a literary and liturgical language. (It is traditionally believed that Ss. Cyril and Methodius, as well as their disciples, grafted Greek grammar onto a native system of Slavic vocabulary and root words.) While certainly not a lingua franca (a language of the people), it was not too challenging for anyone speaking a Slavic spoken dialect to understand translations of the Orthodox church services, particularly in hymnography that had been translated from the later Byzantine Greek.

b) Pre-modern (medieval) Church Slavonic continued to flourish as a literary language in Serbia, Bulgaria, Trans-Carpathia, Belorussia and Ukraine, as well as Russia. However, the old Bulgarian form of Church Slavonic exerted the greatest influence throughout the Slavic regions and was the unofficial (but de facto) literary standard. During this era, the pronunciation of the nasal vowels (the “great yus” and the “small yus”) lost most of their nasal qualities, and their use was heavily absorbed by other vowels; in addition, the letter “yat” underwent a modification in its pronunciation in some regions. But perhaps the greatest change was the gradual shift of the “yers” from their pronunciation as full vowels to semi-vowels to functional hard and soft signs. The alteration of the “yers” had a noticeable effect on later forms of melodic composition.

c) Pre-Nikonian Church Slavonic, encompassing roughly the last few centuries prior to the Nikonian reforms of the 1650s, was a move away from South-Slavic idioms and a greater influence by North-Slavic (Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian) spoken dialectical forms, caused in part to a geographical, political and ecclesiastical distancing of these regions, and more firmly established by the introduction of the printing press for the publication and distribution of liturgical books by Ivan Fedorov in the 1550s. From this point forward, the North-Slavic recension of Church Slavonic began to dominate the entire Slavic-speaking Christian world, and even the West- and South-Slavic regions began to copy and reprint the Muscovite editions. Musically speaking, the entire corpus of notated hymnography had to be “adjusted” to account for the changes in Pre-modern (medieval) Church Slavonic, and we had two “paths” in this regard. A) In formal Znamenny settings, a conservative path of preserving the older melodies and texts was followed, by having neumes accompany the old “yers” (hard and soft signs), and these were sung as fully-vocalized vowels; B) in church reading and more rapid styles of singing (the “Small Znamenny Chant” and “Podobny” melodies), the “yers” almost completely lost their vocalization and became functional non-syllabic letters (the hard and soft signs), resulting in a reduction of the number of syllables in these texts.

d) In the 1650s, the questionably prudent and dubious textual and liturgical “reforms” of Patriarch Nikon of Moscow resulted in Modern (or Nikonian-era) Church Slavonic, where the break from South-Slavonic literary norms was complete. In comparing pre- and post-Nikonian texts, we can observe a great deal of vocabulary expansion (Russification and newer, more “flowery” literary terms) and other grammatical revisions (particularly the imposition of the grammatical system of Meletii Smotritskii).

While we don’t need to address much of the linguistic changes directly, we should be aware that the number of syllables for roughly half the words in the Slavonic language have changed with each stage of development, requiring significant adjustments and revisions within the melodic and notated traditions. (Of course, this is an over-simplification, and many exceptions are seen, as the later Znamenny repertoire did try to preserve some of the well-known melodic features from earlier times in notable hymns that were sung all the time.)

The Traditional Systems of Musical Notation for Znamenny Chant

For the duration of the history of Znamenny Chant up until Patriarch Nikon’s reforms, the melodies were recorded with a variant style of Middle Byzantine neumatic notation, most likely to have been first applied at the Chilandar Monastery on Mount Athos around the 9th century, brought to Bulgaria, and then brought northward to Kievan Rus. There it went through a couple centuries of reworking until we reach the “classical” stage of Znamenny Chant that we are now familiar with, both in neumatic notation and the repertoire it presents; this is the full repertoire still preserved by the Old Ritualists. The priestless Old Believers generally use an older (pre-1630s) version of the texts and notations, which Professor Ivan Gardiner called “Type B Notation”, while the priested Old Believers generally use the latest stage of neumatic “Type A Notation”. The Type B Notation generally preserves the vocalization of hard and soft signs as full vowels (“razdelnorechie”, divergent pronunciation), while the Type A Notation is used with “istinnorechie” (true speech, or contemporary pronunciation). A variant notation system, called "Kazan notation", was used to notate the Demestvenny, Put' and Strochyi repertoires, and its continued use by Old Believers is rather limited to only a small portion of the available chant repertoire.

After the Nikonian reforms and the loss of Znamenny in the mainstream for over a century, the tradition was artificially revived in 1772 by the publication of transcriptions of the melodies in several volumes by the Synodal Printing Press. The selections contained therein were melodically and rhythmically adjusted to accommodate the post-Nikonian Slavonic texts, and which used the “Kievan”, “square-note” or “quadratic” notation (first seen in the Suprasl’ Monastery Irmologion in 1599/1600, and adopted for general use in Muscovite Russia a few decades after the Nikonian reforms). With such a long gap, the Znamenny oral tradition had already withered away in most churches, with the exception of a few monasteries, and it never was re-introduced or accepted for use on a large scale; most of what we now see are a small number of selections that have been salvaged from the dust-bin of Russian musical history, and usually harmonized according to western European harmonizations as choral numbers.

The end result of various textual and pronunciation changes is a viable pre-modern Znamenny tradition – preserved by the Old Believers and Orthodox Old Ritualists – which is able to successfully “go with the flow” of hymns that incorporate textual phrases of greatly varying numbers of syllables. The authentic living tradition among those who use Znamenny Chant has an inherent textual flexibility (born from necessity) that later staff-notated music usually fails to convey to singers, even after prolonged use. While staff notation conveys a more definitive melodic repertoire, the older musical culture that uses the neumatic tradition and memorized formulas for singing hymns according to the Tones has a dynamic flexibility to contract and expand its musical phrases according to whatever texts need to be sung. Simply speaking, staff notation puts a straight-jacket on the chant system, while neumatic chant and memorized formulas make it preeminently adaptable. Moreover, the square-note books fail to convey deeper shades of melodic expression and interpretation (exegesis), as well as they have “fixed” in print a number of mis-interpretations of common idiomatic performance practice (interpretations which all singers in the living tradition will naturally observe, but cannot be gleaned from the notation without being taught orally – similar to what one experiences in Byzantine Chant.

The liturgical use of the English language

Unlike liturgical Greek-Byzantine hymns, which frequently have fixed textual meters that allow for the easy application of well-established and well-known melodies and phrases to other hymns, translations of the liturgical texts into other languages, including Church Slavonic and English, can rarely hope to replicate the original Greek meter, and thus require us to adapt musical repertoires that allow for a great deal of flexibility. The fathers at Holy Transfiguration Monastery have worked diligently to provided metered English translations inasmuch as it is feasible (trying to match the Greek prototypes), while Father Ephraim and the monks at St. Anthony’s Monastery have labored to establish a compositional system of analyzing the traditional Byzantine musical repertoire and presenting a catalog of musical phrases for each Mode/Tone based on the number of syllables per phrase. Critics have argued that in many cases the mechanic process of matching a phrase of English text with a corresponding melody in the St. Anthony’s catalog of musical phrases may indeed produce some very satisfying phrasing, but when you sing each phrase one after another to complete a hymn, the end result may sound either very mechanical or downright strange and unidiomatic to those who intimately know the Byzantine Chant tradition. I personally consider this approach to be a form of “mechanical creativity” or “quasi-AI” (artificial intelligence), although from time to time it can be used effectively when it is difficult to preserve the flow of applying the traditional melodies to textual passages that seem to resist our own creative talents. I prefer to resort to such mechanical creativity as a fall-back only when I am having difficulties moving forward in crafting musical settings.

I will confess to having grave concerns that attempting to produce an analogous catalog of Znamenny musical phrases based heavily on fixed numbers of syllables and fixed stress/accent patterns will be used in the same “slavish” manner which some critics of St. Anthony’s catalog have complained about (not that I necessarily agree with the harshness of such criticism), and will result in Znamenny settings which Old Ritualists will find strange and devoid of originality or expression. While there is no set of rules which dictate the ordering of phrases in Znamenny (or Byzantine) composition, it is true that after much use and observation of the individual repertoires, one develops a sense of “flow” where one intuitively expects certain well-known phrases to be followed by other particular phrases, providing an “organic flow” to the melody. Likewise, experienced chanters in these two traditions will have developed an intuitive ability to expand and contract their phrasing to adapt melodies to new texts, without necessarily needing to consult a catalog or even exchange or re-arrange the use of popevki. I certainly wish to avoid putting out compositions that are dry and academic – technically correct but rather deficient in artistic creativity.

Practical (Liturgical) Considerations

In moving forward with a project of adapting Znamenny Chant to English texts, we also need to look backward in history to existing models of liturgical practice and observe what genres of music within the Znamenny tradition flourished or withered, and understand what influenced, inspired or necessitated the melodic forms that have come down to us. It is also crucial to observe other performance practices that have become almost extinct, including antiphonal singing and "canonarchal" singing.

To be more specific, there was a divergence within the Orthodox liturgical tradition in Russia in the mid-1600s, where the old pre-Nikonian “rite” (the set of liturgical rituals according to an older version of the Typicon, which had also incorporated a few vestigial elements of the earlier Studite Typicon of Patriarch Alexis) was set aside in the mid-1600s during a campaign of liturgical and textual “reforms”, which ultimately resulted in the schism of the Old Believers and the loss of Znamenny Chant within the mainstream Russian Church. The printing of traditional chants in square-note notation in 1772 (more than a century after the Nikonian reforms!), in an attempt to save or resurrect the lost Znamenny tradition, accomplished only a meagre amount of preservation of the older singing tradition. After a gap of more than a century, there were few teachers left who could truly teach the Znamenny tradition as an authentic living tradition. It should also be kept in mind that the Slavonic texts and the melodies in these square-note publications were LATER adaptations of the pre-Nikonian chants to incorporate the “reformed” texts and accommodate the newer liturgical practices. Thus, anyone working with square-note resources is working with musical settings that have been modified from older forms, of varying success and quality. (A specific example is that the Russian Old Rite sings “Lord, I have cried” as a 3-antiphon unit according to the Studite and Cathedral-Rite Typicons, while the New Rite sings it according to the Sabbaitic and Great Church Typicons.)

For performance techniques, the older traditional practice was to always have two choirs (whenever possible), which would take turns singing portions of the services "antiphonally", often followed by the two choirs "coming down" from the raised kléroi (the portion of the soléa where the choirs normally stand) and joining together to sing some of the most significant hymns in the services. (For instance, the stichera on "Lord, I have cried" are sung by the right, then the left choirs, alternating, and then the choirs join together in the middle to sing the Doxasticon and Theotokion, and remain there to sing "O Gentle Light", and then return to their respective places to sing the daily Prokeimenon antiphonally.) BUT... when Patriarch Nikon introduced choral polyphony into the church services, it became strategically difficult to have two separate 4-part choirs, and to conduct them if the vocal parts were not standing all together in front of a choral conductor. Thus, with the practice of placing all the singers together on one kleros (or up in a "choir loft"), it became functionally unnecessary to maintain the orginal practice of having "liturgical movement" in the services. For the most part, the practice of antiphonal singing became obsolete shortly after the Nikonian 'reforms'.

Likewise, "canonarchal singing", the practice of having a canonarch announce the lines of text to the choirs (usually while standing in the front of the nave - "below the ambon", but sometimes from an analogion at the side of the choir) died out about the same time (or perhaps a bit earlier). With the invention of the printing press, a sufficient number of copies of books could be owned by a parish choir to eliminate the need of "lining out" the text to the chanters. (Note that this is an over-simplication of the actual reasons for the loss of the canonarch in liturgical practice in recent centuries, but is the most prominent reason.)

Although it is of lesser consideration, the partial use or influence of the Great Church Typicon in southwestern Rus had a significantly variation of influence on the Znamenny Chant used in that region, resulting in an “alternate” or "Kievan" Znamenny tradition. While the stock phrases that we call "popevki" are easily recognizable, there is a noticeable divergence in how such popevki are typically sung.

Repertoire Considerations

Another aspect to consider for the scope of our project is to determine just how much of the Znamenny repertoire is needed or wanted in modern liturgical practice.

In medieval Russian religious culture, people typically spent many hours in church services, which were performed fairly strictly according to the Typicon, and the lengthy Znamenny repertoire was developed and gradually expanded to accompany such lengthy services. But somewhere back in medieval times we also witnessed (in manuscripts) that the lengthy Znamenny melodies were too long and difficult for a lot of communities, especially for rural communities without trained chanters, and for use on weekdays with a lower-ranking commemoration (ferial services). This resulted in the emergence of the “Small Znamenny” repertoire (and Podobny melodies), which allowed the singing of texts to memorized formulas, by anyone with even a small amount of training. As time went on, most urban parishes before the Nikonian reforms used the full Znamenny repertoire (and selections of the festal “Great Znamenny” Chant) for Sundays and feasts, and the Small Znamenny Chant for weekdays and lesser services; most rural parishes ended up using a reduced selection of the full Znamenny repertoire, except for a few selections of the Obikhod, and instead relied very heavily on the formulaic Small Znamenny “Samoglasny” Chant, as well as some abbreviated melodies for frequently-sung heirmoi of the canons.

After the Nikonian reforms in the 1650s, the Russian Church found that the older ideology of spending hours in long church services was not so desirable, and this contributed to the Znamenny Chant being jettisoned from mainstream use (as well as the simple fact that there was no practical way to provide all parishes with revised-text chant books at the very same time that Nikon’s reforms were being forcibly and hastily pushed through). Something had to give, and the Znamenny Chant was largely abandoned in favor of flexible singing models coming from the west (or adapted from the harmonized Kievan version of Small Znamenny Chant).

Frankly speaking, if we go ahead with (re-)introducing a heavy use of Znamenny Chant in contemporary services, this will more than likely result in parishioners becoming resentful that the choir is making the services too long, as well as boring. (Even the majority of Old Believers had this same reaction back in the late 1600s.) Remember that parishioners and church singers alike are now mostly used to a rapid-fire singing of stichera, troparia, heirmoi, etc., and are not used to a casually-paced or slow singing of these hymns; unless we limit the use of full Znamenny singing to carefully selected highlights of the service, we are going to encounter a good deal of resistance and push-back from parishioners, choir member AND clergy, who are accustomed to a faster-paced pattern of services and don’t want to drag out their time in church beyond the time-frame that they are accustomed to. Again and again, we will hear the argument that such singing is the product of monasteries and is best left for monastics to use. If the Znamenny repertoire is over-used, there is also the risk that people might experience more difficulty with the comprehension and absorption of texts in slower-sung musical settings, and may be distracted by "too much melody”.

As a good working model, I suggest that we examine just how much of the full Znamenny repertoire that was retained for regular use in the Old Rite services, as well as in the earlier Carpatho-Russian tradition, and determine how extensive will be our needs for Znamenny settings. We should compile a practical list of needs (and a supplementary or secondary wish-list of desired hymns) which will not over-burden parishioners and singers alike, and will not add to “service fatigue” (overly lengthy services). Any more than this would be a constructive exercise in Znamenny composition and context, but would likely not be used by any parishes. (There is a point beyond which our labors would not really be utilized, and I suggest that we need not try to meet a “non-need”.) To that end, I suggest that the following pieces should be considered:

From the Obikhod: Most of this is already available from various sources, but we should compile a proper (and complete) Znamenny Obikhod with English texts. I don’t see this as a great challenge.

From the Octoechos: Znamenny settings in each of the 8 Tones for “Lord, I have cried”: a proper setting for Sundays and feasts, and a “Small Znamenny” setting for weekdays (much like Great Vespers sticheraric settings and Daily Vespers heirmologic settings in Byzantine Chant); 10 refrains for the stichera; the first 3 stichera of the Resurrection in full Znamenny Chant, and the other 4 in Small Znamenny Chant; Glory, both now; the Dogmatic Theotokia; the first sticheron on the Aposticha; the remaining stichera in Small Znamenny Chant; the Aposticha Theotokion; the Resurrectional Troparion and Theotokion in full Znamenny Chant; “God is the Lord”; the Resurrectional Troparion and Theotokion in Small Znamenny Chant; the Hypakoi; the Anabathmoi (?); the Resurrectional Prokeimena; the Sunday Heirmoi; “Holy is the Lord our God”; the 11 Eothina Exaposteilaria and Theotokia (?) the first 2 verses of the Praises; the refrains on the Praises; the 11 Eothina Gospel Stichera (?); the Theotokion; the Liturgy Beatitudes (first verse only), Promeimena and Alleluia. (Obviously, no parish will feel they want to use all of this, but it’s good to have this much available. Perhaps my list is a bit too ambitious.)

From the Heirmologion: The Sunday Heirmoi for Compline, the Midnight Office and Matins; the Heirmoi for the Great Feasts; the Heirmoi for the Paraklesis Canon and for common of saints (such as St. Nicholas).

From the Triodion and Pentecostarion: to be determined

From the Book of Needs: to be determined

Finally, we should offer a supplemental volume with instructional materials for how to sing the full Znamenny and Small Znamenny repertoires, with practice examples, etc. I would also like to include supplemental catalogs of the Znamenny neumes, the Popevki (phrase formulas; Greek: theses), the Litsa (complex formulas) and Fity (melismatic passages), together with a full transcription of these catalogs into staff notation, and an explanation of the embedded interpretative information that is lacking in staff notation. (Much of this material is already found in modern Russian publications, and remains to be translated into English.)

Formulating a “Road Map”

Another issue to discuss in formulating a “road map” for this project is to determine which hymns should emulate the original Znamenny melody as closely as possible, and which hymns may utilize the concept of selecting popevki which better fit the phrasing of English text. I consider it to be of paramount importance to attempt to fit English text to well-established melodies in the Znamenny repertoire, which all singers in the established tradition typically know by heart and recognize in mere moments of hearing them, without (or a minimization of) swapping out popevki and altering their recognizability to trained singers of the repertoire. Such examples of “immutable” melodies would naturally include “Lord, I have cried” and the Dogmatica in the 8 Tones, the Sunday Heirmoi, and a few other completely iconic melodies.

Other hymns of the Octoechos are less recognizable as “greatest hits”, and it seems perfectly normal to attempt to use the established sequence of popevki, switching their order of sequence or swapping one for another as needed to better adapt the melodies to English text; in such hymns there would be less concern by experienced singers in having the established tradition disrupted or altered beyond recognition.

Perhaps another way to look at this is to envision a “sliding scale” of acceptability in whether or not there can be a substitution of traditional popevki to adapt Znamenny hymns to English, and if so, just how much should be allowed; this would range from “no allowance or minimal allowance of substitution”, to “allowance of minor alteration, substitution or re-ordering of popevki (as needed)”, to “allowance of moderate revision”, or to “allowance of significant recomposition”. Potential criteria for making such determinations could include how we evaluate the degree of traditional placement within the service, its critical role in the liturgical and musical repertoire, and whether or not its alteration would disrupt the commonly-recognized oral and melodic tradition.

Afterthoughts

There is much else that can be discussed (including which English translation to use), but for now I offer these thoughts on how to approach the project, and I hope that my remarks are constructive, rather than being taken as dismissive of efforts already done by others before me. I do feel, however, that it is extremely valuable to draw upon the research and writings of Russian musicologists who have previously analyzed much of the Znamenny repertoire and published catalogs of compositional elements of the 8-Tone repertoire. There is also an abundance of digitized manuscripts from the medieval era which catalog the various elements of the chant repertoire and provide us with quaint names for all the phrases; almost all of this work is inaccessible to those who cannot fluently read the neumatic notation (as well as Church Slavonic and modern Russian), but with experience the Znamenny repertoire can be adequately transcribed into modern methods of presentation.

Finally, we should also consider that the Old Rite Church of the Nativity (ROCOR) in Erie, Pennsylvania has been using the Znamenny notation (exclusively) with English texts since 1983 for all their services, and perhaps their existing musical settings may be of great value in helping us to not “re-invent the wheel” as we move forward.

With sincere regards,

Nikita Simmons