The Ascendancy of Choral Singing.

The very absence of instrumental music led to an unusual proliferation of choral song and hymnody in the churches. Orthodox services are marked by an altogether extraordinary amount of music, and music of such technical difficulty that it can be handled only by trained choirs. Even the smallest Orthodox parish maintains a choir. These choirs are highly accomplished, if only because of the complicated demands of the liturgy and the immense repertoire of hymns of all types. It would lead us too far afield to analyze the different types of liturgical song which are designated by such names as hirmoi, stichera, kontakia, etc. Considerable demands also are made upon the vocal and musical talents of priests and deacons.

Up to the second half of the ninth century the authors of the hymns were poet-composers who created both words and music. There followed an era of hymn writers who set new poems to existing melodies. The eleventh century saw a new flowering of Byzantine music, characterized by extended coloratura passages; and this period passed directly into the neo-Greek era of hymn composition. In the Russian Church, in Greece, and especially on Greek islands with considerable Italian populations, monodic Byzantine music was replaced partly or completely by modern western European music with its harmony and polyphonic choral singing. In present-day Greece both Byzantine music and italianized polyphonic music are equally favored. The monasteries, especially those on Mount Athos, preserve the old monodic style, but modern polyphonic choral singing is well entrenched in the great cathedrals of Athens, Salonika and Corinth. In Russia the time-honored monodic style has been retained by the Old Believers, but the regular Orthodox Church has developed under the influence of Italian music and the polyphonic singing. Some monodic hymns in the older Byzantine style, which grew out of the liturgical practice in Kiev, Novgorod or Moscow, are still preserved. The great Russian composers of the past few centuries contributed enormously to the further development of ecclesiastical choral music, and church music in its turn has to some extent affected the secular works of Russian composers (for example, Tchaikovsky).

Since many of the villagers or townspeople of Orthodox parishes participated in the church choir, such choral singing also exerted considerable influence upon folk songs in the Orthodox countries. Stylistic elements of Byzantine hymns can be detected in many Greek folk songs; and similarly, Russian folk songs in many respects reflect the style of Russian Orthodox church music. In the Syrian Orthodox Church as well as in the Monophysite and Nestorian churches in Asia and Africa, the liturgical song of the fifth century has been preserved right down to the present; and in these areas too the same relationship between church music and folk songs may be observed.

W e have already had occasion to observe that the whole subject of Orthodox culture has scarcely been given adequate treatment by historians and sociologists. This is even more true of the ethical ideas of Orthodoxy. Up to the present, the whole problem of ethics, especially of the social ethics of Orthodoxy, has hardly been subjected to systematic historical investigation. The ideas and impulses of Christian social ethics operate with particular force within Orthodox theology, as any systematic account can make plain.

Since the whole field of Orthodox ethics has been extraordinarily confused by modern political slogans, we must begin by distinguishing three elements: first, the socio-ethical principles expressed in the Orthodox interpretation of Christianity, that is to say, chiefly in Orthodox dogmatics and liturgy; second, the social doctrines that have been developed by Orthodox ecclesiastics or theologians as direct contributions to social problems; and third, the effects of Orthodox socio-ethical ideas upon various philosophical, political, social and cultural reform movements, especially in the history of Russian thought.

O rthodoxy has given certain elements of Christian social ethics a special interpretation that has left its impress upon history. Orthodoxy stresses brotherly love, not only for all believers but also for all men. The idea springs from the conception that all men are created after the image of God, that Christ died for all, and that all are called to the resurrection in the new life.

Brotherhood, too, stems from the real center of the religion of the Eastern Church; the Eucharistic liturgy, the participation of all the baptized in the wedding supper that makes them members of the Mystical Body of Christ. Uniting in the Eucharist with the resurrected Lord and with the celestial Church of angels and saints, the earthly Church becomes a community of brothers. Consequently, before communion the Eucharistic liturgy proclaims the mutual forgiveness of all sins “in words, in works or thoughts, on this day or on all the days of my life.”

The Russian writer Gogol in his famous Observations on the Divine Liturgy (1847) pointed up the moral implications of this brotherhood forming in the presence of Christ. After the mutual forgiveness of sins the priest cries out: “ Christ is in the midst of us,” and the deacon replies: “He is and will be.” Gogol observes: “Formerly, all those assembled in the church used to kiss one another, men the men and women the women, saying: 'Christ is in the midst of us!' and answering: 'He is and will be!' That tradition persists, though in a modified form, for every communicant summons to his mind all Christians, not only those in the temple at the time, but the absent ones also, not only those close to his heart, but also those who have remained remote from it; hastening to reconcile himself with all those toward whom he has felt envy, hatred or discontent, he gives them all a kiss in spirit, saying to himself: ' Christ is in the midst of us,' and answering on their behalf: 'He is and will be!' Unless he does this he will be dead to all the holy acts that follow, after the words of Christ himself: 'Leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift'; and after the words of Christ's apostle: 'If any one says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.'”

It is probably the Easter liturgy that most vividly expresses this idea of fraternity. The kiss of peace of the primitive Church has been retained in this Easter liturgy to symbolize the mutual forgiveness of sins and the forging of a community freed of all guilts and desires for vengeance. On Easter Sunday the choir sings: “The Day of Resurrection. Let the festival of the people illuminate us. And let us embrace one another. Let those who hate us speak to us: 'Brethren, for the sake of the Resurrection we will all forgive one another'; and so let us cry out: 'Christ rose from the dead after destroying death by death; he gives life to all those resting in their tombs.' “ This sense of the mystical union of all the redeemed in their participation in the resurrected Lord is the innermost core of Orthodox collective and individual ethics, and is continually kept alive by the mystery of the Eucharist.

I t might be imagined that this emphasis upon the Christian ethics of brotherly love would have decisively affected social conditions in the Orthodox countries. That had been the case in the era of the primitive Church, when the spiritual teachers and leaders of the various churches were forever admonishing their flock concerning the social responsibilities of Christians. After Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, the Church assumed the task of reminding the Christian emperors of their social obligations. The Church itself established hospitals and charitable institutions of all kinds, and constantly urged upon the wealthy their duty to the poor.

Unfortunately, there were other forces that worked against this current as Church and state became more and more interlocked. As time went on, the state Church put itself more at the service of political absolutism, which was anchored in the principle of divine right. Gradually the Church withdrew from all but purely charitable social activity. It became a principle of Orthodoxy to remain aloof from politics, so that even in the eventful nineteenth century the Russian Orthodox Church — and this was one of its tragedies — made scarcely any significant contribution toward a solution of the social injustices.

We must add a reservation to the above statement: on this point there exists an almost total gap in historical research. No historian has looked into the part played by the Church in the liberation of the serfs in the mid-nineteenth century or has attempted to discover what position it took on the social question toward the end of that century. Nor are there any studies of the role assumed by the Russian Orthodox Church in the Revolutions of 1905 and 1917. What histories we have, give the impression that all Russian social problems of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were completely ignored by the Church. On the other hand, we must consider the large and influential group of Slavophiles, whose ideals and ideas for reform were based on Orthodox principles, above all upon the idea of sobornost. [8]

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