“Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul! While I live I will praise the Lord; I will sing
praises to my God while I have being….Praise the Lord! For it is good to sing praises to our God; For it is pleasant, and praise is beautiful.” (Psalms 146:1, 147:1)
Warm joy leaps in my heart as I recall my first years as the youngest priest in our New York City cathedral. I would stand holding my taper at the end of the line of priests listening to the glorious Afonsky choir pour forth hymns of exquisite loveliness from the loft. Now and then one tenor’s voice would rise aloft to transcend all the other sounds, and a whisper would then pass from one worshipper to another: “Gedda! Gedda’s here!” The world-renowned operatic singer and devout Orthodox Christian, Nicolai Gedda, would add a luster to what was already a paean of beauty to our Lord God Almighty. And he came quite often in those years. I rush to endorse the words of Igor Stravinsky:
The Church knew what the psalmist knew: Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise Him than the building of the Church and all its decoration; it is the Church’s greatest ornament.
Yes, he’s right—but what kind of music is pleasing to the faithful believers? Raised in the tradition expressed above, it’s obvious: Russian Orthodox choirs—but is it so? The Arabic tradition and the Byzantine style are older and even more authentic. The plain chants so functional to fledgling missions and for those without a history of Old World church music are just as Orthodox. We don’t nor can we sing together. As long as we remain apart, other than on our annual Sunday of Orthodoxy vespers, it doesn’t much matter. That too is unfortunate. And should we not be encouraging and promoting the modern composers such as England’s John Tavener, as well as Arvo Part of Estonia, Tiky Zes and Frank Desby of Greece, Georgi Sviridov, Alfred Schnittke and Yuri Falik of Russia, and others? Are they to compose church music only for symphony halls, but not for our sacred worship? Music is communication, as is prayer. Are we incapable of finding ways to have our church composers create arrangements that will exhilarate, motivate and inspire our communicants to pray to their settings? There was a day when Orthodox Christians could hardly wait for a feast to arrive, to hear what St. Roman the Sweet Singer would come up with for the occasion. Today young people pack rock and roll halls; why can we not find ways to pack them into our churches?
Another problem is that modern folks generally and Americans specifically haven’t the patience of their ancestors. Every Sunday the entire day was set aside for worship. When I was a child, it was normal for the Divine Liturgy to last two and a half hours, even more on special holy days. The night before we attended vigil, and on Sunday evening we attended vespers to complete the cycle. And nobody as far as I could see would look at his watch. Now when I hear one of the pop songs I so enjoyed as a teenager, I can’t believe the tempos were so slow. We live in a fast pace. We drive faster, eat faster, and we probably even sleep faster. Non-Orthodox churches have made their peace by adjusting to our modern life style, but we don’t and probably won’t follow their lead. We never do. Still, we ought to be asking the question: Is there a way to hold onto our young people and even entice others to enhance our membership by their attendance? We have self-evident problems reaching out to contemporary society with the everlasting praise of our faith; but fatalism is not an option. If beauty will save the world, let’s find ways to express that beauty.
My sense is that many of my fellow priests either avoid, ignore or belittle the problem. What problem? If you want to leave, just leave, they say. Orthodoxy is an acquired taste, and many just never care to make the effort. It’s their loss. But is that the end of the matter, or ought we not to struggle and find ways to praise the Lord in song, encouraging our creative artists to offer the Church music that we can recognize as authentic and beautiful, traditional and new, sending us out into the world outside our temples filled with joy in our hearts and songs on our lips?