The Gift of Song

“My heart is steadfast; I will sing and make music with all my soul” (Psalm 108:1)

In my first few years following ordination, I was the youngest and of course lowest of the eight priests at our New York City cathedral. Between Fr. Leonid and me was forty one years. I knew my place literally at all services—far removed from the celebrant, normally the Metropolitan. I enjoyed my rank. The celebrants were consistent in assigning vocal roles to each priest in order, so I had merely to count which place would be mine, and I was free to enjoy the lovely choir singing until my turn would come. And of course to hold my candle and go into myself in deep prayer.

The choir was fluid and flawless, a fragrance of harmony, but on eves of the feasts one tenor voice rang out above all the rest. Whispers permeated the worshippers: “Gedda.” Nicolai Gedda was a famous opera singer. Born in Sweden, he discovered as a young man that he had been gifted with a sterling tenor voice. He enjoyed a brilliant career singing the classic tenor roles on stages throughout the world. Yet he was never far from the Russian Orthodox Church and the services that were the joy of his heart. I’ve listened to the recordings of his various operatic roles, yet captured in my memory bank is the clarity and quality of his prayers from our cathedral loft. The cathedral was originally a Protestant church built in a theater architectural style, with wings above the floor level. A couple in one such pod, obviously not of our faith, came merely to enjoy the singing. The man turned to his wife after one of Gedda’s arias and made a circle of thumb and forefinger, together with a wink.

We cathedral folk had several financial appeals during my stay among them. The old building we inherited required constant repair—plumbing, electricity, and one pressing need was the buckling of the nave’s floor. The proposal was to remove the cracked linoleum and replace it with wooden parquet. The committee for repair sang their obvious tune: “Get Gedda.” And as always the renowned singer obliged. He would sing even at Town Hall on our behalf.

To my regret I never actually met the great tenor. I felt myself too shy to introduce myself, and besides, he never stayed after the services were over, nor would our illustrious choirmaster, Nicolai Petrovich Afonsky, dare to suggest that Gedda should attend choir rehearsals, the unique exception to that mandatory rule. Enough that he always came on the eves of the great feasts, a voice from the choir loft like a bodiless apparition singing out with sounds that filled the temple with beauty.

One must mention the style of worship in the above manner. Such grandiloquent singing from voices that were trained in all the nuances of singing has become challenged and tempered in recent times by giving way to more simple congregational style of worship, so that the experience of prayer is not only by listening to select voices, but by taking part in the chanting from all the people of God. I personally pray that it’s not an either/or situation, but that the glory of the Lord can and ought to be expressed in a variety of ways. For example, in the cathedrals of the Ukraine, specifically Kiev, the responses to the prayers from the altar are offered by three “choirs:” From the right cleros a trained, perhaps even professional group led by an excellent choirmaster is responded by the left cleros choir, not quite as sterling as the “A” team, and then from the congregation in the nave responses to litanies and other quite familiar passages are sung by the congregation as a whole. I pray that the Orthodox Church continues to create new and innovative ways to give glory to God building on tradition to enhance worship today. All-inclusive singing ought not be at the expense of beauty. And beauty to come from the voices of all.