Fr. Romanos Osta has recently shared with me a brief article he had written, titled "The Purpose of Church Chanting". It comes at an appropriate time to answer a question that has been on my mind for a while, one with which many in the Church often grapple: “How can we stay up-to-date with modern times without disfiguring, or at least veiling, Tradition, or being frozen in a sterile inability to adjust to the requirements of our age?”
Given his expertise, Fr. Osta delves into the purpose of Chant and its effects on the faithful. We have previously translated a far longer and more in-depth article of his on Ecclesial Chant. As such, this one is different. It will be quoting the entirety of his article to use it as basis to develop the idea of modernizing, fidelity to Tradition, and the choice of the Church in the 21st century. Bold quotations are taken directly from Fr. Osta’s article, and as such we are thankful for his generosity in sharing it with us.
"We must ask ourselves sometimes, especially we the chanters who experienced the chanting in all services, in the feasts of the Saints, of The Holy Mother of God Theotokos and of our Lord, where we find ourselves today regarding the spirituality of chanting? No doubt that the art of Church (or ecclesiastical) chanting is an art, and the most sacred among the arts. For us believers and chant lovers, however, the situation here is different, as art here is not a goal in itself. Art here serves a specific purpose, it comes to help and to serve the person and the believer, to raise both to a divine state, to taste the upper kingdom while still in this world. The art of chanting plays a prominent role in the heart of Church life. It is an art of prayer that helps the human being to enter in a relationship with the Creator in the Communion of Saints and the Church. The art of chanting transmits to us the ontological beauty, which enlightens and teaches the entire Church."
One often hears the argument that art develops with time, and that the Church needs to keep up with that. It is true that art is in the eye of the cultural beholder, meaning that it does develop with the taste and interest of a culture as a whole. On one hand, some things lose their negative aspects and become acceptable, while others gain a new context that makes some pieces no longer welcome. For example, different cultures have a different tolerance to what they consider “unacceptable violence or injury to modesty”, while others now draw stricter lines regarding what is considered offensive and racist vs a simple joke.
When it comes to the Church, She remains as much part of the world as Her members are. One sees that in the changing of the wording of some prayers no longer regarded as encouraging inter-communal charity towards people of other faiths. This does not mean that the Church changes Her eternal teachings, but rather that She adapts Her expression.
Chant in all its forms is also an art. It expresses human skill and creativity. However, that is not the goal of art in the Church. It is not to turn our gaze to the skill and mastery of others, but rather to use that skill and mastery to turn our gaze towards God. As the great Doctor of the Church, Therese of Lisieux, beautifully expresses, “prayer is a simple look turned toward Heaven.” This is what Fr. Osta’s quote, “[chant] is an art of prayer], refers to. It is a creative expression of the human voice and capacity to handle rhythm and lyrical formulations. However, and that is the key differentiating it from the overtly-humanised expressions of the pre-Byzantine Greeks and their art, it is pointing our gaze always away from the human towards the divine.
"The art of chanting soars with two wings: 1) The wing of doctrine and Church teaching, and 2) the wing of the overflow and interaction of God’s energies in human beings. Through the melodies, we learn theology and divine teaching."
In other words, ecclesial chanting such as Byzantine Chant is one that leads us into a relational situation with God (and others, as we will soon see in following paragraphs). Both wings discussed by Fr. Osta ultimately lead to the same effect: the knowledge of God. On one hand, the teachings of the Church, expressed in Her doctrines and theological formulations, give us a foundational and basic capacity of forming a mental image, to the best of our limited human capacity, of things divine. Her teachings are Truth, and without Truth, one cannot claim to know God. The second wing is God’s action towards us, also revealing His mystery in a way that the human mind can begin to possibly detect. There can be an entire debate on “energies” and “God’s revelatory action in human beings”, and it is one that far more capable Palamite and Thomistic theologians have spent years on, so we will avoid discussing that. The point, however, is that both God and His Church have to be the actors shaping our Chant for it to soar. It is as we say in the Divine Liturgy: “Yours of Your Own”... meaning that we can present to God only that which He Himself first makes available to us. This is also true regarding good Chant and any other expression of the Church: It finds its source, its truth, in God, offered to the Church, and in the Church’s wisdom formulated for us the faithful to then pray with.
"This in turn develops us to reach unity in faith, and in the knowledge of the Son of God, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ."
A good and humble understanding of a unified Truth (which can never contradict itself, as God is One) is the basis of the unity in faith. Here, we can start to gaze into the dangers of a chant that aims to develop human creativity for its own sake, rather than for the purpose of the knowledge of God. What does that mean? It means that, as soon as chant deviates from being a teaching tool of the Church’s doctrines, a formulation of Her saints, fathers, and theologians, it becomes susceptible to the usurpation of human emotion and creativity. How can creativity usurp? It does so by being unguided, unpurified, in the service of expressing human skill rather than divine truth. Therein lies the danger of creative expression in chanting. Suddenly, popular chants cease to be liturgical prayers with strict rules and settings of use. They cease to be unified in their expression and that of the faithful. Suddenly, parishes are no longer chanting theological formulations and truths but the emotional state of their respective choir directors.
This, in turn, leads to chaos. Suddenly, we are no longer corroborating St. John Damascene’s words in his famous hymn: “All of Creation rejoices in thee, O full of grace: the angels in heaven and the race of men…” When Chant ceases to be the unified voice of the Church, we no longer have a unified rejoicing of all of creation, of the race of men united to the angels in their praise. We end up with a very disunified creation, very unlike the harmonious one in the Garden of Eden before the fall. “Lex orandi, lex credendi”. What happens when we cease prayer and worship in unity? It is not far-fetched to claim that the natural result will be a similar disunity in belief. It is good to express our sentiment and creativity in personal prayer. However, the Church is a place for the prayer of all the faithful, not respective expressions and variations. As such, She always speaks with one voice, and this must be conveyed in Her formulations as well.
"Then, God’s energies and his graces overflow in us, where the spirit inflames the heart and works to activate these energies and to make clear for us God’s advice in worship, belief and Christian life. We must point out that the chanting is an art that introduces the believer to the mystery of God, by clarifying the concepts of theology and the symbolism of rituals, especially the mysteries of entry into the Christian faith; in short, teaching the meaning of the incomprehensible mysteries. Therefore this art helps us to enter into the mystagogy."
Here, yet again, Fr. Osta stresses the idea that Chant aims to teach and clarify theology, not to express personal formulations of prayer. In other words, above all else, Chant is a tool of teaching that flows from God and His Church towards us, and not the other way around. It is informing us about God, more than it is expressing something to God about us (and the latter should be, as we’ve already discussed, through the voice of the Church). In other words, Chant teaches us about God through the words and voice of the Church as a primary theological objective. It then takes this knowledge and offers it back to Him in form of praise, prayer and worship. In all of this, there seems to be no logical place for the creative expression of the emotional overflow of Bob on his guitar, Jenny on her flute, and Choir Director Chris through his “modern reinterpretation of ‘How Deep the Father’s Love for Us’”.
"Given all of that, if chanting deviates from its goal, it becomes not only useless, not different from world music, but also dangerous. Church chanting is like any other clerical art, it is not a purpose in itself, but aims to sanctify man. Metropolitan Ierotheos, Bishop of Nafpaktos says: the purpose of Church music is to convey to the believer the atmosphere of the Heavenly Church, to make them love it, yearn for it, desire it, and most importantly, live it as much as possible. My Brothers, chanting is not an artistic show, or a display of muscles [abilities and skill], it is a church service. God will not listen to the chanter’s screams. Rather, let us chant with God’s grace in our hearts as the Divine Apostle Paul says. The Church does not need artists and singers, She needs people with priestly and liturgical awareness."
With this quote, Fr. Osta thoroughly drives the point home: the Church does not need artists and singers when it comes to Her liturgy, and Chant is indeed a service offered in the liturgical contexts of the Church. What is needed, on the other hand, are people with such an awareness of why the Church does things, how they are to be done, and for whom they are being done. If the argument of the common priesthood of the faithful is to be used, then let that priesthood indeed be in service of the Church. Some are ordained towards a greater service through the Sacraments, but the rest of us must also pray with one tongue and one voice, the voice of the Church that directs us and others always towards the unity of God’s truth. This can then be applied to all the liturgical expressions of the Church: in moving forward with the times, the Church can and does adapt. New chants are composed, prayers are written for newly-incorporated liturgical feasts, new saints acquire new troparions and kontakions, etc… However, these adaptations can remain unified expressions of the Church’s voice, being channelled through Her institutions, her theologians, her bishops, and the oneness of Her teaching.
Thank you. this is an interesting question, which I'm going to approach the same content from a somewhat different angle. And try to be short befitting a comment, not a "musing", and much less an essay...
Imo in short "tradition" is the inheritance of the church - a dialogue with, and continuation of (but not a rote copying of)the life of the church, from Pentecost (and even before to creation?) to the parousia. It is not what is cariactuared in Reb Tevye's brilliant opening to a great work exploring the very serious conflict in the human heart between an idealized past and unchangable modernity. Instead, the so-called "deposit of faith", properly understood, is transmitted and re-lived through tradition.