With the blessing of H.E. Metropolitan Nicolae, on Saturday, September 11, at 3.00 pm EDT / 12.00 pm, took place the online conference entitled The Chanter’s Participation in the Church’s Pastoral care.
The meeting began with the usual prayer and the blessing of His Eminence Metropolitan Nicolae who thanked those who decided to participate at this important event, not only for Romanian parishes in the diaspora, but also for those in the motherland, as evidenced by the participation of priests and chanters from Romania.
After the opening word from the Metropolitan, V. Rev. Father Daniel Ene from the Holy Trinity Romanian Orthodox Church from Rochester, NY made a short biographical introduction of the first speaker, Rev. Archdeacon Mihail Bucă, the Protopsaltis of the Tronos Byzantine Choir, who is at the present time on a concert tour in US territory.
In his discourse, the Rev. Archdeacon stressed the necessity for chanters to take the initiative in gathering the people in the kliros, so that this coagulation may contribute to the liturgical chant, as well as serving as a modality for strengthening the bonds between Christians who are the Church, Christ’s Body. On the other hand, referring to the homophonic chant, which predominates in parishes of the Romanian Orthodox Church, the Protopsaltis of the Tronos choir considered that this type of singing cannot match Byzantine chant in revealing the spirit of Orthodoxy, especially in those compositions necessitating a particular experience and training in psalmody (e.g. Great Cherubika, Koinonika, Megalynaria for Great Feasts or Kalophonic Heirmoi).
Thus, it would be desirable, wherever it would be possible, that an attempt be made in order to re-discover the thesaurus of Byzantine Chant through the learning of all of its eight specific tones, and not just alternating between the fifth and the eight tones from the Cântările Sfintei Liturgii (Chants of the Divine Liturgy) book. At the end, Father Archdeacon wanted to remind to all the people present, and especially to the priests, to properly treasure their chanters, especially those that are gifted.
After the presentation of Rev. Mihail Bucă, Father Daniel Ene made certain observations: namely, because the situation in the diaspora is very different from that in the mother land, seeing that one cannot find many Romanian chanters with an adequate training outside the borders of Romania; following this, he introduced the second speaker of the conference, namely, Alin Buliga, former Protopsaltis of the Katharsis group, who at the present time is living in Austria with his family.
Beginning by mentioning a few milestones of his musical career, Mr. Buliga made the important observation according to which the chanter participates in the Church’s pastoral care, first and foremost, by simply reading and chanting the liturgical texts, which contain the Church’s dogmatic teaching, established across the centuries during the Ecumenical Synods. He then continued by talking about the difficulty in maintaining a permanent chanter in the parishes of the diaspora, especially because of the tough financial conditions which many of these may have to face.
However, this lack can also be transformed into something beneficial because, as a result of the absence of an experienced chanter, the faithful of a parish would not feel such nervousness as they normally would when in the presence of a professional, and as a result, they would feel the encouragement of going further in their efforts of learning the Church’s chant; such a type of “volunteering” would consequently allow, as much as possible, a celebration of the services at least somewhat close to what the Typikon would prescribe.
In spite of all this, the absence of a trained chanter will not permit for the same cursivity of the services, and it will almost certainly make impossible the serving of Vespers and Matins, which, as a general rule, are celebrated quite rarely in the Romanian diaspora. Likewise, in many cases, the ones that chant at services in the diaspora communities are the older ones (though there are exceptions to this rule, such as certain communities with children choirs). To this, one can add the difficulty of chant homogenization, seeing that in the diaspora, there are Romanians coming from every region of the mother land, each having a preference towards the type of chant with which he or she was familiarized with, and the absence of a chanter will contribute to the exacerbation of these differences. At the end, Mr. Alin Buliga ended with a similar piece of advice as that of his predecessor, namely, that having an experienced chanter in Romanian parishes of the diaspora is a gift from God, and should, as a result, be treasured as such.
Following his presentation, there came a series of questions addressed to him, as well as to the Rev. Archdeacon, with both offering answers that opened up new perspectives, including the possibility of holding courses of Byzantine chant online.
At the end, His Eminence Metropolitan Nicolae once again thanked the participants, as well as V. Rev. Daniel Ene for moderating this discussion. The conference ended with a prayer addressed to the Mother of God, the one who not infrequently bestowed from the grace of Her Son to God-fearing chanters, as the most beautiful empress with gold-woven robes (Psalm 44:11, LXX).
May it be that through her prayers, all those that are concelebrating with the ones serving in the altars through the Church’s chant be enlightened!
