From Orthodox History:
I’ve been looking through a borrowed copy of Fr. Michael Gelsinger’s Orthodox Hymns in English, published by the Antiochian Archdiocese in 1939. This is a significant work, and Gelsinger’s hymns are still used to this day. I’ll write more about this book in the future, but I found the following paragraph, from the Introduction, to be especially interesting:Other religions in America have hymnbooks containing six hundred or more melodies; Orthodoxy in English, though rightfully heir to the grandest and richest score of music in existence, would only with difficulty command as many as fifty melodies. Our lack of Orthodox hymns that can be sung in English has already encouraged the use of substitutes: rumor tells of Parishes that use Protestant hymnbooks, — in one case, at least, the Billy Sunday collection; and in another a book of “Pentecostal Hymns.” Can we calmly face a future which might add “Brighten the Corner Where You Are” and “Beautiful Isle of Somewhere” to the treasures of Orthodox devotion?
No, Gelsinger answers: “It is, of course, as unthinkable as it is unnecessary that we should permit any such development.” His answer? Translate Orthodox music from all the traditions — Greek, Russian, Antiochian, Bulgarian, Romanian, etc. — into the English language.
Every tradition of our Orthodox music should find a home in every Parish in America; for American Orthodoxy inherits the music of every national Orthodox Church abroad. It is usual to say that our children will all be Americans together; but that is only one face of the truth. It is equally true that each of our children as an Orthodox Christian is as much Russian as he is Greek, as much Greek as he is Syrian, as much Syrian as he is Bulgarian or Rumanian: for he is the rightful heir of everything Orthodox that has ever entered this country.
Here, Gelsinger sounds a lot like Fr. Ingram Nathaniel Irvine and Fr. Leonid Turkevich before him, and like countless people today. But back in 1939, Gelsinger’s views were pretty cutting-edge. They had a substantial influence on the development of American Orthodoxy in the decades that followed.
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"... for American Orthodoxy inherits the music of every national Orthodox Church abroad." Fine if your people come from one of those churches. What about those of us who don't? My people were Irish, and before that Norman, and before that Danes. Where's our music?
ReplyDeleteThere were a thousand years of Western saints before 1054; where are they in our calendars? I look at March 17th and I see "Venerable Aleksy, Man of God". Well, I'm very happy for him. We've got all the time in the world for some obscure Athonite monk or Egyptian stylite or Russian staryets but nary a moment for Patrick and Aidan and Columban and Bridget and the other enlighteners of northern Europe.
The thing I hate most about Orthodoxy in America is the constant, constant, constant pressure to conform to cultures that are not our own. "Let's do it this way because that's the way they do it at the Monastery of the Caves outside of Kiev." I'm sorry, but I don't give a shit about how they do it at the Monastery of the Caves outside of Kiev. I'm much more interested in the way they did it at Armagh and Iona and Lindisfarne. No room for that, though.
The Latin Church had a thousand years of orthodoxy before it went off the rails, but God forbid somebody whose cultural heritage is from west of Serajevo should try to take advantage of it. It is, in Gelsinger's word, "as unthinkable as it is unnecessary".
I am just totally sick and tired of the whole "East is best and West sucks in every particular" cooties that infest even the most casual contact with Orthodoxy in America. I had a guy ask me the other day, "How come all of your priests look like foreigners?" I had to confess to him that most of them are, mentally.
As my granny used to say, a pox on you and bad cess to your kin.
I would say that in better including the pre-Schism Western saints in the liturgical life of the Orthodox parishes of America you need people who can locate, create when necessary, and consolidate the music for those saints. Then you need people who are listened to to push for inclusion of those now readily packaged works of music to be used.
ReplyDeleteIf we look at the American saints we see that their inclusion was an organic one. There is a process in place to devise kontakia etc. for a new saint and those saints are afforded importance in the liturgical year.
I am all for an "American Orthodox Church" with a strong identity of its own that at the same time preserves the local customs for those that hold them dear. It is a diverse group under the American Orthodox tent and it is very difficult to cater to everyone in a parish when half want kielbasa and the other half are wondering who forgot the hummus.
The Eastern triumphalism is, as you've said, a bit overdone is some quarters. Just mention Augustine and wait for the back and forth on whether he's really a saint.