Papers by John Presson Protopsaltis
This is part two of a paper I wrote several years ago in anticipation of a talk never given. Thi... more This is part two of a paper I wrote several years ago in anticipation of a talk never given. This paper is presented as a look at the working conditions of Byzantine chant in the New World and a look at the serious effort at bringing classical and authentic Byzantine music into the English language.
This paper is presented as a look at the working conditions of Byzantine chant in the New World a... more This paper is presented as a look at the working conditions of Byzantine chant in the New World and a look at the serious effort at bringing classical and authentic Byzantine music into the English language.
In a Church that claims an undeniable historical and liturgical link to early Christianity, it is... more In a Church that claims an undeniable historical and liturgical link to early Christianity, it is perhaps a supreme irony that in the midst of such a claim, westernized artistic and Baroque, Italianate and romantic musical forms of particularly 17th, 18th and 19th Century Europe have found their home in Orthodox temples, particularly in the Slavic North. We, particularly in the Orthodox West, have accepted a particular narrative that explains the adherence to monophonic chants in Constantinople, Greece and the Mediterranean as being characteristic to “the Greeks”, harmonized choral music as being characteristic of “the Slavs”, etc., and the implication that there were and therefore are no normative standards of liturgical music in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, but only “national flavours” which are to be maintained for purely “pastoral” purposes. A study of musical history in the early West, East, Greece, and Russia can quickly dispel such notions that anything but adherence to monophony in Orthodox worship is both an novelty and divergence from the letter and spirit of early church liturgical practice.
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Papers by John Presson Protopsaltis