Anyone who has attended an Orthodox service has more than once heard the deacon proclaim the name of the chant that will be performed by the choir and indicate the number of the voice. If the first is generally clear and does not raise questions, then what a voice is is not known to everyone. Let's try to figure this out and understand how it influences the nature of the piece being performed.
Features of church singing
Church singing and reading are the most important components of worship, and the difference between them lies only in melodic breadth. This is quite obvious, since Orthodox singing is nothing more than reading? expanded and based on a specific musical basis. At the same time, is reading itself singing? melodically abbreviated in accordance with its content and the requirements of the Church Charter.
In church singing, the task of the melody is not to aesthetically embellish the text, but to more deeply convey its internal content and reveal many features that cannot be expressed in words. In itself, it is the fruit of the inspired labors of the holy fathers, for whom hymns were not exercises in art, but a sincere expression of their spiritual state. They created the Charter of Chants, regulating not only the sequence of performance, but also the nature of certain melodies.
Are you providing quality?!
I already wrote something similar, but I’ll repeat it. Please pay attention to the quality. And then the amount of church singing material you have mastered will increase. At NPDU, where I taught church singing to the students of the regency department, a full academic year was given to learn eight stichera voices.
Of course, the students had other subjects and obediences, but within a year it was possible to master and learn Octopus. That is, by studying in a group in a lesson and individually self-training, attending regular weekly services and mastering vocal chants in the practice of services; The students gradually, step by step, mastered all the verse voices.
The meaning of the word “voice” as applied to church singing
In the Russian Orthodox Church, liturgical singing is based on the principle of “octophony,” the author of which is St. John of Damascus. According to this rule, all chants are divided into eight voices in accordance with their content and the semantic load contained in them. Each of them is characterized by a strictly defined tune and emotional coloring.
The law of octagonism came to the Russian Orthodox Church from Greece and received a certain creative reworking from us. This was expressed in the fact that, unlike the Greek original, where church voices serve to designate only mode and tonality, in Rus' they mainly designate a certain melody assigned to them and not subject to change. As already mentioned, there are only eight voices. Of these, the first four are basic (athenic), and the subsequent ones are? auxiliary (plagal), whose task is to complete and deepen the main ones. Let's look at them in more detail.
You are your own director, that is, your own examiner.
There were those who mastered the voices faster, but they still kept up with the entire course. Here on the blog, your situation is a little different. There is no strict strict control over the timing of learning, there are no exams, you are left to study on your own.
Of course, I advise everyone, correcting or adjusting your mastery of stichera or troparary voices. But you yourself must understand that singing in the choir is careful and painstaking work and it is not at all appropriate to treat it carelessly.
But I want to learn to sing so quickly! - you say. Learn, am I against it? But don't forget to go back and repeat all the voices you learned earlier. After all, if you sing at services only on weekends and on major holidays, then the voices will be forgotten within a week.
Voices of Bright Resurrection and Holy Saturday
At Easter services, where all the hymns have a radiant, majestic color, the service is built in the first tone and the auxiliary fifth voice parallel to it. This gives the overall sound the character of an appeal to Heaven and allows you to tune the soul into an elevated mood. Being a reflection of heavenly beauty, these chants instill spiritual joy in us. This example clearly shows what a voice is, giving a feeling of celebration.
On Holy Saturday before Easter, when everything in the world froze in anticipation of the miracle of the Resurrection of Christ, and the souls of people are filled with tenderness and love, tender and touching melodies are heard in the churches of God, reflecting the subtlest nuances of the inner state of those praying. On this day, the church service is built entirely on the second voice and the sixth voice that complements it. What the second voice is is also illustrated by funeral services, where all the chants are built on its emotional coloring. This is, as it were, a reflection of the transitional state of the soul from the mortal world to eternal life.
Liturgics (church practice) Osmoglasie
Tone 6 Sunday troparion
male voice: female voice:
The angelic powers are on Thy tomb, / and those watching over the dead, / and standing Mary in the tomb, / seeking Your most pure Body. / You captured hell without being tempted by it; / you met the Virgin, granting life. / Risen from the dead. Lord, glory to You.
In the troparion of the 6th tone
it is sung about the consternation of the guards who guarded the tomb and saw the appearance of the Angels, and about Christ’s disciple, Mary Magdalene, who came to look for the dead body of the Lord and did not find it.
Streguschii - watchers, guardians.
+ After the Sabbath had passed, at dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came and another Mary looked at the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for the Angel of the Lord, who descended from heaven, came, rolled away the stone from the door of the tomb and sat on it; his appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow; Frightened by him, those guarding them trembled and became as if they were dead; The angel, turning his speech to the women, said: Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus crucified; He is not here - He has risen, as He said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay, and go quickly, tell His disciples that He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you to Galilee; you will see Him there. Behold, I have told you (Matthew 28:1-7). And Mary stood at the tomb and cried. And when she cried, she bent down into the tomb, and saw two Angels sitting in white robes, one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus lay. And they say to her: wife! Why are you crying? He says to them: They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him (John 20:11-13).
Thou hast met a virgin, granting life... The line of the troparion turns us to the continuation of the events of the Gospel of John: to the meeting of Jesus with Mary Magdalene (John 20:11-18). She is called here a virgin (neither the Gospel nor the life of St. Mary Magdalene, Equal-to-the-Apostles, tells us anything directly about the age and marital status of the saint at the time of the Gospel events; but the Greek word παρυένος - virgin - like the modern girl, was also used to designate a young woman in general - one whose marital status is not indicated by anything). Often in this troparion the word “virgin”
written with a capital (capital) letter, as referring to the Blessed Virgin Mary; but with this understanding, the troparion does not lend itself to any satisfactory explanation.
Thou hast captivated hell... In the Greek text of the troparion - disarmed.
Tone 6 stichera and troparia. Structure, features. Troparion for Sunday, tone 6. A manual for beginning singers from the Regency Department of the Kharkov Theological Seminary. Here the troparion is sung in one voice and slowly for easier learning. The cursor moves in real time over the notes being played, and the corresponding keys are shown on the keyboard. YouTube player functions allow you to adjust the playback speed if necessary. Troparion Sunday Tone 6, soprano part Troparion Sunday Tone 6, bass part
VOICE 6
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“gives rise to pious feelings - devotion, humanity, love
.
This is what the ancients wrote. We also know this voice as the voice of concentration and sorrow - a minor intonation in which the words of the text rise, as if on “steps”
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The hymns of this voice that are most familiar to believers are: Sunday hymn according to the Gospel “Having seen the Resurrection of Christ”; Troparion (stichera) to the Holy Spirit “Heavenly King”; Stichera “Thy Resurrection, O Christ the Savior, the Angels sing in heaven”; Funeral stichera “Seeing me is silent”; Irmos of the canon “As Israel walked on dry land” (6th canto “The Sea of Life”).
Two voices, very different in frequency of execution
Regarding the third voice, it should be noted that very few chants are built on its basis. In terms of frequency of its use in worship, it ranks second to last. Sedate, but at the same time firm, full of courageous sound, it seems to lead listeners into reflection on the secrets of the Heavenly world and the frailty of earthly existence. The most striking example is the well-known Sunday kontakion “The Resurrection of Christ.”
The sound of chants built on the fourth voice is very characteristic. They are distinguished by solemnity and speed, encouraging fun and joy. They fill the content of the melody and emphasize the meaning of the word. The fourth voice is one of the most popular in Orthodox services. The shade of repentance inherent in it invariably reminds us of the sins we have committed.
Fifth and sixth plagal (auxiliary) voices
Fifth ? plagal voice Its significance is very great: it serves to give greater depth and completeness to chants performed on the basis of the first voice. His intonations are filled with a call to worship. To be convinced of this, it is enough to listen to the Sunday troparion to the Resurrection of Christ or the greeting “Rejoice.” Both of these works carry shades of sadness and joy at the same time.
The sixth voice is auxiliary to the second and emphasizes sadness, which induces repentance for sins committed and at the same time fills the soul with tenderness and hope for the Lord's forgiveness. This is sorrow dissolved by consolation. As already mentioned, the second voice gives a feeling of transition to another world, and is therefore filled with light, while the sixth is more associated with burial. For this reason, chants of the second half of Great Week are sung on its basis.
Repetition is the mother of learning!
Even if (as it seems to you) you have learned them quite well. You can quickly learn how to sing verse, troparion or other voices in the following way:
You take a certain voice (the choice is always yours, although I recommend starting the very first training in voice singing with the second verse voice). Why exactly from him?
It is more easily perceived by beginning singers than all the other verse voices. The sixth verse somewhat overlaps with the second (both are minor), but it has a complex chorus and an alternation of three melodic lines, one of which changes depending on whether it is at the beginning or at the end.
By the way, I’ll probably write about alternating lines in my next post, since many of you asked me about it. At first I wanted to make a separate page for these same alternating lines, but now I think one article is enough.
I got distracted. You take a certain voice (sticheron or troparion - it doesn’t matter) and learn it for as long as it takes you, you and you personally to learn this very voice.
Completing the list of octagonism
Less often in Orthodox churches you can hear chants set to the seventh tone. Greeks? authors of the law of octagonism? They called it “heavy”. The character of the chants performed based on it is important and courageous, which fully explains the name given to it. Is there a whole world hidden behind the external simplicity of these melodies? deep, great and incomprehensible. This is a kind of narrative about Heavenly Jerusalem and the Future Age.
Having listened to such high examples of church singing as “In You He Rejoices...” and “O Glorious Miracle...”, one can easily get an idea of what a voice is. Eighth voice? the last one, it completes the list of elements that make up octovosonance. It is full of royal heights, perfection and calls to trust in the Beginningless Father, who created the visible and invisible world. At the same time, listening to him, it is impossible not to notice a certain shade of sadness caused by the thought of one’s own sinfulness.
