Church chants: prayer or art?

Divine service in the Orthodox Church affects all senses: icons for sight, singing and reading by ear, censing for smell, and eating prosphora, sacred to taste. All this is important, everything matters. In a temple, in worship, a person lives full life. Service in the church goes on a daily, weekly and annual basis.

To a person who is not familiar with Orthodoxy, the service seems monotonous, quite the same. But there are certainly differences.

Each worship consists of an unchanging and variable part. Unchanging church chants are, for example, the Cherubic Song at each Liturgy. It sounds for every divine service (except for a few times a year) and remains unchanged. Cherubic wrote some composers, and their creations also sometimes perform. But this decision is usually taken by the regent of the choir, it is not regulated by the Charter: whether to sing today the Cherubic Grechaninov, Tchaikovsky or simply some monastic chant.

Practical all the church hymns, which are performed and known, are such invariable parts of the divine services. Changed parts take into account:

• Day of the week (every day of the week - the memory of a special event);
• Number (memory of saints is every day);
• The presence of Lent now or in the near future (given 4 weeks of preparation for the Post, Easter "controls" almost half a year).

Church hymns are signed daily according to the regulations. An experienced regent, a person with a special education, is engaged in this. Fully worship is the same throughout the year only once in 518 years. That is, even if you go to all the services, the church chants do not repeat twice the same way throughout the life of a dozen generations. But, of course, full compliance with the entire charter is extremely laborious, this is possible only in monasteries, and in the world people will not stand such long services.

The notes of the church hymns are divided into eight voices. A voice is simply a melody, a melody, to which the troparia of the given day are sung. Glosses alternate for weeks: that is, they are repeated about once every 1.5 to 2 months.

Not always a concrete parish can afford a chic chorus. In the central capital's cathedrals, professional singers often sing, and in small churches on the outskirts, these are usually parishioners who are slightly familiar with musical notation. Professional singing, of course, is more impressive, but often such singers are unbelievers, and after all church songs are a prayer.

What is more important: beautiful voices in the choir or the prayer mood of the choir - the rector of the church should decide. Recently, even a fashion for church chants has appeared. They are broadcast on the radio, performed in the halls of the Philharmonic and the chapel, you can buy records.

It's good that church art attracts people, but listening to such records is often completely incomprehensible, superficial. But the hymns of the most secret moments of worship are being performed. What, then, should a person who has been churched do: pray or enjoy voices? Or remember that this is not a service at all and everything that happens in the concert hall is only music, and not prayer? Therefore, not all Orthodox attend such concerts and generally are fans of such art.