A New Znamenny Chant for the New World — An Overview of the Musical Practices of Holy Cross Monastery — Monk Philaret (Farley)
The soundscape of liturgical music at Holy Cross Monastery in Wayne, West Virginia, is varied and distinctive—comprising multiple styles, each sung primarily in English. Here we have a particular fondness for Georgian chant and enjoy singing its suspended chords and non-tertian harmonies to grant solemnity and ethereality to pinnacle liturgical moments. Byzantine chant is likewise sprinkled throughout our services, both punctuating our regular cycle of worship and adorning parts of Holy Week and hymns to certain Greek saints throughout the year. Our average weekday concludes with the singing of Gregorian chant supported by an ison-like drone. We also employ Obikhod and Kievan melodies—as would be typical for a monastery within the Russian church in the twenty-first century—notwithstanding their frequently reduced textures. However, the majority of our hymnody falls under the umbrella of a different Russian church singing tradition: znamenny chant¹.
Although not widely sung today, znamenny chant was the dominant form of liturgical music of the Russian Orthodox Church for five hundred years, from the twelfth through the seventeenth centuries. Its name derives from the word znamia (знамя, the old Russian word for “sign”), as this chant’s earliest notation conveyed musical information through neumatic symbols or “signs” known as znamiona (знамёна²). Fortunately for those not well-versed in deciphering these “signs,” a significant corpus of znamenny melodies was later transcribed into Kievan square note notation (a system similar to modern Western music notation) and published by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, beginning in 1772 and continually republished until the turn of the twentieth century³. The preservation of these chant books has thereby made a large number of melodic examples accessible and, thus, more readily adaptable into English-language settings—an endeavor which our monastery has modestly sought to pursue.
Notes
We also sing a handful of settings of Demestvenny, Strotny, and Valaam chant.
Johann von Gardner, Russian Church Singing, Vol. 1: Orthodox Worship and Hymnography, Vladimir Morosan, trans. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), 104.
The relevant volumes within the Notnoe Penie (Notated Chant) series include the Triod’ [Lenten Triodion and Pentecostarion], in a single volume, 1899; the Prazdniki [Festal Menaion], 1900; and the Oktoikh [Octoechos], 1900. PDFs of these chant books can be found at glagol-verbum.com/biblioteka.
