A Vision for Beauty in Worship & the Models that Can Help us Get There — Valerie Yova
Training ensembles composed of mostly amateur singers at the parish level requires a long-term perspective. To do it with any degree of success requires a rather large toolbox of skills, knowledge, and strengths: vocal technique, music theory, theology, rubrical knowledge, organization and communications savvy, psychology, leadership, fluency in numerous chant systems, a healthy prayer rule, accountability to a spiritual father, and a vision. I have probably left some things out.
If I were to list these skills by priority, at the top I would put: Having a clear vision of what “beautiful” sound means in the context of worship, with the goal of creating beauty in every service, all the time, to the best of our ability at any given moment, using the best resources available.
Abbess Thaisia, a spiritual daughter of St. John of Kronstadt, once described what I believe most of us liturgical musicians sense on some level at every service:
The singing of the chanter passes over to the hearts of those who are praying; if the singing proceeds from the heart, it meets the heart of the listener and so influences him that it is able to rouse him to prayer, to incite reverence even in those minutes when the heart itself is distracted and hard. Often it happens to those who enter the church without any eagerness toward prayer, from compulsion or from propriety, begin to pray fervently and tearfully, and leave the church in quite another frame of mind, in a spirit of tender feeling and repentance. Such a revival is produced in them by the magnificent service and fine singing. And conversely, often it happens that those who enter the church with the intention to pray from the soul, to pour out before the Lord their sorrowful soul, when they hear scattered, careless singing and reading, themselves little by little become distracted and instead of profit they find harm, they receive no consolation and, having been tempted by the conduct of the singers, involuntarily fall into the sin of condemnation. (Thaisia of Leushino. “Letters to a Beginner: On Giving One’s Life to God,” Wildwood: St. Xenia Skete, 2005).
The first time I read this quote, her words struck me deeply, as they should any liturgical musician. They invoke an overwhelming sense of responsibility for us, not to manipulate people emotionally during worship, but to be conscious of the fact that music has the power to either engage or distract people in prayer, to pull them into or push them away from an encounter with our Creator, Lord, and King.
Beauty is more difficult for most of us to describe than is distraction. Instead of offering my own definition, I am going to suggest a word that I believe can enable us to create beautiful, or at least more beautiful, worship. It is a word we don’t talk about very much. The key concept is “modeling.”
We all need models of beautiful singing. First, I am referring to beautiful singing in general: solo singers who have spent years learning how to enhance and refine the natural, God-given beauty of their voices. We also need models in group singing: fine choral ensembles that have worked hard to create the cohesion of sound that is truly transcendent through pure and consistent vowels, accuracy of tuning, and artistic phrasing. And then we need to study these models carefully to understand how this beauty is reached. It certainly is not by accident nor through “good intentions.” All the better when we can hear this modeling in Orthodox repertoire!
