Antiochian Orthodox Music in North America: Archive Project — Michael G. Farrow
The choral music presently used in the Antiochian Archdiocese in North America is somewhat unusual among the Orthodox jurisdictions of the world in that it is a blend of music from many ethnic Orthodox traditions. Now it even includes aspects of American musical tradition, as expressed in new native compositions, while still adhering to an Orthodox ethos.
This music originated with the first Orthodox service book in English, published in 1906, barely one generation after the first immigration of Middle Eastern Orthodox Christians to North America. This was the Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic Church by Isabel Hapgood¹, a compilation of Church Slavonic service books and those of the Greek Orthodox Church. It was quickly adopted by Syro-Levantine Orthodox Christians in the United States and Canada. After World War I, these Christians, originally under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church in North America, formed their own archdiocese, now known as the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America.
The first published music of the Antiochian Archdiocese was the Divine Liturgy in English in a book entitled The Paradise². This book was published by Metropolitan Archbishop Germanos (Shehadi) in 1920. In 1939 Michael Gelsinger, who later was ordained a priest, published Orthodox Hymns in English³, a collection of both Russian and Byzantine melodies in English. Throughout the twentieth century, the churches of the Antiochian Archdiocese utilized mainly Russian and Ukrainian hymns. These had been adapted and translated into English, most notably by priests Vladimir and Igor Soroka and by Michael Hilko, who also used Carpatho-Russian sources.
Notes
Isabel Florence Hapgood, Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic (Greco-Russian) Church (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1906).
Metropolitan Germanos (Shehadi), The Paradise: Parts of Mass Services from the Byzintian Orthodox Church Music (New York: author, 1920).
Michael G. H. Gelsinger, Orthodox Hymns in English: Melodies Adapted from the Russian and Greek Traditions and their Texts Translated from the Greek (Brooklyn, NY: Syrian Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of New York and All North America, 1939).
