——————————————————

JEFFERS ENGELHARDT
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RIGHT SINGING: THE ORTHODOX

LITURGICAL TRADITION
AN ETHNOMUSICOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

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 RIGHT SINGING: THE ORTHODOX
LITURGICAL TRADITION
AN ETHNOMUSICOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
by

Jeffers Engelhardt
Amherst College

The Seventeenth Annual James W. Cunningham Memorial Lecture

on Eastern Orthodox History and Culture
University of Minnesota
11 November 2011

I BEGIN with what seems like a straightforward and incredibly broad ques-
tion: What is Orthodox music? An intuitive but tautological answer might
simply be the music that is performed as an essential part of Orthodox wor-
ship, wherever and however it happens. For an ethnomusicologist working
from the perspective of the social sciences, this is actually quite a satisfying an-
swer because it invites ethnography—a critical examination of the religious and
aesthetic values and the individual capabilities that both shape and express the
local practice and experience of Orthodoxy.1 This includes the ways singers,
worshipers, and priests link their musical practices to broader understandings
of Orthodox and non-Orthodox musical traditions and identities, both histori-
cally and within local and more dispersed ecclesial communities.
For others within Orthodoxy, the truism that Orthodox music is the
music performed as Orthodox worship may not be sustainable in light of their
understandings of Orthodoxy as a religious ideology and their interest in shap-
ing Orthodox worship and experience: for instance, one should not sing “Silent
Night” at the Vigil of the Nativity, one should not have organs in North
American Greek Orthodox parishes, one should not sing repertoire that is too
“operatic” or too “Western,” one should not try to reproduce esoteric monastic
traditions in local parishes, women should not sing, singing voices should not
be electronically amplified, and the sound of worship should symbolize eccle-
sial, political, and national unity. Movements for musical reform and renewal
within Orthodoxy, like those in nineteenth-century Greece and seventeenth-

25
26 Jeffers Engelhardt

century Russia, testify to specific understandings of what makes Orthodoxy

orthodox, as does resistance to those same movements.
Authenticity is at stake in realizing the conservative, conciliar essence
of Orthodoxy and in recognizing heterodox or, to put it most strongly, wrong
ways of singing and worshiping. Seeking this authenticity is part of a long
story in Orthodox Christianity at the boundary of the temporal and the eternal,
a story that traces Orthodox encounters with and forms of cultural difference,
secular modernity, nationalism and phyletism, and musical pleasure. For the
ethnomusicologist and for the Orthodox worshiper, reformer, or renewer,
singing the right way matters a great deal, on the one hand as way of knowing
through ethnography and, on the other, as a way of living fully as an Orthodox
Christian.
The idea of right singing that I explore here is an articulation of power
through discourses about musical style. By this, I mean that establishing
authenticity—the musical traditions and repertoires that are right—creates hy-
bridities and syncretisms relative to that authenticity as musical practices that
bear some form of difference or heterodoxy. From an ethnomusicological
perspective, it is important to be skeptical of such notions of hybridity and
syncretism that risk recognizing uncritically the forms of power that produce
them.2 It is important to remember that, for those who sing and worship, a
style and way of singing may not be hybrid or syncretic, but simply right.

The Global Soundscapes of Orthodoxy

To push this, and as a way of situating the Estonian examples below
within the global soundscapes of Orthodoxy, take the two main musical tradi-
tions of Chalcedonian Orthodoxy, broadly conceived as the Byzantine and the
Slavic. There is the issue of essentialism in both traditions. By Byzantine, do
we mean a traditional kathisma from Mount Athos performed by Lycourgos
Angelopoulos,3 a Serbian kanon for Holy Saturday from the Hilandar
Monastery, 4 a Macedonian Paschal stichera,5 or a Finnish festal stichera?6 By
Slavic, do we mean the sound of the St. Petersburg court,7 an Old Believer
chant for the Feast of the Ascension,8 a Serbian hymn to the Theotokos,9 or a
Bulgarian hymn to the Theotokos?10 In all of these examples, to attend to the
microtraditions and translations that shape these sounds is to attend to the
localizations and ecumenical interconnections of Orthodoxy that are funda-
mental to Orthodox ecclesiology and experience. One listens to these local
sounds as one would encounter local monasteries and shrines, learn the lives
of local saints, or take note of local ways of adorning and venerating icons.
The issue of hybridity and syncretism becomes more complicated
through the effects of conversion, missionization, and diaspora, and through
the relationship of Byzantine and Slavic traditions to other Orthodoxies. Dif-
ference is commonplace in a global Orthodox soundscape that accounts for
these effects and relationships. To think about this difference, consider the
singing of Syriac Christians in South India,11 Yup’ik Orthodox Christians in
Alaska,12 Orthodox converts in Kenya,13 Georgian chant,14 and the sounds of
 Right Singing: The Orthodox Liturgical Tradition 27

Ethiopian liturgy. 15 Hearing difference as non-derivative and, in Orthodox

terms, as authentically canonical is an imperative, then. One needs to be at-
tuned to local theologies of sound and understandings of Orthodox canonicity
in order to capture the interrelated dynamics of liturgical performance and its
exigencies, the capabilities and knowledge of singers, and the universal truths
of Orthodoxy, and this is what the idea of right singing does.16 As I suggest
below, this approach can translate into thinking about other aspects of
Orthodox tradition, practice, and social engagement as well.

The Idea of Right Singing

To get at this idea of right singing, I begin with how it is immanent in
Orthodox liturgical practice as a metadiscourse about that practice—as an on-
going effort of realizing how to sing the right way. Here is a passage from
Estonian Orthodox service books from the Canon for the Sunday Orthros
service:

Oh Kristus, Sa valgustasid oma tulemise hiilgusega ja rõõmustasid oma ristiga

kõik maailma otsad. Valgusta oma tundmise valgusega nende südameid, kes
Sinust õigel viisil laulavad.

Oh Christ, You illumined with the radiance of Your coming and gladdened with
Your cross all the ends of the earth. Illumine with the light of Your knowledge
the hearts of those who sing of You in the right way.17

The provocation of this text is how it invests singing the right way with trans-
formative power. Here, the energies of sound and light enable the singer to
participate in Christ’s universal redemption when the singing is done right.
But, to a significant extent, the sound and style of that authenticity remain
nebulous. The work of realizing that transformative power in liturgical per-
formance is left up to the faithful and the conciliar wisdom of Orthodox tradi-
tions, both local and more global. Realizing right singing creates a correct
unity of doxa (belief) and praxis (practice) which is inherent in the literal
meaning of Orthodoxy as “right belief” and “right glory” or “right worship.”18
Right singing puts into everyday practice the intimate relationship
within Orthodoxy of beauty and truth, aesthetics and veracity. It is inseparable
from the synesthetic reality of liturgy that incorporates hymnody and chant, the
mystical presence of the Eucharist, the acoustics and architectural symbolism
of the church building, interlocking cycles of liturgical and secular time, sacred
texts articulated through the heightened speech of priests, deacons, and read-
ers, the sanctifying smell of incense which lifts human prayers to God, the
presence of icons whose prototypical, true images instruct and are conduits for
devotion and intercession, the ritual gestures, clothing, and liturgical instru-
ments used by the clergy, and the tastes and anointing touches worshipers ex-
perience. Singing the right way confirms Orthodox truths and refines the relig-
ious sensibilities that aspire to right worship and right action in the world.
28 Jeffers Engelhardt

To formalize this in a way that can be non-paradoxical from the per-

spective of the faithful: If the singing is right, then the belief expressed in that
singing is right, and if the belief is right, then the musical practices grounded in
that belief are right. Put another way, singing is believing when what matters
is doxa, and being Orthodox is about singing the right way when what matters
is praxis. In decoupling worship and belief, experience and sincerity, this idea
of right singing captures the fact that liturgy is at the same time a performance
that expresses and a performance that convinces for congregations and indi-
viduals alike.
Given the mutable, indefinite nature of Orthodox right singing, is it still
possible to arrive at a working, minimal definition? Perhaps it is, and I focus
briefly here on three aspects of right singing: the human voice, the system of
melodic modes known as the okto chos, and the bodies and spirits of the sing-
ers themselves.
First, there is the voice: The traditional proscription of musical in-
struments in most Orthodox Christianities echoes theological and liturgical
imperatives codified by the Church Fathers and the Ecumenical Councils in
the first centuries of Christianity. On the one hand, it is based on beliefs about
the perfection of the human voice as a source of musical sound created by
God and able to pray and sing the prototypes of celestial beings, its intimate
connection to language and efficacy in prayer, and the way it enhances audi-
tion and affective experience. On the other hand, it is based on beliefs about
the imperfection of musical instruments as human creations alienated from
language, incapable of prayer, and associated with pagan ritual and such
worldly pursuits as dance and work (cf. Isaiah 5:11-12; 1 Corinthians 13:1).
Like the later iconoclast controversy in the ninth century, the proscription of
musical instruments in the early Church helped to define Orthodoxy as such.
Second, there are the melodic modes: The essence of Orthodox right
singing is the system of eight modes or chant formulae known in Greek as the
okto chos, in Russian as the oktoich, and in Estonian as the lauluviisid or just
viisid. These modes are ordered according to the Orthodox liturgical calendar
in seven-day cycles commencing on Thomas Sunday (the Sunday after Holy
Pascha). With a few exceptions for special feasts and liturgical seasons, the
cycles progress sequentially each week (first mode one week, second mode the
next, and so on) at the Sunday Vespers service or All-Night Vigil, the be-
ginning of the Orthodox day that moves from darkness into light. In addition
to giving musical expression to the liturgical year, these eight modes are theo-
logically significant in that Christ rose from the dead on the eighth day (the
Sunday of Pascha being the eighth day), thus uniting the seven-day week of the
Old Testament with the redeemed time of this eternal eighth day.
In any given service, the bulk of liturgical texts are performed by the
choir and chanters using the eight melodic modes. Orthodox Estonians, for
instance, use simply harmonized modes adapted from the Russian Obikhod.
Most choir members have internalized these modes and sing from service
books that have only texts and signs showing how to sing the flexible chant
formulae. These service books are hardly mute, however. Experienced sing-
ers who understand the relationship of the modes and the liturgical calendar
 Right Singing: The Orthodox Liturgical Tradition 29

understand the intimate relationship of certain fixed texts and their correspond-
ing modes. However, for the ethnomusicologist to hear and interpret this as-
pect of right singing as something primarily musical would misrepresent an
ontology of Orthodox sound. Estonian words like teenima (to serve) or
lugema (to read) used to describe sung participation in Orthodox liturgy sug-
gest that, in important ways, right singing may not be singing at all. Rather, it
can be understood as the efficacious sound of heightened speech, sacralized
language, and divine prototypes. In terms of Orthodox theology, it is the
sounding beauty of the word that is the essential complement to and vessel of
its semantic meaning and truth claims.
And third, there are the bodies and spirits of singers: The sensing body
that sings and the person that attends piously to Orthodox right singing is part
of a particular ontology as well. Right singing is not just the Neoplatonic re-
presentation of divine prototypes, but the voice and spiritual labor of an
Orthodox subject. In Orthodox doctrine and tradition, the body and spirit are
disciplined in a number of ways to make singing right. In general, all those
who will receive communion at the Divine Liturgy are fasting—the Eucharist
is the first substance they consume that day. Singers are also fasting through-
out the Orthodox year, including the major periods of Great Lent and Holy
Week (seven weeks), the Nativity Fast (forty days), the Apostles’ fast (ranging
from eight to forty-two days), and the Dormition Fast (two weeks). Like cler-
gy, some singers also observe fasts on Wednesdays and Fridays to commemo-
rate Christ’s betrayal and crucifixion. Those who sing and commune should
have prepared themselves spiritually through confession to a priest. Further,
the singing body is gendered through clothing and comportment (depending
on the parish and the person, women may or may not be expected to cover
their head), through limits on its movement and role in the liturgy (women
should not enter the altar area or perform clerical texts), and through the
negotiation of ritual knowledge and power between choir leaders and priests.

The Polyeleos in Estonian Orthodoxy

I turn now to a case study from Estonia of how right singing happens
in local Orthodox parishes—the kind of ethnographic approach to liturgy and
the making of Orthodoxy that the idea of right singing invites. The polyeleos
(polieleion in Estonian) is a special hymn drawn from Psalms 134 and 135
(LXX) and sung at the All-Night Vigil and certain festal Orthros services. It is
a particularly festive moment in these liturgies when the Holy Doors at the
center of the iconostasis are opened to reveal the altar, the clergy emerge and
cense the entire church, and the Gospel for Orthros is recited. The meaning of
the term polyeleos is manifold, incorporating the vocality and aurality of
psalmody, the structure and form of particular services (it can refer to an entire
portion of the All-Night Vigil or Orthros service), the qualities and hierarchies
of Orthodox ritual temporality (it can refer to the rank of Orthodox feasts
marked by the performance of the polyeleos), and the multisensory festivity of
liturgical tradition (“poly elaion” means “much oil” in Greek, and polyeleos
30 Jeffers Engelhardt

can refer to a large chandelier hanging from the central dome of the nave that,
when lit on special feasts, requires “much oil” as it is swung in monastic prac-
tice with a long rod during the singing of the polyeleos).
Perhaps the most commonplace meaning of polyeleos comes from the
distinctive shape, rhythm, and substance of its text. “Poly eleos” in Greek
means “much mercy,” and the part of the text from Psalm 135 (LXX) is con-
tinually punctuated by the refrain, “For His mercy endures forever. Hallelu-
jah.” Outside of Orthodox monasteries, where its performance can last up-
wards of one hour, the polyeleos is usually abbreviated significantly. Here is
the standard polyeleos text of the Orthodox Church of Estonia:

Kiitke Issanda nime, teie, Issanda
sulased, kiitke.
Halleluuja, halleluuja, halleluuja.
Kiidetud olgu Issand Siionist, kes
elab Jeruusalemmas.
Halleluuja, halleluuja, halleluuja.
Tänage Issandat, sest Tema on hea.
Halleluuja.
Sest Tema heldus jääb igaveseks
ajaks.
Halleluuja.
Tänage taeva Jumalat.
Halleluuja.
Sest Tema heldus jääb igaveseks
ajaks.
Halleluuja.
Praise the name of the Lord, give
praise, you servants of the Lord.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
Blessed be the Lord from Zion, who
dwells in Jerusalem.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
Give thanks to the Lord, for He is
good.
Hallelujah.
For his mercy endures forever.
Hallelujah.
Give thanks to the God of heaven.
Hallelujah.
For His mercy endures forever.
Hallelujah.

One can hear a number of different vocal renderings of the polyeleos in

Orthodox Church of Estonia parishes, and each represents what I mean by
right singing in the literal sense of Orthodoxy as “right belief” and “right glory”
or “right worship.” These hymns envoice local understandings of Orthodox
canonicity and are the sonorous, divine prototypes revealed to the Church
through God’s grace that establish the right means of worship. Each polyeleos
here crystalizes the liturgical essence of Orthodox Christian theology—the way
orthopraxy constitutes orthodoxy through what Jaroslav Pelikan calls the
“melody of theology.”19 Echoing forth from the festive moments when
Orthodox Estonians sing and hear hymns like the polyeleos, right singing is a
sonic expression and shaping of the moral sensibilities, social vision, identity
concerns, and religious commitments that fundamentally shape Orthodoxy.
The most widespread Estonian Orthodox polyeleos is a four-part,
major-mode setting drawn from the Russian Orthodox Obikhod featuring a
tetrachordal melodic formula adapted from Russian znamenny chant and a
tonic/dominant/supertonic harmonic framework. This is the typical sound of
parish practice throughout the Orthodox Church of Estonia—accessible for
laypeople in the choir, in touch with institutionalized Estonian traditions and
liturgical sensibilities, and canonical-seeming in terms of its close adherence to
 Right Singing: The Orthodox Liturgical Tradition 31

the intonations and form of the text, its lack of conventional sentimental ex-
pressive gestures, and the opportunity it affords singers to realize the conciliar,
ascetic values of Orthodoxy through performance.

Fig. 1. Opening of a conventional Estonian Orthodox polyeleos (transcription based on

the service notebooks of Terje Palli and a 2007 field recording at the Cathedral of Saint
Simeon and the Prophetess Hanna in Tallinn).

They sing a different version of the polyeleos at the Cathedral of Saint

Simeon and the Prophetess Hanna in Tallinn and the Church of All Saints
Alexander in Tartu—an Estonian adaptation of a well-known polyeleos recon-
structed from the tradition of the Valaam/New Valamo monastery in Karelia.
Sung either monophonically or in lightly harmonized, major-mode arrange-
ments, this melismatic, essentially tetrachordal melody evokes the archaic, ca-
nonical forms of znamenny and neo-Byzantine chant present in the Valaam/
New Valamo tradition. This polyeleos arrived in these parishes through the
circulation of people, sounds, and knowledge between Estonia, the New
Valamo Monastery in Heinävesi, Finland, and the Department of Orthodox
Theology at the University of Joensuu, Finland, where female choir leaders,
priests, and parishioners have undertaken pilgrimage and study. It represents a
style of Finno-Ugric Orthodoxy that has tremendous appeal for the younger,
well-educated, mobile Estonians in these parishes who are interested in re-
imagining the sound and style of Estonian Orthodoxy in light of their experi-
ences of global Orthodoxies. And through the vocal aesthetics it requires, it
both expresses and shapes ascetic discipline and a prayerful state of being.
32 Jeffers Engelhardt

Fig. 2. Opening of an Estonian Orthodox polyeleos from the Valaam/Valamo tradition

(transcription based on the service notebooks of Terje Palli and a 2003 recording by the
choir of the Church of All Saints Alexander in Tartu).

For example, at parishes like the Church of Saint Nikolas in

Kuressaare and the Cathedral of the Transfiguration in Tallinn, where there is
a long-standing tradition of choral excellence and (semi)professionalism, the
polyeleoi are robust and virtuosic, with Estonian adaptations coming from the
traditional nineteenth-century repertoire of the Monastery of the Holy Trinity
in Alatyr, Chuvashia, and the work of nineteenth-century Russian composer
S. A. Smirnov.20 The choirs in both these churches are large and feed off the
high level of choral singing in Estonia. This enables them to navigate the rela-
tively lush harmonies, extrovert expressive gestures, and heightened vocal de-
mands of these polyeleoi while realizing an Orthodox liturgical sensibility that
embraces the canonicity of virtuosic performance as festive aesthetics rather
than as an ascetic act. In the Smirnov polyeleos performed at the Cathedral of
the Transfiguration, for instance, it would be lost on few that Pille Lill, the
featured soloist, is one of the most distinguished opera singers in Estonia. As
part of Orthodox worship, her charismatic performance and persona draw
emphatic attention to how individuals (or, at the Church of Saint Nikolai, a
choir whose virtuosity sets it decidedly apart from the congregation) can
magnify a liturgical moment through the manner of their utterance.
 Right Singing: The Orthodox Liturgical Tradition 33

Fig. 3. Opening of a polyeleos by S.A. Smirnov adapted into Estonian by Tiina Allik
(transcription based on a 1999 recording by the choir of the Cathedral of the Trans-
figuration in Tallinn).

Fig. 4. Opening of a polyeleos from the Monastery of the Holy Trinity in Alatyr,
Chuvashia (transcription based on a 2003 field recording at the Church of Saint Nikolai
in Kuressaare).
34 Jeffers Engelhardt

The leader of the Orthodox Church of Estonia is Metropolitan

Stefanus, a Greek Cypriot nominated by Patriarch of Constantinople
Bartholomew and elected in 1999. During his tenure, the church has re-
newed itself both spiritually and physically, welcoming in around six thousand
new members (mainly Estonian Protestant converts), ordaining dozens of new
priests and deacons, restoring deteriorating or closed churches, establishing
the Saint Platon Seminary, organizing education, pilgrimages, and activities for
youth, adults, and families, ministering to those in prisons and serving in the
Estonian army, revising translations and republishing service books and
hymnography, and revitalizing the public status of Estonian Orthodoxy
through concerts, song festivals, and media productions. Metropolitan
Stefanus is a gifted singer as well, and the presence of his hierarchical voice in
liturgy connects the Orthodox Church of Estonia to what one might call the
global “Byzantine” Orthodox imaginary of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
This connection to knowledge and alternative traditions perceived as being un-
corrupted by Soviet atheism establishes the new religious imaginaries and
authenticities that legitimate new ways of right singing among Orthodox
Estonians. Here is a well-known Athonite polyeleos that Metropolitan
Stefanus has sung on different festive occasions.

Fig. 5. Opening of an Athonite polyeleos performed by Metropolitan Stefanus (transcrip-

tion based on 2003 field recording with the choir of the Cathedral of Saint Simeon and the
Prophetess Hanna in Tallinn).

Finally, back at the Cathedral of Saint Simeon and the Prophetess

Hanna in Tallinn, Metropolitan Stefanus’s episcopal seat, the newfound
authenticity of estonianized neo-Byzantine chant21 is transforming the sound of
worship in ways that are consonant with the new ecclesial identity of the
Orthodox Church of Estonia. What one might call the byzantification of sing-
ing at the Cathedral of Saint Simeon and the Prophetess Hanna is what makes
singing right there, which corresponds to other transformations in liturgical
practice, iconography, and the circulation of religious knowledge within the
congregation.
 Right Singing: The Orthodox Liturgical Tradition 35

Fig. 6. Opening of an estonianized neo-Byzantine polyeleos (transcription based on the

service notebooks of Terje Palli and a 2006 field recording at the Cathedral of Saint
Simeon and the Prophetess Hanna in Tallinn).

This kind of diversity within a religious community, Orthodox or

otherwise, in terms of musical style and ideology is unremarkable in and of
itself, and the presence of multiple canonicities within the Orthodox Church of
Estonia is not a sign of doctrinal confusion or competing religious ideologies.
Rather, these different renderings of the polyeleos reveal something essential
about Orthodox right singing: that understandings of canonical Orthodox
sound, the mutuality of orthopraxy and orthodoxy, and the moral and social
force of modern faith and religious practice are always local, always embodied
in individual capacities and communal traditions. Beyond the space of this
essay, there are, of course, many more details to share about why these dif-
ferent polyeleoi are right in these parishes, details touching on class, con-
version, identity, and the politics of Orthodoxy in Estonia.

Right Singing and the Orthodox Voice

Above, the hosts of angels sing praise; below, men form choirs in the churches
and imitate them by singing the same doxology. Above, the seraphim cry out in
the [thrice-holy hymn]; below, the human throng sends up the same cry. The
inhabitants of heaven and earth are brought together in a common solemn
assembly; there is one thanksgiving, one shout of delight, one joyful chorus.22

In this often-cited sermon from Saint John Chrysostom, the theology and
ontology of the sound of Orthodox Christianity—the human voice—is
expressed with tremendous evocative power. There is the singing of celestial
beings—the doxology of the angels and the trisagion hymn of the seraphim—
and the mimetic singing of human voices that couples the worldly and the
divine in collective worship. Faith is central to this Neoplatonic theology and
ontology, since the singing of celestial beings is beyond human perception and
understanding. The singing of celestial beings invokes the silence of God, and
36 Jeffers Engelhardt

the human voice, participating in this divine praise, realizes itself, and the per-
son of the singer, as redeemed through the right singing of divine prototypes.
Singing as the means of realizing one’s fullest humanity is fundamental
to Orthodox Christianity. In the Hebrew Bible, God sings: “He will rejoice
over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you
with loud singing” (Zephaniah 3:17). Like icons, the Orthodox theology of
singing is justified through the incarnation. Stephen Webb explains it this way:

The category of voice can help us to remember that the Word of God is not just
any kind of sound; it is the speech of a person, that is, the Second Person of the
Trinity. The incarnation, in turn, can remind us of the tactile qualities of the
auditory.23

This can work the other way around as well. The sound of worship, rather
than establishing a limit on the human capacity to positively know God, can be
the knowledge and means of divine participation revealed through God’s
grace. Right singing is an act of faith, a conservative re-presentation of divine
prototypes that is the performative pronunciation and recognition of revealed
truth accepted as being beyond discourse or instrumental reason. In its as-
sumption of the Orthodox voice as its medium, right singing is the opposite of
idolatry; ideally, its theological and experiential basis in liturgy precludes the
objectification of the Orthodox voice and the possibility of musical iconoclasm
or Augustine’s “sinning by the ear.”
By way of a brief conclusion, I will simply note that this kind of eth-
nomusicological approach to Orthodoxy can model the dynamics of belief,
practice, and engagement with the world in Orthodoxy more broadly in fields
ranging from iconography and architecture to bioethics and perspectives on
human rights. As a realization of the eternal truths of Orthodox teaching and
tradition in the worldly time of human being, the right in right singing can also
be the right in other forms of Orthodox worship and ethical action as well.

NOTES

1. For more on the ethnomusicology of Orthodox Christianity, see Jeffers

Engelhardt, “Congregational Singing, Orthodox Christianity, and the Making of
Ecumenicity,” in The Oxford Handbook on Music and World Christianities, ed. Suzel
Reily and Jonathan Dueck (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming); idem,
“Right Singing in Estonian Orthodox Christianity: A Study of Music, Theology, and Relig-
ious Ideology,” Ethnomusicology 53, no. 1 (2009): 32-57; idem, “Right Singing and Con-
version to Orthodox Christianity in Estonia,” in Conversion After Socialism: Disruptions,
Modernisms and Technologies of Faith in the Former Soviet Union, ed. Mathijs Pelkmans
(Oxford: Berghahn, 2009); idem, “ ‘Every Bird Has Its Own Song’: Congregational Sing-
ing and the Making of Estonian Orthodoxy, 1840s–1930s,” in Composing and Chanting in
the Orthodox Church (Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Orthodox
Church Music, University of Joensuu, Finland 4–10 June 2007), ed. Ivan Moody and Maria
Takala-Roszczenko (Joensuu, Finland: International Society for Orthodox Church Music
and University of Joensuu, 2009); idem, “The Acoustics and Geopolitics of Orthodox Prac-
 Right Singing: The Orthodox Liturgical Tradition 37

tices in the Estonian-Russian Border Region,” in Eastern Christians in Anthropological

Perspective, ed. Chris Hann and Hermann Goltz (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2010); Tala Jarjour, “In the Beginning There Was Syriac: Chant as Pre Utopian
Christian Aramaean Spirithood,” in The Oxford Handbook on Music and World Christi-
anities, ed. Suzel Reily and Jonathan Dueck, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press,
forthcoming); eadem, “Syriac Chant of Edessa: Contemporary Religious and Ethnic Per-
formability of an Aramaic uzn” (Ph.D. diss., University of Cambridge, 2010); Tore
Tvarnø Lind, The Past is Always Present: The Revival of the Byzantine Musical Tradition
at Mount Athos (Lanham, M.D.: Scarecrow Press, 2012); and Joseph J. Palackal,
“Okto chos of the Syrian Orthodox Churches in South India,” Ethnomusicology 48, no. 2
(2004): 229-50.
2. See Jeffers Engelhardt, “Inculturation: Genealogies, Meanings, and Musical
Dynamics,” Yale Institute of Sacred Music Colloquium: Music, Worship, Arts 3 (2006): 1-
6.
3. Track one, Musique Byzantine: Lycourgos Angelopoulos et Le Choeur byzantin
de Grèce en concert, Harmonia Mundi CMT 274971 (1994).
4. Track six, — —
/ The Hilandarion Musical Treasury—Vikentije of Hilandar—Saint
Kassiane Choir, Sokoj/Biem SK1 (2003).
5. Track seven, ia—Paschal Sticheria—The Brotherhood of
the Bigor Monastery of Saint John the Baptist, Kukuzel Music IX001 (2003).
6. Track three, Ortofonia—Armon hedelmä, Gaudior ry GAUCD 002 (2007).
7. Track one, The Powers of Heaven—Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir—
Paul Hillier, Harmonia Mundi HMU 907318 (2003).
8. Track one, —The Liturgic
Chant of the Chud’ Lake Old Believers, RarelyLaboratory CD 001 (2004) [1971].
9. Track seven, Credo—Bery —The Chamber Choir of Orthodox Sacred Music,
Viivo Muusika 1993.
10. Track five, Credo—Bery —The Chamber Choir of Orthodox Sacred Music,
Viivo Muusika 1993.
11. Qambel M ran—Syriac Chants from South India—Joseph J. Palackal, PAN
Records Pan 2085 (2002).
12. Tracks 9-11, Beautiful Beyond—Christian Songs in Native Languages, Smith-
sonian Folkways Recordings CD SFW 40480 (2004).
13. Music of the Kenyan Orthodox Church—The Makarios III Patriarchal
Orthodox Seminary Choir, Orthodox Christian Mission Center (no date).
14. Zedashe—Bridges to the Divine—Ancient Polyphonic Chants from Georgia,
Zedashe Cultural Center (2007).
15. Eglise chrétienne orthodoxe d’ethiopie: 'AqwAQwAM—la musique et la danse des
cieux / Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Church: 'AqwAQwAM—Music and dances of
heaven, Maison des Cultures du Monde / Inédit (2008).
16. For an excellent perspective on the global soundscapes of Orthodox Christianity,
see Olivier Mille’s film Le silence des anges: Terres et voix de l’Orient orthodoxe
(Éditions Montparnasse MN 0765, 1999).
17. Canon for Sunday Orthros, first mode, fifth ode irmos from the service books of
the Orthodox Church of Estonia.
38 Jeffers Engelhardt

18. For a more expanded development of the idea of right singing, see Engelhardt,
“Right Singing in Estonian Orthodox Christianity.”
19. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of
Doctrine, vol. 2, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600–1700) (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1974), 133.
20. Thanks to Yuri Ivan for his help in identifying S.A. Smirnov as the composer of
this polyeleos.
21. See Jaakko Olkinuora, “Experiences Adapting Post-Byzantine Chant into For-
eign Languages: Research and Praxis,” Muzikologija 11 (2011): 133-46.
22. Cited in James W. McKinnon, Music in Early Christian Literature (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989), 89.
23. Stephen H. Webb, The Divine Voice: Christian Proclamation and the Theology
of Sound (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Brazos Press, 2004), 62.