Petronius said:
Your explanation is very interesting even for me, a craddle Orthodox, about the American Orthodox community.
Hope it is also for Bushmaster, provided he knows already something about jurisdictions in the Orthodox Church.
Petronius, you are right, I should have explained more than I did. I'm sorry.
In Orthodoxy, the services involve those in attendence in responses. The Priest or Deacon, etc "say" something and there is a response. The "choir" or "chanter" leads the congregation in responses. In some jurisidictions and some ethnic expressions within jurisdictions, the congregation is less involved and one hears mostly the "choir" or "chanter".
I put "say" in quotations because while some things are vocally spoken, much of the service is "chanted". Chanting is informal like a sing-song expression of the words, or it is more formal with written notes of a melody and even harmony to be song. Some churches use a choir (All of the one's I have ever visited have used a choir) but I understand that sometimes there is a "chanter" or two instead of a group.
In the churches I have visited, except the Serbian Orthodox church, the congregation joined in most of the time (some individual's not wishing to join in have not.) IN the Serbian Orthodox Church I visited, there was a few people who joined in but it was a small percentage.
The melody of the chants are organized into "tones". There are 8 different tones. Basically the "tones" are melodies. EAch week we use a different "tone". This is true for both OCA and Antiochian and Greek etc etc.
The difference between Byzantine and Russian chant is about how the melody sounds. In Russian the melody involves harmony (as in a Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Bass line of music that forms cords). The music is "majestic and regal". Byzantine uses a more flowing style and typically there is mostly everyone singing the exact same notes in union with an underlying lower note song by one or two people.
I like both of these styles.
Keep in mind that we are talking about how the music is "chanted" (sung) and not what the words are. The actually words are almost identical in all the jurisidictions.
Definitely!
