The Recovering Choir Director

Is someone going to argue that if I double or triple tongue, my trumpet is now a “percussive” instrument?

What do “intelligibilty” or ‘text” have to do with whether an instrument is pecussive?

I was questioning not if the trumpet could be considered on a par with the voice in this putative “hierarchy” but whether it made sense to try to shoehorn the human voice into the category of percussive in order to refute the concept of the hierarchy.

[Gabe - It's a good point. The best way to address this issue, it seems, is to place the voice outside of this putative hierarchy. See the follow-up post for the reasoning. -Ed.]

Granola, Todd:

Ah, Todd, as ever, you appear to be master of the non sequitur. I do not see how leaving the human voice within the above described “hierarchy of instruments”, or alternatively taking it out of that hierarchy, takes plainsong (or any other genre of song) out of whatever picture. Please explain.

As regards the human voice and its relative position within this proposed hierarchy of instruments, (in order: aperture, horn, and reed wind instruments, stringed instruments and finally tuned and untuned percussion), I think that a case could be made that the human voice shares characteristics with *all* of the above named instruments. For boy soprano and alto voices, adult male falsetto, and adult female flagiolet voices, there is the formation of a small aperture in the vocal cords which permits a “whistle” like effect (in females most notably heard in the “Queen of the Night” aria in Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”; all human voices make use of horn like qualities with the mouth and head registers; and as I have mentioned before, the vocal cords appear to act in the manner of a double reed. However, the vocal cords also act somewhat in the manner of resonant strings, in that the pitch appears in part to be controlled by the tension of those cords. Finally, as you have mentioned, there is a percussive aspect in the use of consonants.

I believe that therefore Mr. Rex and others could use this reasoning to argue that the human voice stands above this hierarchy, in that it contains aspects of all its members.

Without speaking as regards the merits of this argument from *structure*, I still maintain, with the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, that the human voice remains on a *functional* basis the pre-eminent instrument for worship.

Finally, I agree with you as regards your insight that all other instruments play “second fiddle” to the human voice in worship.

Greetings, Todd:

Thank you for the explanation of your reasoning, and the premises which you used in getting there.

Actually, I find that I am in complete agreement with you: yes, chant possesses pride of place as a sung expression of the Liturgy. And yes, if the liturgical element is gone, it does tend to level the “playing field” of the instrumental world to other genres of music.

I personally think that while Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis is a lovely orchestral work, it, and the other orchestral Masses of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, tended to obscure, and ultimately to hide, the liturgical element, and to contribute to the secularization of liturgical music which plagues the West now.

In the early Christian Church, the Fathers ultimately decided to eliminate musical instruments from worship altogether, for two reasons:

1) instruments were used in pagan worship of a sort that Christians of the time (and no doubt many moderns today) would find abominable. People of that time would have associated the use of instruments with some particularly vile practices, and would have found use of them in association with worship highly repugnant to them.

2) Aside from bad associations, the Fathers believed that the purpose of instruments, and of music in general, was the stirring up of passions. They believed that chant was the only way in which the passions which music creates could be subordinated to the word of God The Fathers therefore forbade the use of instruments in worship, and the Orthodox and Eastern Catholics largely maintain this prohibition today.

In the West, however, with the loss of Greek learning after the fall of Rome, and the breaking of the association between instrumental music and pagan worship, instruments gradually became a part of worship, and pretty much in the order that Paul Rex presents in his hierarchy.

I suppose that while it would be tempting to suggest that the early prohibition of instrumental music should be restored in the West, perhaps the most charitable solution would be in the words of the Apostle Paul: “Let those who do a thing, let them do it for the Lord, and let those who do not do a thing, let them also do it for the Lord.”

I would only suggest that if instrumental music be used, that it be subordinated to chant, harmonized song, and polyphony, both in the style of the music, and as regards the instruments used.

Regarding the relative status of the saxophone and the carillon, I suppose that has much to do, not with the instruments themselves, but the style of music associated with them. We usually associate the saxophone with the music of Benny Goodman or (shudder) Kenny G. Nonetheless, I think that Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble in their excellent collaboration, Officium, have shown that even the saxophone can be subordinated to sacred music.

On the other hand, while the simetron (a wooden clapper used even today in Greek monasteries to call the monks to prayer) and the chorus of bells and the carillon have been long used in both the West and the Slavic East, until recently they have not been used as liturgical instruments. They have been used to call worshipers to church, or to mark specific moments in what is going on (e.g., the Creed, the words of institution, and the Angelus). But both figuratively and literally, bells stand outside the Church.

Greetings, Todd:

I am glad to be able to help you. I am also glad to know that at least one Benedictine monastery is keeping up on eastern practices. As I recall, at the end of the Regula Benedicta, St. Benedict admitted that his Rule was based on the great Eastern monastic rules (e.g. St. Pachomius, St. Basil the Great, etc.), and recommended that the reader go on to study those Rules as well.

So as not to get too far away from the original subject, however (which I believe was percussion instruments in the Church), I understand that the Egyptian Coptic churches make use of cymbals, zills, and other tuned percussion instruments in their services, basing the practice on the earlier Egyptian temple worship which used such instruments. Also, the Ethiopian churches use drums and other untuned percussion instruments in their services, based on preChristian tribal practice.

As regards the use of the simetron in Orthodox services, I recall a lovely little CD put out by Koch/Schwann, entitled Russiche Klostervesper (Eng. Russian Monastic Vespers), and sung by the monks of the Eastern Catholic Monastery of Chevetogne, Belgium. It begins with the simetron being struck slowly, then accelerating, then church bells being rung in a tresvon (or peal), and then some of the most glorious liturgical music I have ever heard in my life.

While that particular CD is not present at their website, they do have audio clips of a number of their other CDs. I cannot vouch for the quality of all of them, but those that I have heard sound good. Additionally, the website opens with the monks singing Da voskresnet Bog (or Let God Arise). Their website is:

http://www.monasterechevetogne.com/

I can only find the original CD in print in Europe, and while they claim to have sound samples, I can’t get them to work. Perhaps you will have better luck:

http://www.jpc-music.com/5312511.htm