Direction for the Director

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I have been in dialogue with Fr. Thomas Soroka of St. Nicholas parish in McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania, about various choir director thingies. I asked for mailing lists for choir directors, and he directed me to three of them:

• OrthodoxPSALM, for discussion of excellence in liturgical music
• Typikon, for discussion of the liturgical rules governing Orthodox worship (traditionally bound in a book called the Typikon)
• Ustav, for the discussion of the Typikon as used in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (“ustav” means Typikon in Russian).

Though they are excellent resources, each of these has unique pitfalls, of course. Because OrthodoxPSALM is composed mostly of musicians who are primarily concerned with excellence, there can sometimes be too much of a desire to eschew old, boring settings (like the standard settings called the Obikhod) for newer, more accessible settings. The other two can also be havens for the “hyper-Orthodox” who want to be, as Fr. Ted says so eloquently, “more Orthodox than Jesus!”

As an aside, it’s very heartening to see that not everyone in Orthodoxy thinks technology is dangerous.

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