Eparchy of Stamford: St. Basil Seminary Cantors Program
Liturgical worship is at the heart of Ukrainian Catholic Church life, and by it the faithful are spiritually fed and enriched. The experience of worship shapes our ecclesiastical identity and is a cornerstone of spiritual formation.
At the same time, our contemporary liturgical life in the United States of America is lacking well educated and experienced cantors.
Therefore, it is necessary to establish training in both musical and rubrical dimensions of worship.
In the Cantors Program students will be trained in the theory and practice of the Divine Liturgy and the daily, festal, and seasonal cycle of services, thus providing the necessary framework for understanding and learning patterns of the liturgical office. It is expected that this liturgical framework, together with parish participation in the cycle of services, will prepare cantors to sing with beauty and majesty in their respective parish communities.
Each course utilizes texts in Church Slavonic, Ukrainian, and English.
Suggested sequence of courses in the Cantors Program:
Elementary Liturgical Chant I
Introduction to the Byzantine-Ukrainian (Galician) tonal system; common responses to the Divine Liturgy, Resurrectional troparia and prokimena; common devotional hymns.
Elementary Liturgical Chant II
Continuation of the basics of the tonal system: Common responses to Vespers, Samohlasny tones and introductory verses; Presanctified Liturgy, Liturgy of St. Basil the Great; seasonal devotional hymns.
Intermediate Liturgical Chant I
Chanting of Scriptural readings, Requiem services and Funeral services; Bulgarian tones and frequently used Podobny; continuation of common and seasonal devotional hymns.
Intermediate Liturgical Chant II
Chanting of seasonal and occasional offices. Special consideration is given to Jerusalem and Paschal Matins, Christmas and Jordan Compline. Seasonal hymns from Bohohlasnyk.
Rubrical dimension:
Typicon; Order of Services (Ordo Celebrationis); Liturgical Instructions; laws of liturgical celebration; historical development of the Byzantine-Ukrainian Office; the origin of liturgical year; its cycles: daily, weekly, paschal; the Liturgical Hours as a school of prayer.