Preparing for Easter

By Marina Kochetova

The Day of the Bright Resurrection of Christ is the main Christian holiday. Each year, the date of Easter is different. According to church tradition, the lunar calendar determines on which exact day Easter will be celebrated—both Catholic and Orthodox.

Orthodox Easter is always the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs after the spring equinox. At the same time, there is one essential condition: Christian Easter is celebrated after Jewish Passover. This year, Passover begins on the evening of April 1 and lasts until the 9th; Catholics will celebrate Easter on Sunday, April 5. Orthodox Easter, meanwhile, falls on April 12.

Any Christian service—and a festive one especially—is accompanied by vocal music. Unlike Catholic worship, Orthodox services do not allow instrumental accompaniment, because any instrument, unlike the human voice, is a creation of human hands. Singing is an important component of church worship. Accompanying the sacred rite, it lends solemnity, and attunes the mind and heart to prayerful uplift.

The history of church singing goes back to ancient times. From the religious point of view, singing—like speech—serves to express elevated feelings and reverence for God. In earlier times, singing was truly communal: all parishioners gathered for prayer sang together. Modern church singing is more professional and includes three main directions: obikhod (simple everyday liturgical chants), authorial works (from the earliest church composers of the first centuries of Christianity to contemporary composers), as well as chants and their varieties in arrangements by our contemporaries.

Church singing is an inseparable part—and perhaps one of the most beautiful attributes—of the Russian Church. It is hard to find someone who can remain indifferent to it. Even non-believers are captivated and calmed by a cappella (that is, unaccompanied) polyphony, which sets one in a prayerful frame of mind, because it offers a chance to instantly sense the reality of the living spiritual world.

Singing in church involves more than accurate performance of a beautiful melody. You cannot sing without soul—you must feel the music with your whole body! To guide people by the magic of the voice onto the true path, one must not only possess a special gift, but also develop it to the level of free command of a whole set of specific skills and abilities. That is why church singing is not a craft, but a great art. It is a form of collective activity that supports the development of vocal culture, shaping and refining creative abilities and skills in people of any age. It is not a mechanical repetition of memorized words, but a remarkable process of mastering a unique musical instrument created by the Creator Himself—the human voice. There are several Russian Orthodox churches in Ottawa. Come and listen. After all, choral singing has a powerful effect on the emotional sphere: it develops imagination, activates thinking processes, and, finally, brings aesthetic pleasure!