The Year of the Liturgical Monody Since the establishment of the state of emergency to combat the coronavirus
pandemic, churches have been closed and believers have watched Sunday and
holiday Liturgies on television. For a musicologist, the solitary church
liturgy, without a choir, performed only by the altar and kliros officials, was
a challenge to meditate on the original liturgical monody, full of simplicity,
intimacy and unspectacular. The monodic church singing, both of the Byzantine
tradition and of the Gregorian tradition of the Catholic churches, was for us a
necessary lesson of essentialization and simplicity. It is worth listening to
and learning it with more attention and appreciation. CONSTANŢA CRISTESCU |
|