OUR PROJECT | English Language Lit

There has been a massive influx of converts to Eastern Orthodox Christianity for several years now. This is happening in the United States of America, in Western Europe and across the world. With new Church parishes and communities appearing everywhere - many of them featuring English as their language for worship, we realized that there is a lack of resources available for the faithful in these new outposts of Orthodox Christianity.

In particular, chanters, singers and choirs were often presented with musical requirements for which there was no adequate model to demonstrate simple, easy-to-learn arrangements of Church Singing. One could find English-language libraries of Church singing online, but such libraries usually included only sheet-music scores, sometimes accompanied with MIDI-file playback. Also, a great number of arrangements made available were generally pointed at somewhat advanced ensembles and conductors. Where there were audio demonstration of simple hymns, they were often audio-only, or uncoordinated with scores so that singers and directors could follow and understand what was taking place. Also, the groups that made the recordings, while very well-intentioned, produced inaccurate or even poorly sung audio material, and this is not good for pattern-forming, such as is very useful in learning Church singing.

In Russia and Belarus there exist liturgical music libraries on YouTube and vKontakte which remedy these problems: (1) the singing ensembles are often top-notch, providing excellent examples of what they present. (2) The singing is accompanied by visual reference to the score used, and what one sees is what one hears as they listen. However, most of these resources featured singing in Church Slavonic or in Greek, and as such do not meet the needs of groups who wish to sing the same melodies in English. There is no reference point.

Or at least, there *was* no reference point, until now.

The English Language Orthodox Christian Liturgical Library is our effort to meet this need. Here you will find an ever-expanding database of Church music, starting with the Divine Liturgies of St John Chrysostom and St Basil the Great, and, God helping us, expanding to include music for all the regular cycle of services, for Great Lent, and for all of the Holy Mysteries. Our goals are:

To show and demonstrate high-quality presentations of simple Church hymn settings that one must know, such as Troparia, Kontakia, Ektenie (Litanies), so as to be able to form a simple and beautiful presentation of the Divine Liturgy from beginning to end.
To provide downloadable PDFs of scores, free of charge.
To offer insightful instruction in the technique of masterful Church singing, without either the conductor or choir having to be "professional" or "expert" musicians. While some learning is necessary, we believe that this library will work for those with little or near-zero musical knowledge, and will also bring them to more advanced levels of musical knowledge, allowing them to acquire and master a larger repertoire.
Finally, we wish to do something rather daring: to introduce a consistent form of Liturgical English that can be used throughout all the services. We are using Revised Liturgical English (RLE), developed by Aorist Press, as the primary form of liturgical English for our scores. This recension of English follows the tradition and theology of the Orthodox Christian Church on its own terms, without either overcomplication or oversimplification of the language. Up to now, the variations of liturgical English have been infinite. We hope that RLE will demonstrate itself to be a standard, much like Church Slavonic and Koine Greek became, therefore to allow comprehensible, beautiful and prayerful services at all times.

We welcome you to our site and to our project. We also invite feedback and will be hoping for contributions to our Library from all of you who use it!