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Fr. Anthony Bio [Home] || <--Go to Chapter 8 || -->Go to Chapter 10
Autobiography of Father Anthony Kosturos
Chapter 9
The Study of Chanting
Hymns are chanted in our Church within eight scales, called modes. Each mode has its particular ascending and descending notes. At Seminary,
we learned the modes (scales) by instruction and repetition, because we knew that every hymn in every liturgical book of our Church is chanted
in a certain mode. Some hymns are chanted in all eight modes.
To master Byzantine music, transcribed in symbols which must be learned, I would take by Byzantine book of hymns, called the Ymnothia, and go
out in the fields of Pomfret, Connecticut, where I began my studies, and in the open areas of Brookline, Massachusetts, where the Seminary
reached its final location, and chant scales repeatedly, as I sang hymns, as I read Byzantine notation, which looks like shorthand. It was
my desire and hope that, eventually, I would be able to begin each hymn in its particular mode without taking recourse to beginning set notes
for each mode. The objective: To hear the mode in my head and begin the hymn from mind to voice. It wasn't an easy task. Byzantine music
is unlike any other music. Persistence, however, prevailed. Slowly yet surely I began a hymn just by thinking of the opening to the scale in
my head. Also, I made a conscious effort to avoid chanting with that nasal sound which seems to characterize most cantors of Greece. I felt
that nasal sound implies influence of Turkish music during the occupation of the Greeks for four hundred years. Also, it was and is my
conviction that chanting should have a mellow ring to it rather than remind you of what emanates from minarets in Muslim nations.
Entertainment
At Pomfret, where I spent my first three years of seminary life, we were allowed to leave the grounds for one half day a week to go to a town
named Putnam. There we would buy items, toothpaste and the like, or go to a movie. That was the only time we had away from the Seminary.
We entertained ourselves at the Seminary by staging skits which impersonated professors of the Seminary. One student even posed as a monk and
enjoyed dinner with all of us until, suddenly, the Assistant Dean, Father Tsoukalas, realized he was the victim of impersonation. Another
time, a student frightened a seminarian's brother, there for a visit, by donning a white sheet, entering the room where the visitor was
sleeping, awakening him, letting out a loud cry as from a world beyond, and causing the visitor to run down the corridor of that floor in full
fright and flight. Our Dean, Bishop Cavadas, heard the commotion and quickly put a stop to this shenanigan by suggesting the visitor leave
for home the next day. He discovered the culprit who had done the deed, admonished him, and knew that this was one way of dispelling the
boredom of ongoing enclosure.
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