The Many Dresses of Kassiani
By Photios Kontoglou
By Photios Kontoglou
The troparion of Kassiani is greatly beloved by our Orthodox people; even people who do not go to church go to hear it. Contributing to this is the inspiration with which it is written and the passion of the sinful woman who repents, as well as the story of Kassiani who composed it. But above all, in my opinion, what moved the people was its music, which is slow and majestic; for the teachers of our ecclesiastical music emphasized it with special love and care. However, one could say this about former times; now, I cannot understand what people hear in most churches where it is chanted — or rather sung — in some improvised way, with a supposedly European music, which is fashioned by people without Christian compunction and without any musical feeling, but with that dead and false conception of music, which they think is the music suited to our age.
First of all, chanting is one thing, and singing is another. Even this these “maestros” have not understood, who take as their ideal in everything the scale of Milan. In this we ought to be proud of our cultivated race. For, as happens in everything, we have surpassed the Europeans. Because for them secular music is different from religious music, whereas among us the music of the Church is becoming more worldly even than opera and even operetta. May we not be bewitched! These disgusting and insipid concoctions, which from time to time one or another fairy-struck fellow presents in church, have completely disfigured the modest and profound character of our Church, so much so that anyone who still has within him genuine Greek sensibilities falls into despair.
For our ecclesiastical music, as well as iconography and hymnography, reveal the deep roots of our race. But we do everything to destroy them, and the insensibility with which we do it shows a great spiritual decline. Every race is a spiritual phenomenon and not a herd carried away by every current, like a ship without a rudder. But we busy ourselves with many things and leave what is most precious to the whim of every fool. And we boast theatrically about our race with words empty of any true meaning, while we allow it to become a chameleon and even help it to perfect itself in Frankish-Levantinism and in every kind of spiritual degeneration.
Thus, the troparion of Kassiani, in many Greek churches, is chanted unrecognizably — “modernized.” Each “innovating” chanter dresses poor Kassiani in whatever garments come into his head: one disguises her like an operetta singer, another like a sentimental lady of the most foolish romantic insipidity, and most of them like a modern actress: “Art, sir, is in demand today! People want something a bit modern in church. Those quackish old things are past!”
Behold then, O Greeks, your spiritual representative. Whatever exquisite work Greece produced in the past is “quackery.” All the pain and tears that were transformed by this suffering race into immortal diamonds — the revered icons, which those who made them wept over and infused with pain and blood, giving them “the breath of life” — are, for this Lenten little man, “quackery.” The same goes for him for the songs of the people and the exquisite chant that clothed the troparia in their natural garment, which were written by men of great spiritual beauty. All these things, for this harlequin of today, are “quackery.” And he does all this out of fear, lest he be called rustic and backward. Everything is offered as a holocaust on the altar of stupidity and petty pride.
But let me stop here, because I might say even worse things. Whenever I reflect on this decline of ours, I grieve — deeply I grieve!
Kassiani herself, it seems, used to set her own hymns to music, according to the custom of the time. She also wrote many others, chiefly “Canons,” as the Katavasies are called. Among these, the most beautiful is the Canon chanted on Great Saturday, “By the Wave of the Sea” (Kýmati Thalássēs), which breathes with virginal purity and a certain breath of immortality:
“Be struck with awe, O heaven, and tremble; let the foundations of the earth be shaken: for behold, He who dwells in the highest is numbered among the dead and is received in a small tomb as a stranger. Him, O youths, bless; O priests, hymn; O people, exalt Him above all forever!”
Source: From one of the first articles of Photios Kontoglou in ELEFTHERIA, 4/28/1948. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
