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Prostopinije Introduction and Resources

Prostopinije Introduction and Resources

By Steve Puluka

Prostopinije is the name for the Capatho-Rusyn chant tradition.  Roughly translated "plain chant" is a system of relatively simple music for the congregational singing of the divine services.  These are typically lead by a single or small group of cantors with the entire congregation joining in the chant.  This section has a brief discussion of the chant system and a reprint of the history of prostopinije by Dr. Stephen Reynolds.

In this collection I also present a scanned collection of some important printed sources for the Church Slavonic music of the tradition.  These are each accompanied by a description and the pdf download.  The pdf files are linked up with bookmarks for the major sections that will assist in locating particular pieces of interest.  These files also have their pdf page numbers correctly coorelated with the physical page numbers.  And the files are tagged with all of the bibliographic information on the books.  I hope to expand this collection over time.

The majority of these works were scanned from the reference and rare book collection at the Byzantine Catholic Seminary of Saints Cyril & Methodius in Pittsburgh.  I am grateful for the access to the collection and copier services.  This is an important center for printed books and material from the tradition.  And they are very open and welcoming to researchers.  I am probably biased, as I am an alumnus as both a full-time seminarian for two years in college and later as a graduate of the joint masters degree program with Duquesne University.

Please do comment on additional original sources of the chant tradition in slavonic, I'd love to hear about them.

Sokol Plain Chant

By Steve Puluka on 02-Dec-10 19:20. Comments (0)

Sokol sought to provide these collections of chant for the cantor that increasing could not read the Cyrillic alphabet. These volumes are aimed at the increasing numbers of American born cantors who could still sing the services but were not schooled in the Rusyn written language and thus could not read the Cyrillic. The book is in Transliterated Church Slavonic in western music notation.

Sokol Basic Chant

By Steve Puluka on 02-Dec-10 19:10. Comments (0)

Sokol sought to provide these collections of chant for the cantor that increasing could not read the Cyrillic alphabet. These volumes are aimed at the increasing numbers of American born cantors who could still sing the services but were not schooled in the Rusyn written language and thus could not read the Cyrillic. The book is in Transliterated Church Slavonic in western music notation.

Ratsin Prostopinije

By Steve Puluka on 02-Dec-10 18:57. Comments (0)

Ratsin sought to provide the same chant collection for cantors as the Bokshai 1906 collection with some supplements. At the time in the USA the Bokshai volume was difficult to obtain. The book is in Cyrillic Church Slavonic but uses a typescript face from a typewriter instead of real typesetting.

Papp Irmologion

By Steve Puluka on 02-Dec-10 18:52. Comments (0)

The Papp Irmologion is the primary example of the great thaw in relations between the communist government and the church in the 70s. This anthology was the first printing of music for liturgical use since WWII for the region and filled an important void. The book also contains a forward and a short chant history in both English and Slovak in the appendix. The book is in transliterated Church Slavonic with western music notation.

Khoma Prostopinije

By Steve Puluka on 02-Dec-10 18:42. Comments (0)

Khoma has a collection of the basic variable material for matins, vespers and Divine Liturgy. This does not have any of the common parts of the Divine Liturgy service. But it does include a section on the Presanctified Liturgy. The book is in Cyrillic Church Slavonic but uses a square note music notation. The publisher notation is a monastic community Chernecha Hora.

Bokshai Hungarian Prostopinije

By Steve Puluka on 02-Dec-10 18:34. Comments (0)

This work is a concession in a collection that is otherwise purely works of Prostopinije in Church Slavonic. This represents the same material as is contained in Bokshai's Church Slavonic volume published this same year but adapted to Hungarian. In a real sense this is one of the first attempts to bring the Church Slavonic chant tradition into a modern language. The book is in Hungarian with western music notation.

Bokshai / Kochan Prostopinije

By Steve Puluka on 02-Dec-10 18:26. Comments (0)

Bokshai & Kochan collaborated on this collection of liturgical hymns for the Sunday eight tone cycle. The book largely provides a single convenient volume for these Sunday hymns. The book is in Cyrillic Church Slavonic but uses a typescript face from a typewriter instead of real typesetting and the musical notation is hand written onto the printed staff. The quality of both the paper and the printing is rather low.

Bobak Irmologion

By Steve Puluka on 02-Dec-10 18:15. Comments (0)

Bobak is part of the publishing effort during the thaw in relations between church and state in Czechoslovakia. The book is in Translitterated Church Slavonic and is very poorly made. The publication is essentially printed via copier with comb binding from the 70's resulting in very low quality images that have significantly faded over time. In addition, I am working from a copy of this "copy" from the seminary collection and not even an original photo copy.

Prostopinije Chant System

By Steve Puluka on 02-Dec-10 18:06. Comments (0)

The Carpatho-Rusyn (CR) prostopinije is a system of chant melodies from a variety of sources and patterns. The system includes a number of eight tone cycles, each of which is proper to certain classes of hymns within the divine office. The system also includes specific melodies for certain pieces and a system of intonation and reading tones for other texts. These are also layered then with special melodies within each sub-system and then variants on the chant by region or even parish practice.

Timko Prostopinije

By Steve Puluka on 27-Nov-10 10:44. Comments (1)

Timko provides the basic collection of chant for the three main services in a compact short format. To this he adds a short section on extra liturgical hymns at the end. This seems aimed as a "handbook" format of the most common material.

History of Carpatho-Rusyn Prostopinije

By on 06-Jun-10 18:49. Comments (0)

The Carpatho-Rusyn Slavonic plainchant (prostopinije) is a typical and distinctive feature of Rusyn culture. Where did it come from? No single answer can be given, because the prostopinije is a composite chant system, including elements from various sources. The oldest of these is the znamennyj chant, and it is remarkable that this chant, which has almost disappeared in Great Russian church singing, is preserved in a few still-living traditions: the chant of the Russian Old Believers, the "Ukrainian Chant" of Galicia and other western Ukrainian provinces, and the Carpatho-Rusyn prostopinije.

Bokshai Prostopinije

By Steve Puluka on 22-Mar-09 07:09. Comments (1)

For the Carpatho-Rusyn chant tradition this is the basic collection of melodies. This is not the only version for the repetoire nor does it represent a complete version (as noted below with the missing Samohalsen tone 4 as one example). But the Prostopinje has become the standard textbook for teaching the chant system since this publication.

Originally Posted June 06, 2010
Last Revised on December 02, 2010

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