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Church music
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Church music may be defined as music written for performance in church, or any musical setting of ecclestiacal liturgy, or music set to words expressing propositions of a sacred nature, such as a hymn. This article covers music in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. For sacred music outside this tradition, see Sacred music. See also christian music.
Nature of sacred music
It has been claimed that there no precise distinction between music expressing feelings of a sacred or religious nature, and music expressing feelings that are not sacred or religious.
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Church music may be defined as music written for performance in church, or any musical setting of ecclestiacal liturgy, or music set to words expressing propositions of a sacred nature, such as a hymn. This article covers music in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. For sacred music outside this tradition, see Sacred music. See also christian music.
Nature of sacred music
It has been claimed that there no precise distinction between music expressing feelings of a sacred or religious nature, and music expressing feelings that are not sacred or religious. Bach's sacred works are musically the same as his secular ones . Mozart used parts of his religious compositions in secular cantatas and extracts from his operas for church purposes. A mass has also been compiled from some of Haydn's secular compositions.
On the other hand, St Augustine says that "To sing once is to pray twice" (Qui cantat, bis orat) literally "he who sings, prays twice", suggesting there can be thoughts expressed by the music in which a prayer is offered, separate from those expressed by the words of the prayer itself.
Music, unlike art or architecture, does not represent physical objects, and unlike poetry is independent of propositional thought. Hence it can take human emotions into areas that other artistic works cannot, and offer the prospect of an escape from worldly existence. Music is also appropriate to the sacrificial character of worship, particularly in the Christian tradition, being an offering to God. Music is a way of allowing a large number of worshippers to form an effective communion, by expressing their faith and their offering in public, together. Finally, music has the evangelical purpose of attracting those whose enthusiasm for religious matters is not sufficient on its own.
History
Jewish religious music
The earliest music of the synagogue was based on the same system as that used in the Temple in Jerusalem. According to the Mishnah, the regular Temple orchestra consisted of twelve instruments, and the choir of twelve male singers. A number of additional instruments were known to the ancient Hebrews, though they were not included in the regular orchestra of the Temple: the uggav (small flute), the abbuv (a reed flute or oboe-like instrument).
After the destruction of the Temple and the subsequent diaspora of the Jewish people, music was initially banned. Later, these restrictions would relax. It was with the piyyutim (liturgical poems) that Jewish music began to crystallize into definite form. The cantor sang the piyyutim to melodies selected by their writer or by himself, thus introducing fixed melodies into synagogal music. The music may have preserved a few phrases in the reading of Scripture which recalled songs from the Temple itself; but generally it echoed the tones which the Jew of each age and country heard around him, not merely in the actual borrowing of tunes, but more in the tonality on which the local music was based.
The earliest synagogal music was based on the same system as that used in the Temple in Jerusalem. According to the Talmud, Joshua ben Hananiah, who had served in the sanctuary Levitical choir, told how the choristers went to the synagogue from the orchestra by the altar (Talmud, Suk. 53a), and so participated in both services.
Biblical and contemporary sources mention the following instruments that were used in the ancient Temple:
- the nevel, a 12-stringed harp;
- the kinnor, a lyre with 10 strings;
- the shofar, a hollowed-out ram's horn;
- the chatzutzera, or trumpet, made of silver;
- the tof or small drum;
- the metziltayim, or cymbal;
- the paamon or bell;
- the halil or big flute.
According to the Mishna, the regular Temple orchestra consisted of twelve instruments, and the choir of twelve male singers.
Early Christian music
Christianity began as a small, persecuted Jewish sect. At first there was no break with the Jewish church; Christians still attended synagogues and the Temple in Jerusalem just as Christ had done, and presumably still carried on the same musical traditions in their separate Christian meetings. The only record of communal song in the Gospels is the last meeting of the disciples before the Crucifixion. Outside the Gospels, there is a reference to St. Paul encouraging the Ephesians and Colossians to use psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.
Later, there is a reference in Pliny who writes to the empereror Trajan (61-113) asking for advice about how to prosecute the Christians in Bithynia, and describing their practice of gathering before sunrise and repeating antiphonally 'a hymn to Christ, as to God'. Antiphonal psalmody is the singing or musical playing of psalms by alternating groups of performers. The peculiar mirror structure of the Hebrew psalms makes it likely that the antiphonal method originated in the services of the ancient Israelites. According to the historian Socrates, its introduction into Christian worship was due to Ignatius of Antioch (died 107), who in a vision had seen the angels singing in alternate choirs.
The use of instruments in early Christian music seems to have been frowned upon. In the late fourth or early fifth century St. Jerome wrote that a Christian maiden ought not even to know what a lyre or flute is like, or to what use it is put.
The introduction of church organ music is traditionally believed to date from the time of the papacy of Pope Vitalian in the seventh century.
Gregorian chant
Gregorian chant is the main tradition of Western plainchant, a form of monophonic liturgical chant of Western Christianity that accompanied the celebration of Mass and other ritual services. This musical form originated in Monastic life, in which singing the 'Divine Service' nine times a day at the proper hours was upheld according to the Rule of St. Benedict. Singing psalms made up a large part of the life in a monastic community, while a smaller group and soloists sang the chants.
In its long history Gregorian Chant has been subjected to many gradual changes and some reforms. It was organized, codified, and notated mainly in the Frankish lands of western and central Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries, with later additions and redactions, but the texts and many of the melodies have antecedents going back several centuries earlier. Although popular belief credits Pope Gregory the Great with having personally invented Gregorian chant, scholars now believe that the chant bearing his name arose from a later Carolingian synthesis of Roman and Gallican chant
During the following centuries the Chant tradition was still at the heart of Church music, where it changed and acquired various accretions. Even the polyphonic music that arose from the venerable old chants in the Organa by Leonin and Perotin in Paris (1160-1240) ended in monophonic chant and in later traditions new composition styles were practised in juxtaposition (or co-habitation) with monophonic chant. This practice continued into the lifetime of François Couperin, whose Organ Masses were meant to be performed with alternating homophonic Chant. Although it had mostly fallen into disuse after the Baroque period, Chant experienced a revival in the 19th century in the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Anglican Communion.
The Mass
The mass is a form of music that sets out the parts of the Eucharistic liturgy (chiefly belong to the Roman Catholic Church, the Churches of the Anglican Communion, and also the Lutheran Church) to music. Most Masses are settings of the liturgy in Latin, the traditional language of the Roman Catholic Church, but there are a significant number written in the languages of non-Catholic countries where vernacular worship has long been the norm. For example, there are many Masses (often called "Communion Services") written in English for the Church of England.
Masses can be a cappella, for the human voice alone, or they can be accompanied by instrumental obbligatos up to and including a full orchestra. Many Masses, especially later ones, were never intended to be performed during the celebration of an actual mass.
Generally, for a composition to be a full Mass, it must contain the following six sections, which together constitute the Ordinary of the Mass.
- Kyrie eleison ("Lord have mercy")
- Gloria ("Glory be to God on high")
- Credo ("I believe in one God"), the Nicene Creed
- Sanctus ("Holy, Holy, Holy"), the second part of which, beginning with the word "Benedictus" ("Blessed is he"), was often sung separately after the consecration, if the setting was long. (See Benedictus for other chants beginning with that word.)
- Agnus Dei ("Lamb of God")
The Requiem Mass is a modified version of the ordinary mass. Musical settings of the Requiem mass have a long tradition in Western music. There are many notable works in this tradition, including those by Palestrina, Tomás Luis de Victoria, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Hector Berlioz, Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner, Gabriel Fauré, Franz Liszt, Giuseppe Verdi, Benjamin Britten, Maurice Duruflé, György Ligeti, Krzysztof Penderecki and Igor Stravinsky.
In a liturgical Mass, there are other sections that may be sung, often in Gregorian chant. These sections, the "Proper" of the Mass, change with the day and season according to the Church calendar, or according to the special circumstances of the mass. The Proper of the Mass is usually not set to music in a Mass itself, except in the case of a Requiem Mass, but may be the subject of motets or other musical compositions. The sections of the Proper of the Mass include the Introit, Gradual, Alleluia or Tract (depending on the time of year), Offertory and Communion.
Carols
A carol is a festive song, generally religious but not necessarily connected with church worship, often having a popular character. Today the carol is represented almost exclusively by the Christmas carol, the Advent carol, and to a much lesser extent by the Easter carol.
The tradition of Christmas carols goes back as far as the thirteenth century, although carols were originally communal songs sung during celebrations like harvest tide as well as Christmas. It was only later that carols began to be sung in church, and to be specifically associated with Christmas. Traditionally, carols have often been based on medieval chord progressions, and it is this that gives them their characteristic sound. Some carols like "Personent hodie" and "Angels from the Realms of Glory" can be traced directly back to the Middle Ages, and are among the oldest musical compositions still regularly sung.
Carols suffered a decline in popularity after the Reformation in the countries where Protestant churches gained prominence (although well-known Reformers like Martin Luther authored carols and encouraged their use in worship), but survived in rural communities until the revival of interest in carols in the 19th century. The first appearance in print of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen", "The First Noel", "I Saw Three Ships" and "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" was in Christmas Carols Ancient and Modern (1833) by William B. Sandys. Composers like Arthur Sullivan helped to repopularize the carol, and it is this period that gave rise to such favorites as "Good King Wenceslas" and "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear", a New England carol written by Edmund H. Sears and Richard S. Willis.
Christian hymnody
Thomas Aquinas, in the introduction to his commentary on the Psalms, defined the Christian hymn thus: "Hymnus est laus Dei cum cantico; canticum autem exultatio mentis de aeternis habita, prorumpens in vocem." ("A hymn is the praise of God with song; a song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice.") The earliest Christian hymns are mentioned round about the year 64 by Saint Paul in his letters. The Greek hymn, Hail gladdening light was mentioned by Saint Basil around 370. Latin hymns appear at around the same time, influenced by Saint Ambrose of Milan. Prudentius, a Spanish poet of the late 4th century was one of the most prolific hymn writers of the time.
Early Celtic hymns, associated with Saint Patrick and Saint Columba, including the still extant, Saint Patrick's Breastplate, can be traced to the sixth and seventh centuries. Catholic hymnody in the Western church introduced four-part vocal harmony as the norm, adopting major and minor keys, and came to be led by organ and choir.
The Protestant Reformation resulted in two conflicting attitudes to hymns. One approach, the regulative principle of worship, favoured by many Zwinglians, Calvinists and other radical reformers, considered anything that was not directly authorised by the Bible to be a novel and Catholic introduction to worship, which was to be rejected. All hymns that were not direct quotations from the bible fell into this category. Such hymns were banned, along with any form of instrumental musical accompaniment, and organs were ripped out of churches. Instead of hymns, biblical psalms were chanted, most often without accompaniment. This was known as exclusive psalmody. Examples of this may still be found in various places, including the "free churches" of western Scotland.
The other Reformation approach, favoured by Martin Luther, produced a burst of hymn writing and congregational singing. Luther and his followers often used their hymns, or chorales, to teach tenets of the faith to worshipers. The earlier English writers tended to paraphrase biblical text, particularly Psalms; Isaac Watts followed this tradition, but is also credited as having written the first English hymn which was not a direct paraphrase of Scripture.
Later writers took even more freedom, some even including allegory and metaphor in their texts.
Charles Wesley's hymns spread Methodist theology, not only within Methodism, but in most Protestant churches. He developed a new focus: expressing one's personal feelings in the relationship with God as well as the simple worship seen in older hymns. The Methodist Revival of the eighteenth century created an explosion of hymn writing in Welsh, which continued into the first half of the nineteenth century.
African-Americans developed a rich hymnody out of the spirituals sung during times of slavery. During the Second Great Awakening in the United States, this led to the emergence of a new popular style. Fanny Crosby, Ira D. Sankey, and others produced testimonial music for evangelistic crusades. These are often designated "gospel songs" as distinct from hymns, since they generally include a refrain (or chorus) and usually (though not always) a faster tempo than the hymns. As examples of the distinction, "Amazing Grace" is a hymn (no refrain), but "How Great Thou Art" is a gospel song. During the 19th century the gospel-song genre spread rapidly in Protestantism and, to a lesser but still definite extent, in Roman Catholicism. The gospel-song genre is unknown in the worship per se by Eastern Orthodox churches, which rely exclusively on traditional chants (a type of hymn).
Along with the more classical sacred music of composers ranging from Mozart to Monteverdi, the Roman Catholic Church continued to produce many popular hymns such as Lead, Kindly Light, Silent Night, O Sacrament Divine and Faith of our Fathers.
Many churches today use contemporary worship music which includes a range of styles often influenced by popular music. This style began in the late 1960s and became very popular during the 1970s. A distinctive form is the modern, lively black gospel style.
Sources
- A.C. Zenos, ed., "The Ecclesiastical History of Socrates Scholasticus", in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Second Series, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company 1957.
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