Music has come a long way from the Christian Church in the first millennium to the present day. From liturgical choirs to modern day Christian rock in churches, coming to church sometimes seems more than religious. But was it always appropriate to have a drummer and electric guitar at Mass? Where does music all begin and how do church authorities feel about music?
Some people are surprised to hear that the church has disapproved of some music in the service instrument music and has rejected the music. pleasure While hymns of praise were encouraged, some early church leaders rejected other aspects of the ancient practice. In the Middle Ages he began singing; The most sacred song of the time represented only the vocals. Gregorian chant was generally in consonants and gradually separated into parts, sung in parallel motion, a perfect interval below the original chant. The “Fathers of the Church” – otherwise known as St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine – interpreted the Holy Scriptures and established principles for governing the Church. The Church Fathers also shared similar views with the Greeks, who believed that the power of music governed how it affected listeners’ ethics.
St. Augustine, hearing psalm after psalm, feared to give himself the pleasure of music; he feared that music would make him think less about God and think about sin. Consequently, most of the church fathers simply rejected music for enjoyment because of the same fear that St. Augustine experienced. The Fathers of the Church emphasized the use of music not for secular reasons, but only as a way of praising God. Thus they warn against music without the purpose of religion and write down all bad music.
However, it is difficult to perceive the feeling of the Church towards music; the relationship between music and religion remains vague. Opinions about music of the Middle Ages and the following years sometimes seem contradictory, as ideas are constantly changing and new ones are being brought forth. Above all, religion and music are in some respects inseparable. As has been said, the Bible is always connected when dealing with religious matters. In the Pentateuch, or Torah, music and music appear in several narratives. In the passages of Genesis that relate the binding of Isaac, the sacrificed ram gives a horn (Gen. 22:12), which symbolically becomes the “shofar,” musical instruments were used to mark significant beginnings and endings in the Jewish liturgical calendar such as Yom Kippur, the day of atonement (Bohlman 1). For religious figures, such as the Fathers of the Church, it is difficult to deny what is in a religious text, and to argue against what is written. Singing is easily found acceptable in the church, as opposed to other types of music from historical narratives about Jesus or other religious figures reciting prayers and scriptures: liturgies often include prayers recited in a reciting tone, more or less singing and. He simply said no.
In addition to the secular music controversy, women’s singing in the church was also unpopular with the Church Fathers. Saint Paul applied this question when he wrote to the Corinthians: Let your women be silent in the churches, for it is not permitted for them to speak (1 Corinthians 14:34). Although this problem was not discussed with others in Christianity years ago, even today it is easy to understand this problem, especially with gender roles are often discussed in today’s society. In many films made during the early years of Christianity—more specifically, biblical or religious ones—the audience sees women silenced in such places and synagogues. Women don’t have much say when it comes to religion, so learning that women are not allowed to participate in the musical aspects of church is not surprising. There are also other more obvious reasons why this question arose: the appearance of women’s choirs in the heretical circles of the third century and the making of a spectacle of female figures. The Fathers of the Church not only saw professional female musicians as a problem because of the sexuality and physical pleasure that can be derived from their appearance, but also because of the musical pleasure of listening to them. It is clear that pleasures of this kind combined are dishonest.
Moreover, the Fathers of the Church accepted the ideas of the Greeks, who said that music belongs to the life of reason. The Fathers of the Church tried to conform to this thought, saying that music was a close thing when it came to salvation, but this was a cause of contention since music was of great importance in the liturgy (Goehr 1). Boethius, the most sacred authority on music in the Middle Ages, later divided music into three categories, in an attempt to satisfy the various opinions about music in the church. He regarded music as a numerical part, as a branch of mathematics; and it was not considered mathematics, or anything like that at the time. In his Fundamentals of Music, Boethius divided into mundane music, human music, and instrumental music. The first represented the “music of the universe” which governed the movement of cosmic life and nature; the second, “Human music”, the human body and the soul; and the third, “instrumental music,” is the complex type of music in question: audible music. However, the complex thought of Boethius, more than just the distinction between secular and sacred music, raised the debate.
Instrumental music became more controversial as time went on. The association of the media with the religious practices of the pagans was despised by the media before the Fathers of the Church. For example, St. John Chrysostom wrote about the abuse of music in the celebration of marriage;
Nature indulges the frenzy of the berries at these marriages; those who are present become brutes rather than men; they neigh like horses and kick like asses. much luxury, much dissipation, nothing serious, nothing profound; here are many parades of the devil – cymbals, auloi and songs of fornication and adultery (McKinnon. 1).
Such words, which happen to be what students learn about music today. In a society that almost embraces the sexual immorality that the Fathers of the Church feared and wanted to suppress, it is common today to see wild acts rather than the reserved personalities of the past. But somehow the words of St. John Chrysostom seem inappropriate. Is it really music that made people look like beasts? It seems that the Fathers of the Church jumped at the chance of accusing diabolical acts in music. However, it is important to note that there are no examples of the Church Fathers directly condemning musical instruments in the Church: instrumental accompaniment was not much of a problem, since the accompanying instrument was usually emphasized by voices or was “soft”. An instrument (for example, a guitar or similar instrument).
The problem that the Fathers of the Church faced was polyphony, music with two or more independent melodic parts sounded. . This was rejected at first, because singing, usually in voice and soloist with congregational response, remained the primary mode of performance in previous centuries (McKinnon 2). Christian singing was not dull and unattractive before, but as music is more complex and more than experiments with musical ideas at It was difficult for the Fathers of the Church to accept and preach what seemed appropriate and inappropriate. The controversy over the comprehensibility of voices in polyphonic music originated with the 16th century composer, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. According to legend, Palestrina was said to have saved polyphonic music from all rejection by the Council of Trent by composing the famous and lively Missa Marcellus Papae, with six voices. While the story is most likely, Palestrina noted that his collection of masses was written “in a new way,” no doubt in response to a lack of evidence in the text (Burkholder 229).
Inevitably, as the cathedrals became more elaborate and elegant, polyphonic music remained remarkably parallel to the church. Now it is difficult to remove more secular than sacred music in temples, since tastes have changed a lot within the past hundreds of years. In the common standards of the church they are not nearly so high now as those prevailing in the secular field. Religious music is the predecessor of the music heard on the radio today, and if the earliest Christian Church did not carefully. He supported the development of music, who knows what music has developed into today (Norden 196). What would the Church Fathers say about music in the Church today?
Works Citation
Anderson, Warren. Plato, §8: His successors. No Music Online.
Bohlman, Philip V. The Middle East, §1: Musical Concepts. Nemus Music Online.
Burkholder, Peter J. A History of Western Music W.W. Norton & Society, 2006.
Goehr, Lydia. Philosophy of music, §II, 2: Early Christian thought.” Nemus Musica Online.
McKinnon, James W. “The Christian Church, Early Music, §II, 4: Women’s Singing in the Church.” Nemus Music Online.
McKinnon, James W. The Christian Church, Early Music, §II, 8: In music of early Christian characters. “ No Music Online.
McKinnon, James W. “The Christian Church, Early Music, §II, 1: Instruments.” Nemus Music Online.
Norden, Lindsay. Pleas for Pure Church Music.” Music Quarterly. Volume 4, No. 2 ( April 1918): pp.
Sanders, Ernest H. “Motet, §IV: After 1750.” Nemus Music Online.
