Produced by Stephen Hutcheson
MUSIC IN THE HISTORY
OF THE WESTERN CHURCH
_WITH AN INTRODUCTION
ON RELIGIOUS MUSIC AMONG PRIMITIVE AND
ANCIENT PEOPLES_
BY
EDWARD DICKINSON
_Professor of the History of Music, in the Conservatory of Music,
Oberlin College_
HASKELL HOUSE PUBLISHERS Ltd.
_Publishers of Scarce Scholarly Books_
NEW YORK. N.Y. 20012
1969
First Published 1902
HASKELL HOUSE PUBLISHERS Ltd.
_Publishers of Scarce Scholarly Books_
280 LAFAYETTE STREET
NEW YORK. N.Y. 10012
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 68-25286
Standard Book Number 8383-0301-3
Printed in the United States of America
PREFACE
The practical administration of music in public worship is one of the
most interesting of the secondary problems with which the Christian
Church has been called upon to deal. Song has proved such a universal
necessity in worship that it may almost be said, no music no Church. The
endless diversity of musical forms and styles involves the perennial
question, How shall music contribute most effectually to the ends which
church worship has in view without renouncing those attributes upon which
its freedom as fine art depends?
The present volume is an attempt to show how this problem has been
treated by different confessions and in different nations and times; how
music, in issuing from the bosom of the Church, has been moulded under
the influence of varying ideals of devotion, liturgic usages, national
temperaments, and types and methods of expression current in secular art.
It is the author's chief purpose and hope to arouse in the minds of
ministers and non-professional lovers of music, as well as of church
musicians, an interest in this branch of art such as they cannot feel so
long as its history is unknown to them. A knowledge of history always
tends to promote humility and reverence, and to check the spread of
capricious perversions of judgment. Even a feeble sense of the grandeur
and beauty of the forms which ecclesiastical music has taken, and the
vital relation which it has always held in organized worship, will serve
to convince a devoted servant of the Church that its proper
administration is as much a matter of concern to-day as it ever has been
in the past.
A few of the chapters in this work have appeared in somewhat modified
form in the _American Catholic Quarterly Review_, the _Bibliotheca
Sacra_, and _Music_. The author acknowledges the permission given by the
editors of these magazines to use this material in its present form.
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I. Primitive and Ancient Religious Music 1
II. Ritual and Song in the Early Christian Church 36
III. The Liturgy of the Catholic Church 70
IV. The Ritual Chant of the Catholic Church 92
V. The Development of Mediaeval Chorus Music 129
VI. The Modern Musical Mass 182
VII. The Rise of the Lutheran Hymnody 223
VIII. Rise of the German Cantata and Passion 268
IX. The Culmination of German Protestant Music: Johann
Sebastian Bach 283
X. The Musical System of the Church of England 323
XI. Congregational Song in England and America 358
XII. Problems of Church Music in America 390
Bibliography 411
Index 417
MUSIC IN THE HISTORY
OF THE
WESTERN CHURCH
CHAPTER I
PRIMITIVE AND ANCIENT RELIGIOUS MUSIC
Leon Gautier, in opening his history of the epic poetry of France,
ascribes the primitive poetic utterance of mankind to a religious
impulse. "Represent to yourselves," he says, "the first man at the moment
when he issues from the hand of God, when his vision rests for the first
time upon his new empire. Imagine, if it be possible, the exceeding
vividness of his impressions when the magnificence of the world is
reflected in the mirror of his soul. Intoxicated, almost mad with
admiration, gratitude, and love, he raises his eyes to heaven, not
satisfied with the spectacle of the earth; then discovering God in the
heavens, and attributing to him all the honor of this magnificence and of
the harmonies of creation, he opens his mouth, the first stammerings of
speech escape his lips--he speaks; ah, no, he sings, and the first song
of the lord of creation will be a hymn to God his creator."
If the language of poetical extravagance may be admitted into serious
historical composition, we may accept this theatrical picture as an
allegorized image of a truth. Although we speak no longer of a "first
man," and although we have the best reasons to suppose that the earliest
vocal efforts of our anthropoid progenitors were a softly modulated love
call or a strident battle cry rather than a _sursum corda_; yet taking
for our point of departure that stage in human development when art
properly begins, when the unpremeditated responses to simple sensation
are supplemented by the more stable and organized expression of a soul
life become self-conscious, then we certainly do find that the earliest
attempts at song are occasioned by motives that must in strictness be
called religious. The savage is a very religious being. In all the
relations of his simple life he is hedged about by a stiff code of
regulations whose sanction depends upon his recognition of the presence
of invisible powers and his duties to them. He divines a mysterious
presence as pervasive as the atmosphere he breathes, which takes in his
childish fancy diverse shapes, as of ghosts, deified ancestors,
anthropomorphic gods, embodied influences of sun and cloud. In whatever
guise these conceptions may clothe themselves, he experiences a feeling
of awe which sometimes appears as abject fear, sometimes as reverence and
love. The emotions which the primitive man feels under the pressure of
these ideas are the most profound and persistent of which he is capable,
and as they involve notions which are held in common by all the members
of the tribe (for there are no sceptics or nonconformists in the savage
community), they are formulated in elaborate schemes of ceremony. The
religious sentiment inevitably seeks expression in the assembly--"the
means," as Professor Brinton says, "by which that most potent agent in
religious life, collective suggestion, is brought to bear upon the
mind"--the liturgy, the festival, and the sacrifice.[1] By virtue of
certain laws of the human mind which are evident everywhere, in the
highest civilized condition as in the savage, the religious emotion,
intensified by collective suggestion in the assembly, will find
expression not in the ordinary manner of thought communication, but in
those rhythmic and inflected movements and cadences which are the natural
outlet of strong mental excitement when thrown back upon itself. These
gestures and vocal inflections become regulated and systematized in order
that they may be permanently retained, and serve in their reaction to
stimulate anew the mental states by which they were occasioned. Singing,
dancing, and pantomime compose the means by which uncivilized man
throughout the world gives expression to his controlling ideas. The
needed uniformity in movement and accent is most easily effected by
rhythmical beats; and as these beats are more distinctly heard, and also
blend more agreeably with the tones of the voice if they are musical
sounds, a rude form of instrumental music arises. Here we have elements
of public religious ceremony as they exist in the most highly organized
and spiritualized worships,--the assemblage, where common motives produce
common action and react to produce a common mood, the ritual with its
instrumental music, and the resulting sense on the part of the
participant of detachment from material interests and of personal
communion with the unseen powers.
The symbolic dance and the choral chant are among the most primitive,
probably the most primitive, forms of art. Out of their union came music,
poetry, and dramatic action. Sculpture, painting, and architecture were
stimulated if not actually created under the same auspices. "The
festival," says Prof. Baldwin Brown, "creates the artist."[2] Festivals
among primitive races, as among ancient cultured peoples, are all
distinctly religious. Singing and dancing are inseparable. Vocal music is
a sort of chant, adopted because of its nerve-exciting property, and also
for the sake of enabling a mass of participants to utter the words in
unison where intelligible words are used. A separation of caste between
priesthood and laity is effected in very early times. The ritual becomes
a form of magical incantation; the utterance of the wizard, prophet, or
priest consists of phrases of mysterious meaning or incoherent
ejaculations.
The prime feature in the earlier forms of worship is the dance. It held
also a prominent place in the rites of the ancient cultured nations, and
lingers in dim reminiscence in the processions and altar ceremonies of
modern liturgical worship. Its function was as important as that of music
in the modern Church, and its effect was in many ways closely analogous.
When connected with worship, the dance is employed to produce that
condition of mental exhilaration which accompanies the expenditure of
surplus physical energy, or as a mode of symbolic, semi-dramatic
expression of definite religious ideas. "The audible and visible
manifestations of joy," says Herbert Spencer, "which culminate in singing
and dancing, have their roots in instinctive actions like those of lively
children who, on seeing in the distance some indulgent relative, run up
to him, joining one another in screams of delight and breaking their run
with leaps; and when, instead of an indulgent relative met by joyful
children, we have a conquering chief or king met by groups of his people,
there will almost certainly occur saltatory and vocal expressions of
elated feeling, and these must become by implication signs of respect and
loyalty,--ascriptions of worth which, raised to a higher power, become
worship."[3] Illustrations of such motives in the sacred dance are found
in the festive procession of women, led by Miriam, after the overthrow of
the Egyptians, the dance of David before the ark, and the dance of the
boy Sophocles around the trophies of Salamis. But the sacred dance is by
no means confined to the discharge of physical energy under the
promptings of joy. The funeral dance is one of the most frequent of such
observances, and dread of divine wrath and the hope of propitiation by
means of rites pleasing to the offended power form a frequent occasion
for rhythmic evolution and violent bodily demonstration.
Far more commonly, however, does the sacred dance assume a representative
character and become a rudimentary drama, either imitative or emblematic.
It depicts the doings of the gods, often under the supposition that the
divinities are aided by the sympathetic efforts of their devotees.
Certain mysteries, known only to the initiated, are symbolized in bodily
movement. The fact that the dance was symbolic and instructive, like the
sacrificial rite itself, enables us to understand why dancing should have
held such prominence in the worship of nations so grave and intelligent
as the Egyptians, Hebrews, and Greeks. Representations of religious
processions and dances are found upon the monuments of Egypt and Assyria.
The Egyptian peasant, when gathering his harvest, sacrificed the first
fruits, and danced to testify his thankfulness to the gods. The priests
represented in their dances the course of the stars and scenes from the
histories of Osiris and Isis. The dance of the Israelites in the desert
around the golden calf was probably a reproduction of features of the
Egyptian Apis worship. The myths of many ancient nations represent the
gods as dancing, and supposed imitations of such august examples had a
place in the ceremonies devoted to their honor. The dance was always an
index of the higher or lower nature of the religious conceptions which
fostered it. Among the purer and more elevated worships it was full of
grace and dignity. In the sensuous cults of Phoenicia and Lydia, and
among the later Greek votaries of Cybele and Dionysus, the dance
reflected the fears and passions that issued in bloody, obscene, and
frenzied rites, and degenerated into almost incredible spectacles of
wantonness and riot.
It was among the Greeks, however, that the religious dance developed its
highest possibilities of expressiveness and beauty, and became raised to
the dignity of a fine art. The admiration of the Greeks for the human
form, their unceasing effort to develop its symmetry, strength, and
grace, led them early to perceive that it was in itself an efficient
means for the expression of the soul, and that its movements and
attitudes could work sympathetically upon the fancy. The dance was
therefore cultivated as a coequal with music and poetry; educators
inculcated it as indispensable to the higher discipline of youth; it was
commended by philosophers and celebrated by poets. It held a prominent
place in the public games, in processions and celebrations, in the
mysteries, and in public religious ceremonies. Every form of worship,
from the frantic orgies of the drunken devotees of Dionysus to the pure
and tranquil adoration offered to Phoebus Apollo, consisted to a large
extent of dancing. Andrew Lang's remark in regard to the connection
between dancing and religious solemnity among savages would apply also to
the Hellenic sacred dance, that "to dance this or that means to be
acquainted with this or that myth, which is represented in a dance or
_ballet d'action_."[4] Among the favorite subjects for pantomimic
representation, united with choral singing, were the combat between
Apollo and the dragon and the sorrows of Dionysus, the commemoration of
the latter forming the origin of the splendid Athenian drama. The ancient
dance, it must be remembered, had as its motive the expression of a wide
range of emotion, and could be employed to symbolize sentiments of
wonder, love, and gratitude. Regularly ordered movements, often
accompanied by gesture, could well have a place in religious ceremony, as
the gods and their relations to mankind were then conceived; and
moreover, at a time when music was in a crude state, rhythmic evolutions
and expressive gestures, refined and moderated by the exquisite sense of
proportion native to the Greek mind, undoubtedly had a solemnizing effect
upon the participants and beholders not unlike that of music in modern
Christian worship. Cultivated as an art under the name of _orchestik_,
the mimic dance reached a degree of elegance and emotional significance
to which modern times afford no proper parallel. It was not unworthy of
the place it held in the society of poetry and music, with which it
combined to form that composite art which filled so high a station in
Greek culture in the golden age.
The Hellenic dance, both religious and theatric, was adopted by the
Romans, but, like so much that was noble in Greek art, only to be
degraded in the transfer. It passed over into the Christian Church, like
many other ceremonial practices of heathenism, but modified and by no
means of general observance. It appeared on occasions of thanksgiving and
celebrations of important events in the Church's history. The priest
would often lead the dance around the altar on Sundays and festal days.
The Christians sometimes gathered about the church doors at night and
danced and sang songs. There is nothing in these facts derogatory to the
piety of the early Christians. They simply expressed their joy according
to the universal fashion of the age; and especially on those occasions
which, as for instance Christmas, were adaptations of old pagan
festivals, they naturally imitated many of the time-honored observances.
The Christian dance, however, finally degenerated; certain features, such
as the nocturnal festivities, gave rise to scandal; the church
authorities began to condemn them, and the rising spirit of asceticism
drove them into disfavor. The dance was a dangerous reminder of the
heathen worship with all its abominations; and since many pagan beliefs
and customs, with attendant immoralities, lingered for centuries as a
seductive snare to the weaker brethren, the Church bestirred itself to
eliminate all perilous associations from religious ceremony and to arouse
a love for an absorbed and spiritual worship. During the Middle Age, and
even in comparatively recent times in Spain and Spanish America, we find
survivals of the ancient religious dance in the Christian Church, but in
the more enlightened countries it has practically ceased to exist. The
Christian religion is more truly joyful than the Greek; yet the Christian
devotee, even in his most confident moments, no longer feels inclined to
give vent to his happiness in physical movements, for there is mingled
with his rapture a sentiment of awe and submission which bids him adore
but be still. Religious processions are frequent in Christian countries,
but the participants do not, like the Egyptians and Greeks, dance as they
go. We find even in ancient times isolated opinions that public dancing
is indecorous. Only in a naive and childlike stage of society will
dancing as a feature of worship seem appropriate and innocent. As
reflection increases, the unrestrained and conspicuous manifestation of
feeling in shouts and violent bodily movements is deemed unworthy; a more
spiritual conception of the nature of the heavenly power and man's
relation to it requires that forms of worship should become more refined
and moderate. Even the secular dance has lost much of its ancient dignity
from somewhat similar reasons, partly also because the differentiation
and high development of music, taking the place of dancing as a social
art, has relegated the latter to the realm of things outgrown, which no
longer minister to man's intellectual necessities.
As we turn to the subject of music in ancient religious rites, we find
that where the dance had already reached a high degree of artistic
development, music was still in dependent infancy. The only promise of
its splendid future was in the reverence already accorded to it, and the
universality of its use in prayer and praise. On its vocal side it was
used to add solemnity to the words of the officiating priest, forming the
intonation, or ecclesiastical accent, which has been an inseparable
feature of liturgical worship in all periods. So far as the people had a
share in religious functions, vocal music was employed by them in hymns
to the gods, or in responsive refrains. In its instrumental form it was
used to assist the singers to preserve the correct pitch and rhythm, to
regulate the steps of the dance, or, in an independent capacity, to act
upon the nerves of the worshipers and increase their sense of awe in the
presence of the deity. It is the nervous excitement produced by certain
kinds of musical performance that accounts for the fact that
incantations, exorcisms, and the ceremonies of demon worship among
savages and barbarians are accompanied by harsh-sounding instruments;
that tortures, executions, and human sacrifices, such as those of the
ancient Phoenicians and Mexicans, were attended by the clamor of drums,
trumpets, and cymbals. Even in the Hebrew temple service the blasts of
horns and trumpets could have had no other purpose than that of
intensifying emotions of awe and dread.
Still another office of music in ancient ceremony, perhaps still more
valued, was that of suggesting definite ideas by means of an associated
symbolism. In certain occult observances, such as those of the Egyptians
and Hindus, relationships were imagined between instruments or melodies
and religious or moral conceptions, so that the melody or random tone of
the instrument indicated to the initiate the associated principle, and
thus came to have an imputed sanctity of its own. This symbolism could be
employed to recall to the mind ethical precepts or religious tenets at
solemn moments, and tone could become a doubly powerful agent by uniting
the effect of vivid ideas to its inherent property of nerve excitement.
Our knowledge of the uses of music among the most ancient nations is
chiefly confined to its function in religious ceremony. All ancient
worship was ritualistic and administered by a priesthood, and the
liturgies and ceremonial rites were intimately associated with music. The
oldest literatures that have survived contain hymns to the gods, and upon
the most ancient monuments are traced representations of instruments and
players. Among the literary records discovered on the site of Nineveh are
collections of hymns, prayers, and penitential psalms, addressed to the
Assyrian deities, designed, as expressly stated, for public worship, and
which Professor Sayce compares to the English Book of Common Prayer. On
the Assyrian monuments are carved reliefs of instrumental players,
sometimes single, sometimes in groups of considerable numbers. Allusions
in the Bible indicate that the Assyrians employed music on festal
occasions, that hymns to the gods were sung at banquets and dirges at
funerals. The kings maintained bands at their courts, and provided a
considerable variety of instruments for use in the idol worship.[5]
There is abundant evidence that music was an important factor in the
religious rites of Egypt. The testimony of carved and painted walls of
tombs and temples, the papyrus records, the accounts of visitors, inform
us that music was in Egypt preeminently a sacred art, as it must needs
have been in a land in which, as Ranke says, there was nothing secular.
Music was in the care of the priests, who jealously guarded the sacred
hymns and melodies from innovation and foreign intrusion.[6] In musical
science, knowledge of the divisions of the monochord, systems of keys,
notation, etc., the Egyptians were probably in advance of all other
nations. The Greeks certainly derived much of their musical practice from
the dwellers on the Nile. They possessed an extensive variety of
instruments, from the little tinkling sistrum up to the profusely
ornamented harp of twelve or thirteen strings, which towered above the
performer. From such an instrument as the latter it would seem as though
some kind of harmony must have been produced, especially since the player
is represented as using both hands. But if such were the case, the
harmony could not have been reduced to a scientific system, since
otherwise a usage so remarkable would not have escaped the attention of
the Greek musicians who derived so much of their art from Egypt. Music
never failed at public or private festivity, religious ceremony, or
funeral rite. As in all ancient religions, processions to the temples,
carrying images of the gods and offerings, were attended by dances and
vocal and instrumental performances. Lyrical poems, containing the
praises of gods and heroes, were sung at public ceremonies; hymns were
addressed to the rising and setting sun, to Ammon and the other gods.
According to Chappell, the custom of carolling or singing without words,
like birds, to the gods existed among the Egyptians,--a practice which
was imitated by the Greeks, from whom the custom was transferred to the
Western Church.[7] The chief instrument of the temple worship was the
sistrum, and connected with all the temples in the time of the New Empire
were companies of female sistrum players who stood in symbolic relations
to the god as inmates of his harem, holding various degrees of rank.
These women received high honors, often of a political nature.[8]
In spite of the simplicity and frequent coarseness of ancient music, the
older nations ascribed to it an influence over the moral nature which the
modern music lover would never think of attributing to his highly
developed art. They referred its invention to the gods, and imputed to it
thaumaturgical properties. The Hebrews were the only ancient cultivated
nation that did not assign to music a superhuman source. The Greek myths
of Orpheus, Amphion, and Arion are but samples of hundreds of marvellous
tales of musical effect that have place in primitive legends. This belief
in the magical power of music was connected with the equally universal
opinion that music in itself could express and arouse definite notions
and passions, and could exert a direct moral or immoral influence. The
importance ascribed by the Greeks to music in the education of youth, as
emphatically affirmed by philosophers and law-givers, is based upon this
belief. Not only particular melodies, but the different modes or keys
were held by the Greeks to exert a positive influence upon character. The
Dorian mode was considered bold and manly, inspiring valor and fortitude;
the Lydian, weak and enervating. Plato, in the second book of the _Laws_,
condemns as "intolerable and blasphemous" the opinion that the purpose of
music is to give pleasure. He finds a direct relation between morality
and certain forms of music, and would have musicians constrained to
compose only such melodies and rhythms as would turn the plastic mind
toward virtue. Plutarch, in his discourse concerning music in his
_Morals_, says: "The ancient Greeks deemed it requisite by the assistance
of music to form and compose the minds of youth to what was decent,
sober, and virtuous; believing the use of music beneficially efficacious
to incite to all serious actions." He even goes so far as to say that
"the right moulding of ingenuous manners and civil conduct lies in a
well-grounded musical education." Assumptions of direct moral,
intellectual, and even pathological action on the part of music, as
distinct from an aesthetic appeal, are so abundant in ancient writings
that we cannot dismiss them as mere fanciful hyperbole, but must admit
that music really possessed a power over the emotions and volitions which
has been lost in its later evolution. The explanation of this apparent
anomaly probably lies, first, in the fact that music in antiquity was not
a free independent art, and that when the philosophers speak of music
they think of it in its associations with poetry, religious and patriotic
observances, moral and legal precepts, historic relations, etc. Music, on
its vocal side, was mere emphasized speech inflection; it was a slave to
poetry; it had no rhythmical laws of its own. The melody did not convey
aesthetic charm in itself alone, but simply heightened the sensuous
effect of measured speech and vivified the thought. Mr. Spencer's
well-known expression that "cadence is the comment of the emotion upon
the propositions of the intellect" would apply very accurately to the
musical theories of the ancients. Certain modes (that is, keys), on
account of convenience of pitch, were employed for certain kinds of
poetical expression; and as a poem was always chanted in the mode that
was first assigned to it, particular classes of ideas would come to be
identified with particular modes. Associations of race character would
lead to similar interpretation. The Dorian mode would seem to partake of
the sternness and vigor of the warlike Dorian Spartans; the Lydian mode
and its melodies would hint of Lydian effeminacy.[9] Instrumental music
also was equally restricted to definite meanings through association. It
was an accompaniment to poetry, bound up with the symbolic dance,
subordinated to formal social observances; it produced not the artistic
effect of melody, harmony, and form, but the nervous stimulation of crude
unorganized tone, acting upon recipients who had never learned to
consider music as anything but a direct emotional excitant or an
intensifier of previously conceived ideas.
Another explanation of the ancient view of music as possessing a
controlling power over emotion, thought, and conduct lies in the fact
that music existed only in its rude primal elements; antiquity in its
conception and use of music never passed far beyond that point where tone
was the outcome of simple emotional states, and to which notions of
precise intellectual significance still clung. Whatever theory of the
origin of music may finally prevail, there can be no question that music
in its primitive condition is more directly the outcome of clearly
realized feeling than it is when developed into a free, intellectualized,
and heterogeneous art form. Music, the more it rises into an art, the
more it exerts a purely aesthetic effect through its action upon
intelligences that delight in form, organization, and ideal motion, loses
in equal proportion the emotional definiteness that exists in simple and
spontaneous tone inflections. The earliest reasoning on the rationale of
musical effects always takes for granted that music's purpose is to
convey exact ideas, or at least express definite emotion. Music did not
advance so far among the ancients that they were able to escape from this
naturalistic conception. They could conceive of no higher purpose in
music than to move the mind in definite directions, and so they
maintained that it always did so. Even in modern life numberless
instances prove that the music which exerts the greatest effect over the
impulses is not the mature and complex art of the masters, but the simple
strains which emanate from the people and bring up recollections which in
themselves alone have power to stir the heart. The song that melts a
congregation to tears, the patriotic air that fires the enthusiasm of an
assembly on the eve of a political crisis, the strain that nerves an army
to desperate endeavor, is not an elaborate work of art, but a simple and
obvious tune, which finds its real force in association. All this is
especially true of music employed for religious ends, and we find in such
facts a reason why it could make no progress in ancient times, certainly
none where it was under the control of an organized social caste. For the
priestly order is always conservative, and in antiquity this conservatism
petrified melody, at the same time with the rites to which it adhered,
into stereotyped formulas. Where music is bound up with a ritual,
innovation in the one is discountenanced as tending to loosen the
traditional strictness of the other.
I have laid stress upon this point because this attempt of the religious
authorities in antiquity to repress music in worship to a subsidiary
function was the sign of a conception of music which has always been more
or less active in the Church, down even to our own day. As soon as
musical art reaches a certain stage of development it strives to
emancipate itself from the thraldom of word and visible action, and to
exalt itself for its own undivided glory. Strict religionists have always
looked upon this tendency with suspicion, and have often strenuously
opposed it, seeing in the sensuous fascinations of the art an obstacle to
complete absorption in spiritual concerns. The conflict between the
devotional and the aesthetic principles, which has been so active in the
history of worship music in modern times, never appeared in antiquity
except in the later period of Greek art. Since this outbreak of the
spirit of rebellion occurred only when Hellenic religion was no longer a
force in civilization, its results were felt only in the sphere of
secular music; but no progress resulted, for musical culture was soon
assumed everywhere by the Christian Church, which for a thousand years
succeeded in restraining music within the antique conception of bondage
to liturgy and ceremony.
Partly as a result of this subjection of music by its allied powers,
partly, perhaps, as a cause, a science of harmony was never developed in
ancient times. That music was always performed in unison and octaves, as
has been generally believed, is, however, not probable. In view of the
fact that the Egyptians possessed harps over six feet in height, having
twelve or thirteen strings, and played with both hands, and that the
monuments of Assyria and Egypt and the records of musical practice among
the Hebrews, Greeks, and other nations show us a large variety of
instruments grouped in bands of considerable size, we are justified in
supposing that combinations of different sounds were often produced. But
the absence from the ancient treatises of any but the most vague and
obscure allusions to the production of accordant tones, and the
conclusive evidence in respect to the general lack of freedom and
development in musical art, is proof positive that, whatever concords of
sounds may have been occasionally produced, nothing comparable to our
present contrapuntal and harmonic system existed. The music so
extravagantly praised in antiquity was, vocally, chant, or recitative,
ordinarily in a single part; instrumental music was rude and
unsystematized sound, partly a mechanical aid to the voice and the dance
step, partly a means of nervous exhilaration. The modern conception of
music as a free, self-assertive art, subject only to its own laws,
lifting the soul into regions of pure contemplation, where all temporal
relations are lost in a tide of self-forgetful rapture,--this was a
conception unknown to the mind of antiquity.
The student of the music of the Christian Church naturally turns with
curiosity to that one of the ancient nations whose religion was the
antecedent of the Christian, and whose sacred literature has furnished
the worship of the Church with the loftiest expression of its trust and
aspiration. The music of the Hebrews, as Ambros says, "was divine
service, not art."[10] Many modern writers have assumed a high degree of
perfection in ancient Hebrew music, but only on sentimental grounds, not
because there is any evidence to support such an opinion. There is no
reason to suppose that music was further developed among the Hebrews than
among the most cultivated of their neighbors. Their music, like that of
the ancient nations generally, was entirely subsidiary to poetic
recitation and dancing; it was unharmonic, simple, and inclined to be
coarse and noisy. Although in general use, music never attained so great
honor among them as it did among the Greeks. We find in the Scriptures no
praises of music as a nourisher of morality, rarely a trace of an
ascription of magical properties. Although it had a place in military
operations and at feasts, private merry-makings, etc., its chief value
lay in its availability for religious purposes. To the Hebrews the arts
obtained significance only as they could be used to adorn the courts of
Jehovah, or could be employed in the ascription of praise to him. Music
was to them an efficient agent to excite emotions of awe, or to carry
more directly to the heart the rhapsodies and searching admonitions of
psalmists and prophets.
No authentic melodies have come down to us from the time of the
Israelitish residence in Palestine. No treatise on Hebrew musical theory
or practice, if any such ever existed, has been preserved. No definite
light is thrown upon the Hebrew musical system by the Bible or any other
ancient book. We may be certain that if the Hebrews had possessed
anything distinctive, or far in advance of the practice of their
contemporaries, some testimony to that effect would be found. All
evidence and analogy indicate that the Hebrew song was a unison chant or
cantillation, more or less melodious, and sufficiently definite to be
perpetuated by tradition, but entirely subordinate to poetry, in rhythm
following the accent and metre of the text.
We are not so much in the dark in respect to the use and nature of Hebrew
instruments, although we know as little of the style of music that was
performed upon them. Our knowledge of the instruments themselves is
derived from those represented upon the monuments of Assyria and Egypt,
which were evidently similar to those used by the Hebrews. The Hebrews
never invented a musical instrument. Not one in use among them but had
its equivalent among nations older in civilization. And so we may infer
that the entire musical practice of the Hebrews was derived first from
their early neighbors the Chaldeans, and later from the Egyptians;
although we may suppose that some modifications may have arisen after
they became an independent nation. The first mention of musical
instruments in the Bible is in Gen. iv. 21, where Jubal is spoken of as
"the father of all such as handle the _kinnor_ and _ugab_" (translated in
the revised version "harp and pipe"). The word _kinnor_ appears
frequently in the later books, and is applied to the instrument used by
David. This _kinnor_ of David and the psalmists was a small portable
instrument and might properly be called a lyre. Stringed instruments are
usually the last to be developed by primitive peoples, and the use of the
_kinnor_ implies a considerable degree of musical advancement among the
remote ancestors of the Hebrew race in their primeval Chaldean home. The
word _ugab_ may signify either a single tube like the flute or oboe, or a
connected series of pipes like the Pan's pipes or syrinx of the Greeks.
There is only one other mention of instruments before the Exodus, _viz._,
in connection with the episode of Laban and Jacob, where the former asks
his son-in-law reproachfully, "Wherefore didst thou flee secretly, and
steal away from me; and didst not tell me, that I might have sent thee
away with mirth and with songs, with _toph_ and _kinnor_?"[11]--the
_toph_ being a sort of small hand drum or tambourine.
After the Exodus other instruments, perhaps derived from Egypt, make
their appearance: the _shophar_, or curved tube of metal or ram's horn,
heard amid the smoke and thunderings of Mt. Sinai,[12] and to whose sound
the walls of Jericho were overthrown;[13] the _hazozerah_, or long silver
tube, used in the desert for announcing the time for breaking camp,[14]
and employed later by the priests in religious service,[15] popular
gatherings, and sometimes in war.[16] The _nebel_ was either a harp
somewhat larger than the _kinnor_, or possibly a sort of guitar. The
_chalil_, translated in the English version "pipe," may have been a sort
of oboe or flageolet. The band of prophets met by Saul advanced to the
sound of _nebel, toph, chalil_, and _kinnor_.[17] The word "psaltery,"
which frequently appears in the English version of the psalms, is
sometimes the _nebel_, sometimes the _kinnor_, sometimes the _asor_,
which was a species of _nebel_. The "instrument of ten strings" was also
the _nebel_ or _asor_. Percussion instruments, such as the drum, cymbals,
bell, and the Egyptian sistrum (which consisted of a small frame of
bronze into which three or four metal bars were loosely inserted,
producing a jingling noise when shaken), were also in common use. In the
Old Testament there are about thirteen instruments mentioned as known to
the Hebrews, not including those mentioned in Dan. iii., whose names,
according to Chappell, are not derived from Hebrew roots.[18] All of
these were simple and rude, yet considerably varied in character,
representing the three classes into which instruments, the world over,
are divided, _viz._, stringed instruments, wind instruments, and
instruments of percussion.[19]
Although instruments of music had a prominent place in public
festivities, social gatherings, and private recreation, far more
important was their use in connection with religious ceremony. As the
Hebrew nation increased in power, and as their conquests became
permanently secured, so the arts of peace developed in greater profusion
and refinement, and with them the embellishments of the liturgical
worship became more highly organized. With the capture of Jerusalem and
the establishment of the royal residence within its ramparts, the worship
of Jehovah increased in splendor; the love of pomp and display, which was
characteristic of David, and still more of his luxurious son Solomon, was
manifest in the imposing rites and ceremonies that were organized to the
honor of the people's God. The epoch of these two rulers was that in
which the national force was in the flower of its youthful vigor, the
national pride had been stimulated by continual triumphs, the long period
of struggle and fear had been succeeded by glorious peace. The barbaric
splendor of religious service and festal pageant was the natural
expression of popular joy and self-confidence. In all these ebullitions
of national feeling, choral and instrumental music on the most brilliant
and massive scale held a conspicuous place. The description of the long
series of public rejoicings, culminating in the dedication of Solomon's
temple, begins with the transportation of the ark of the Lord from
Gibeah, when "David and all the house of Israel played before the Lord
with all manner of instruments made of fir-wood, and with harps
(_kinnor_), and with psalteries (_nebel_), and with timbrels (_toph_),
with castanets (_sistrum_), and with cymbals (_tzeltzelim_)."[20] And
again, when the ark was brought from the house of Obed-edom into the city
of David, the king danced "with all his might," and the ark was brought
up "with shouting and with the sound of a trumpet."[21] Singers were
marshalled under leaders and supported by bands of instruments. The ode
ascribed to David was given to Asaph as chief of the choir of Levites;
Asaph beat the time with cymbals, and the royal paean was chanted by
masses of chosen singers to the accompaniment of harps, lyres, and
trumpets.[22] In the organization of the temple service no detail
received more careful attention than the vocal and instrumental music. We
read that four thousand Levites were appointed to praise the Lord with
instruments.[23] There were also two hundred and eighty-eight skilled
singers who sang to instrumental accompaniment beside the altar.[24]
The function performed by instruments in the temple service is also
indicated in the account of the reestablishment of the worship of Jehovah
by Hezekiah according to the institutions of David and Solomon. With the
burnt offering the song of praise was uplifted to the accompaniment of
the "instruments of David," the singers intoned the psalm and the
trumpets sounded, and this continued until the sacrifice was consumed.
When the rite was ended a hymn of praise was sung by the Levites, while
the king and the people bowed themselves.[25]
With the erection of the second temple after the return from the
Babylonian exile, the liturgical service was restored, although not with
its pristine magnificence. Ezra narrates: "When the builders laid the
foundation of the temple of the Lord, they set the priests in their
apparel with trumpets, and the Levites the sons of Asaph with cymbals, to
praise the Lord, after the order of David king of Israel. And they sang
one to another in praising and giving thanks unto the Lord, saying, For
he is good, for his mercy endureth forever toward Israel."[26] And at the
dedication of the wall of Jerusalem, as recorded by Nehemiah,
instrumentalists and singers assembled in large numbers, to lead the
multitude in rendering praise and thanks to Jehovah.[27] Instruments were
evidently employed in independent flourishes and signals, as well as in
accompanying the singers. The trumpets were used only in the interludes;
the pipes and stringed instruments strengthened the voice parts; the
cymbals were used by the leader of the chorus to mark the rhythm.
Notwithstanding the prominence of instruments in all observances of
public and private life, they were always looked upon as accessory to
song. Dramatic poetry was known to the Hebrews, as indicated by such
compositions as the Book of Job and the Song of Songs. No complete epic
has come down to us, but certain allusions in the Pentateuch, such as the
mention in Numbers xxi. 14 of the "book of the wars of Jehovah," would
tend to show that this people possessed a collection of ballads which,
taken together, would properly constitute a national epic. But whether
lyric, epic, or dramatic, the Hebrew poetry was delivered, according to
the universal custom of ancient nations, not in the speaking voice, but
in musical tone. The minstrel poet, it has been said, was the type of the
race. Lyric poetry may be divided into two classes: first, that which is
the expression of individual, subjective feeling, the poet communing with
himself alone, imparting to his thought a color derived solely from his
personal inward experience; and second, that which utters sentiments that
are shared by an organization, community, or race, the poet serving as
the mouthpiece of a mass actuated by common experiences and motives. The
second class is more characteristic of a people in the earlier stages of
culture, when the individual is lost in the community, before the
tendency towards specialization of interests gives rise to an expression
that is distinctly personal. In all the world's literature the Hebrew
psalms are the most splendid examples of this second order of lyric
poetry; and although we find in them many instances in which an isolated,
purely subjective experience finds a voice, yet in all of them the same
view of the universe, the same conception of the relation of man to his
Creator, the same broad and distinctively national consciousness, control
their thought and their diction. And there are very few even of the first
class which a Hebrew of earnest piety, searching his own heart, could not
adopt as the fitting declaration of his need and assurance.
All patriotic songs and religious poems properly called hymns belong in
the second division of lyrics; and in the Hebrew psalms devotional
feeling touched here and there with a patriot's hopes and fears, has once
for all projected itself in forms of speech which seem to exhaust the
capabilities of sublimity in language. These psalms were set to music,
and presuppose music in their thought and their technical structure. A
text most appropriate for musical rendering must be free from all
subtleties of meaning and over-refinements of phraseology; it must be
forcible in movement, its metaphors those that touch upon general
observation, its ideas those that appeal to the common consciousness and
sympathy. These qualities the psalms possess in the highest degree, and
in addition they have a sublimity of thought, a magnificence of imagery,
a majesty and strength of movement, that evoke the loftiest energies of a
musical genius that ventures to ally itself with them. In every nation of
Christendom they have been made the foundation of the musical service of
the Church; and although many of the greatest masters of the harmonic art
have lavished upon them the richest treasures of their invention, they
have but skimmed the surface of their unfathomable suggestion.
Of the manner in which the psalms were rendered in the ancient Hebrew
worship we know little. The present methods of singing in the synagogues
give us little help, for there is no record by which they can be traced
back beyond the definite establishment of the synagogue worship. It is
inferred from the structure of the Hebrew poetry, as well as unbroken
usage from the beginning of the Christian era, that the psalms were
chanted antiphonally or responsively. That form of verse known as
parallelism--the repetition of a thought in different words, or the
juxtaposition of two contrasted thoughts forming an antithesis--pervades
a large amount of the Hebrew poetry, and may be called its technical
principle. It is, we might say, a rhythm of thought, an assonance of
feeling. This parallelism is more frequently double, sometimes triple. We
find this peculiar structure as far back as the address of Lamech to his
wives in Gen. iv. 23, 24, in Moses' song after the passage of the Red
Sea, in the triumphal ode of Deborah and Barak, in the greeting of the
Israelitish women to Saul and David returning from the slaughter of the
Philistines, in the Book of Job, in a large proportion of the rhythmical
imaginative utterances of the psalmists and prophets. The Oriental
Christians sang the psalms responsively; this method was passed on to
Milan in the fourth century, to Rome very soon afterward, and has been
perpetuated in the liturgical churches of modern Christendom. Whether, in
the ancient temple service, this twofold utterance was divided between
separate portions of the choir, or between a precentor and the whole
singing body, there are no grounds for stating,--both methods have been
employed in modern times. It is not even certain that the psalms were
sung in alternate half-verses, for in the Jewish Church at the present
day the more frequent usage is to divide at the end of a verse. It is
evident that the singing was not congregational, and that the share of
the people, where they participated at all, was confined to short
responses, as in the Christian Church in the time next succeeding the
apostolic age. The female voice, although much prized in secular music,
according to the Talmud was not permitted in the temple service. There is
nothing in the Old Testament that contradicts this except, as some
suppose, the reference to the three daughters of Heman in 1. Chron. xxv.
5, where we read: "And God gave to Heman fourteen sons and three
daughters;" and in verse 6: "All these were under the hands of their
father for song in the house of the Lord." It is probable, however, that
the mention of the daughters is incidental, not intended as an assertion
that they were actual members of the temple chorus, for we cannot
conceive why an exception should have been made in their behalf.
Certainly the whole implication from the descriptions of the temple
service and the enumeration of the singers and players is to the effect
that only the male voice was utilized in the liturgical worship. There
are many allusions to "women singers" in the Scriptures, but they plainly
apply only to domestic song, or to processions and celebrations outside
the sacred enclosure. It is certainly noteworthy that the exclusion of
the female voice, which has obtained in the Catholic Church throughout
the Middle Age, in the Eastern Church, in the German Protestant Church,
and in the cathedral service of the Anglican Church, was also enforced in
the temple worship of Israel. The conviction has widely prevailed among
the stricter custodians of religious ceremony in all ages that there is
something sensuous and passionate (I use these words in their simpler
original meaning) in the female voice--something at variance with the
austerity of ideal which should prevail in the music of worship. Perhaps,
also, the association of men and women in the sympathy of so emotional an
office as that of song is felt to be prejudicial to the complete
absorption of the mind which the sacred function demands. Both these
reasons have undoubtedly combined in so many historic epochs to keep all
the offices of ministry in the house of God in the hands of the male sex.
On the other hand, in the more sensuous cults of paganism no such
prohibition has existed.
There is difference of opinion in regard to the style of melody employed
in the delivery of the psalms in the worship of the temple at Jerusalem.
Was it a mere intoned declamation, essentially a monotone with very
slight changes of pitch, like the "ecclesiastical accent" of the Catholic
Church? Or was it a freer, more melodious rendering, as in the more
ornate members of the Catholic Plain Song? The modern Jews incline to the
latter opinion, that the song was true melody, obeying, indeed, the
universal principle of chant as a species of vocalism subordinated in
rhythm to the text, yet with abundant movement and possessing a
distinctly tuneful character. It has been supposed that certain
inscriptions at the head of some of the psalms are the titles of
well-known tunes, perhaps secular folk-songs, to which the psalms were
sung. We find, _e. g._, at the head of Ps. xxii. the inscription, "After
the song beginning, Hind of the Dawn." Ps. lvi. has, "After the song, The
silent Dove in far-off Lands." Others have, "After lilies" (Ps. xlv. and
lxix.), and "Destroy not" (Ps. lvii.-lix.). We cannot on _a priori_
principles reject the supposition that many psalms were sung to secular
melodies, for we shall find, as we trace the history of music in the
Christian era, that musicians have over and over again borrowed profane
airs for the hymns of the Church. In fact, there is hardly a branch of
the Christian Church that has not at some time done so, and even the
rigid Jews in modern times have employed the same means to increase their
store of religious melodies.
That the psalms were sung with the help of instruments seems indicated by
superscriptions, such as "With stringed instruments," and "To the
flutes," although objections have been raised to these translations. No
such indications are needed, however, to prove the point, for the
descriptions of worship contained in the Old Testament seem explicit. The
instruments were used to accompany the voices, and also for preludes and
interludes. The word "Selah," so often occurring at the end of a psalm
verse, is understood by many authorities to signify an instrumental
interlude or flourish, while the singers were for a moment silent. One
writer says that at this point the people bowed in prayer.[28]
Such, generally speaking, is the most that can definitely be stated
regarding the office performed by music in the worship of Israel in the
time of its glory. With the rupture of the nation, its gradual political
decline, the inroads of idolatry, the exile in Babylon, the conquest by
the Romans, the disappearance of poetic and musical inspiration with the
substitution of formality and routine in place of the pristine national
sincerity and fervor, it would inevitably follow that the great musical
traditions would fade away, until at the time of the birth of Christ but
little would remain of the elaborate ritual once committed to the
guardianship of cohorts of priests and Levites. The sorrowing exiles who
hung their harps on the willows of Babylon and refused to sing the songs
of Zion in a strange land certainly never forgot the airs consecrated by
such sweet and bitter memories; but in the course of centuries they
became lost among the strange peoples with whom the scattered Israelites
found their home. Many were for a time preserved in the synagogues,
which, in the later years of Jewish residence in Palestine, were
established in large numbers in all the towns and villages. The service
of the synagogue was a liturgical service, consisting of benedictions,
chanting of psalms and other Scripture passages, with responses by the
people, lessons from the law and the prophets, and sermons. The
instrumental music of the temple and the first synagogues eventually
disappeared, and the greater part, if not the whole, of the ancient psalm
melodies vanished also with the dispersion of the Levites, who were their
especial curators. Many details of ancient ritual and custom must have
survived in spite of vicissitude, but the final catastrophe, which drove
a desolate, heart-broken remnant of the children of Judah into alien
lands, must inevitably have destroyed all but the merest fragment of the
fair residue of national art by sweeping away all the conditions by which
a national art can live.
Does anything remain of the rich musical service which for fifteen
hundred years went up daily from tabernacle and temple to the throne of
the God of Israel? A question often asked, but without a positive answer.
Perhaps a few notes of an ancient melody, or a horn signal identical with
one blown in the camp or in the temple court, may survive in the
synagogue to-day, a splinter from a mighty edifice which has been
submerged by the tide of centuries. As would be presumed of a people so
tenacious of time-honored usages, the voice of tradition declares that
the intonations of the ritual chant used in the synagogue are survivals
of forms employed in the temple at Jerusalem. These intonations are
certainly Oriental in character and very ancient, but that they date back
to the time of David cannot be proved or disproved. A style of singing
like the well-known "cantillation" might easily be preserved, a complete
melody possibly, but the presumption is against an antiquity so great as
the Jews, with pardonable pride, claim for some of their weird, archaic
strains.
With the possible exception of scanty fragments, nothing remains of the
songs so much loved by this devoted people in their early home. We may
speculate upon the imagined beauty of that music; it is natural to do so.
_Omne ignotum pro magnifico_. We know that it often shook the hearts of
those that heard it; but our knowledge of the comparative rudeness of all
Oriental music, ancient and modern, teaches us that its effect was
essentially that of simple unison successions of tones wedded to poetry
of singular exaltation and vehemence, and associated with liturgical
actions calculated to impress the beholder with an overpowering sense of
awe. The interest which all must feel in the religious music of the
Hebrews is not due to its importance in the history of art, but to its
place in the history of culture. Certainly the art of music was never
more highly honored, its efficacy as an agent in arousing the heart to
the most ardent spiritual experiences was never more convincingly
demonstrated, than when the seers and psalmists of Israel found in it an
indispensable auxiliary of those appeals, confessions, praises, and pious
raptures in which the whole after-world has seen the highest attainment
of language under the impulse of religious ecstasy. Taking "the harp the
monarch minstrel swept" as a symbol of Hebrew devotional song at large,
Byron's words are true:
"It softened men of iron mould,
It gave them virtues not their own;
No ear so dull, no soul so cold,
That felt not, fired not to the tone,
Till David's lyre grew mightier than his throne."
This music foreshadowed the completer expression of Christian art of
which it became the type. Inspired by the grandest of traditions,
provided with credentials as, on equal terms with poetry, valid in the
expression of man's consciousness of his needs and his infinite
privilege,--thus consecrated for its future mission, the soul of music
passed from Hebrew priests to apostles and Christian fathers, and so on
to the saints and hierarchs, who laid the foundation of the sublime
structure of the worship music of a later day.