A Timeline of Christians and Music

TIMELINE:

“The story is told of a new husband who was watching his wife prepare her first ham for the oven. He noticed that she cut off a few inches from the end. When asked her reason for doing such, her only reply was that her mother always did it that way. Upon calling her mother they found she could give no other reason except that her mother had always prepared her hams that way. Finally, they called the grandmother, who told them she always cut a few inches off because her pan was too small.”

Magnus Libre polyphonic composition notre dane polyphony when on Timeline??

428-328 BC	Plato Lived: Plato outlines his view of the qualities of the modes of the time and when they were fitting or appropriate.
384-322 BC	Aristotle Lived: He classified melodies as 1) ethical melodies, 2) melodies of action, and 3) passionate or inspiring melodies, each having a mode and harmony corresponding to the intent.
33 AD	Matthew 26:30; Mark 14:26 = Last supper followed by “when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives” : in the Gospel of Luke, there are the "Angels' Song," Mary's "Magnificat," and Zacharias's "Song." In Acts, Paul and Silas sing behind prison-bars: the prison is shaken, the doors fly open, and they are free. In the Epistles, there are but few references to music, but in Ephesians there is a "beautiful one," in which Paul exhorts the churches to sing "Psalms" and "spiritual songs."
1st Century AD	Werner in noting that "the connections between Hebrew and Christian chant have been scientifically investigated and proved Nearly all of the backgrounds from which early Christians came-Jewish, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and more-had instrumental traditions, but these traditions carried negative associations. Most church fathers saw the use of instruments in Jewish worship as a "childish" weakness, less glorifying to God than words of praise. "since harmony was unknown during the first one thousand years or more of the Christian era, and instrumental music had no independent existence, the whole vast system of chant melodies was purely unison and unaccompanied, its rhythm usually subordinated to that of the text" While the Greek and Roman songs were metrical, the Christian psalms were antiphons, prayers, responses, etc., were unmetrical;
	1 Timothy 3:16 “Hos Ephanerothe”
61-113 ad	, there is a reference in Pliny the Younger who writes to the emperor 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 of Constantinople, 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.
100 AD	“Plainchant” “Plainsong” Sung without musical accompaniment. Plainsong developed during the earliest centuries of Christianity, influenced possibly by the music of the Jewish synagogue and certainly by the Greek modal system. It has its own system of notation. 4 line staff NOT notating pitches or intervals - Monophony (1 voice) Plainsong was the exclusive form of Roman Catholic church music until the 9th century. Singing Psalms and other Scriptures.
200 AD	Clement of Alexandria., "And even if you wish to sing and play to the harp or lyre, there is no blame." [speaking on “How to Conduct Ourselves at Feasts” and not specifically church worship.]
340-397 AD	Ambrose (340-397) Bishop of Milan to support the view that the instrument was in use in public worship prior to the seventh century ????
342-420 AD	JEROME LIVED: The use of instruments in early Christian music seems to have been frowned upon. 4th or early 5th 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.
347-407 AD	John Chrysostom lived: Psalm 63 was known as the morning hymn by the early church in Greece. John Chrysostom (347-407), Archbishop of Constantinople, wrote “that it was decreed and ordained by the primitive [church] fathers, that no day should pass without the public singing of this Psalm.”
4th Century	“In blowing on the tibia [pipes] they puff out their cheeks … they lead obscene songs … they raise a great din with the clapping of scabella [a type of foot percussion]; under the influence of which a multitude of other lascivious souls abandon themselves to bizarre movements of the body"
500-1500 AD	Medieval Period: because of the pervasive influence of the church, the dividing line between sacred and secular aspects was thin throughout a good part of the medieval period.
578 AD	Until 578 AD Women did join in Roman Catholic church singing but there was a returning to Hebraic tradition of male only voices.
590-604 AD	Gregory’s collection was selected from chants already in use. His codification assigned these chants to particular services in the liturgical calendar. In general it reinforced the simple, spiritual, aesthetic quality of liturgical music. There are preserved manuscript notations reminding singers to be careful and modest in their work, indicating that temptations of inattention and excessive vocal display existed for even the earliest liturgical musicians.
7th Century	Coptic music is the music sung and played in the Coptic Orthodox Church (Church of Egypt) and the Coptic Catholic Church. It consists mainly of chanted hymns in rhythm with instruments such as cymbals (hand and large size) and the triangle. Ethiopian Church Music: Ancient chanted worship with congregation participating with clapping, ululation and rhythmic movements
657-672 AD	The introduction of church organ music is traditionally believed to date from the time of the papacy of Pope Vitalian in the 7th century, as processional uses but in the worship not common until 10th-12th century. According to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, Pope Vitalian introduced the organ into the worship of the church at Rome to improve the congregation singing. But, it was not until the ninth century that the organ was "consistently" used, and the thirteenth century before it was "in general use throughout the Latin Church" (Vol. 10, p. 746).
9th Century AD	Polyphony (2 or more simil lines of independent melody)
10th-12th Century	Instruments were not common in the worship part of service in Roman Catcholic Western church settings until the 10th-12th centuries.
	Conductus: processional music for 1, 2, or 3 voices
1115-1180	John of Salsbury lived: The very service of the Church is defiled, in that before the face of the Lord, in the very sanctuary of sanctuaries, they, showing off, as it were, strive with the effeminate dalliance of wanton tones and musical phrasing to astound, enervate, and dwarf simple souls.
11th Century AD	Musical Pitches were integrated with written music.
1225-1274 AD	Thomas Acquinas Lived: 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.
14th century	Ars Nova new music … rhythm appearing in compositions "more contrived" criticism
1543 AD	John Calvin, Psalter

Isaac Watts

• Isaac Watts, (born July 17, 1674, Southampton, Hampshire, England—died November 25, 1748, Stoke Newington, London), English Nonconformist minister, regarded as the father of English hymnody.
• One day, fifteen-year-old Isaac complained to his father over Sunday dinner about the lamentable singing. His father shouted, 'Give us something better, young man.' Already having written verses beginning at age 7, he turned his poetic tendencies loose in the religious field and wrote a hymn which was sung at the evening service.
• 1. When I Survey The Wondrous Cross On which the Prince of glory died, My richest gain I count but loss, And pour contempt on all my pride.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30OaM6b48k8
• "too much of the world"
• ecstatic, trance
• Christian Values
  • Educational
  • Distinct?

FIRST 1000 Years of the Church

The majority of Church Fathers between AD 100 and 500 did not accept the use of musical instruments in church and the Christians worshipped God with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs in a chanting fashion.
The Orthodox Church today would claim to follow this pattern based on the New Testament and early church tradition. Apart from the rejection of musical accompaniment during worship because they regarded it as being from the Old Covenant, they were also defensive about the possible influences of pagan music creeping into the Church and leading it astray.
- In the pagan Roman Empire there were four styles of music: the magical use of flutes and drums to produce good omens (euphemia); the banging of gongs and drums to drive away evil spirits (apotropaic); music used to summon the pagan gods (epiclesis), and general entertainment at feasts and weddings which often led to drunkenness and licentious revelry. It was so bad at weddings that even Emperor Julian the Apostate (AD 331-363), who supported paganism, told his pagan clergy to leave before the musicians arrived. Not surprisingly church leaders gave the same advice to their congregations. Clement of Alexandria (AD 165-215) expressed this concern:

[Christians] having paid reverence to the discussion about God, they leave within [the church] what they have heard, and outside they foolishly amuse themselves with impious playing, and amatory quavering, occupied with flute-playing, and dancing, and intoxication, and all kinds of trash.

(Instructor 3)

Even pagan Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, who had a huge influence on the Roman Empire, were against certain kinds of music. According to Plato, Socrates said:

[Where there were] men of worth and culture, you will find no girls piping or dancing or harping.

(Protagoras, 347c)

Aristotle (384 -322 BC) was against flute-playing and wrote that the flute was:

Not an instrument that has a good moral effect… the ancients therefore were right in forbidding the flute to youths and freemen.

(Politics, 8:6:9-10)

Some of the Church Fathers, like Basil the Great, thought that cithara (like a guitar) players should be excommunicated from the church, and Ambrose was concerned that if Christians turned from psalm singing to playing instruments they might lose their salvation, such was their anxiety of pagan influences. Basil wrote:

Of useless arts there is harp playing, dancing, flute playing, of which, when the operation ceases, the result disappears with it. And, indeed, according to the word of the apostle, the result of these is destruction.’

(Commentary on Isaiah 5)

Some of the Church Fathers tended to allegorise the use of musical instruments from the Old Testament, such as the following:

The musical instruments of the Old Testament are not unsuitable for us if understood spiritually.

(Pseudo-Origen, Selection of Psalms 32)

Clement of Alexandria goes to great lengths to spiritualise musical instruments:

The Spirit, distinguishing from such revelry the divine service, sings, Praise Him with the sound of trumpet; for with sound of trumpet He shall raise the dead. Praise Him on the psaltery; for the tongue is the psaltery of the Lord. And praise Him on the lyre. By the lyre is meant the mouth struck by the Spirit, as it were by a plectrum. Praise with the timbrel and the dance, refers to the Church meditating on the resurrection of the dead in the resounding skin. Praise Him on the chords and organ. Our body He calls an organ, and its nerves are the strings, by which it has received harmonious tension, and when struck by the Spirit, it gives forth human voices. Praise Him on the clashing cymbals. He calls the tongue the cymbal of the mouth, which resounds with the pulsation of the lips.

(Instructor 2:4)

Some of the Christians became so ascetic in their approach to music that they even refused to sing out loud and believed that the purest form of worship was only in the heart – this was the allegorical interpretation from the Alexandrian School at its worst. Nicetas of Remesiana, mentioned before in his On the Benefit of Psalmody, goes to great lengths to persuade his readers that verbal singing is biblical. When the Council of Laodicea met in AD 363-4 the leaders there decided to even ban congregational singing, which meant that the gap between the priests and church members became increasingly wide, and the congregations became onlookers, rather than participators.