The Early Christianity

As the Church began to spread its power among the Western civilization, the music experienced somewhat of a 180 degrees turnover. Musical performance should now be restricted to religious events, and any other enjoyment of music, in the free form, was discouraged. The reason of that turn of development is quite obvious  the previous music performances were often associated with pagan  rituals and hedonistic  behaviours, strongly opposite in nature to the Christian ideas. However, the Church music itself seems to have drawn some of its traits from the earlier forms of music, even the ones condemned by the Church. The extent of the influence of the ancient music on the early Christian music is but relatively speculative, however.

  First of all, it must be noticed that the basis of the Christian worship services was constructed upon the Jewish model, that is: holy book readings combined with psalms and prayers, and other songs of adoration. A remarkable fact is the inclusion of responsorial psalmody, where the song leader sang the first line, followed by the congregation s response with the second line of the psalm, which was then continued in that fashion. That kind of performance was well suited particularly for a song like psalm, which was often written in a way where the first line(s) were affirmed by the second line(s). E.g. Psalm 31 in NIV:

   Line 1: In you, O LORD, I have taken refuge;
   Response: Let me never be put to shame; deliver me in your righteousness.

 This idea can be slightly modified and used in our own compositions. The creative spirit is left for the reader to flourish.

  Another way to perform a psalm was antiphonal psalmody, in which every second part of the verse, or every second line, were sung in turn by a different chorus.

 A different kind of musical tradition developed in the Eastern Churches, later referred to as the Byzantine Church. There, musicians and other artists acquired a blend of Oriental elements and Greek Hellenistic culture. It is worth mentioning at least two music forms of the Eastern Church.
 A kanon was built on eight blocks of music (odes), each based on a lyrical Bible passage (canticle). An ode was similar to the responsorial psalmody  responses between lines of the text  but also added an instrumental melody part that decorated the singing.
  A kontakia was an earlier form of the kanon, in which many elements of kontakia were retained and further developed.

 How were the melodies composed? The leader was supposed to base his singing on predetermined motives, specific for the different sections of a melody. The melody itself could be further furnished by melismas, also selected out of standard motives. Each set of motives could convey a different feeling, created by inner relationships between the notes, or what we today refer to as a mode. The Byzantines had eight different modes, or eight echoi, which later influenced the development of the Western church modes, as we guitarists should be familiar with. It is important to notice however that the echoi were not defined in the way as we define a mode today, but they were simply a set of melodic ideas to borrow from. It is possible that the Western musicians later derived the scale patterns from these melodic motives and, in this process, defined the modes as we know them today.

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