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2 EARLY CHRISTIAN MUSIC
so that the congregation would be aware that it was ending. We shall
have to deal more fully with the problem of musical punctuation when
1
we come to discuss Syrian and Byzantine ecphonetic notation.
No document from the Apostolic Age has come down to us from
which we can learn the exact nature of the music which was sung at
the first gatherings of the followers of Christ. But we learn something
from a passage in the Epistle to the Colossians (iii. 16) in which St.
Paul tells them to teach and admonish one another 'in psalms and
hymns and spiritual songs'. Similar advice is given in the Epistle to
the Ephesians (v. 9). These passages have given rise to discussion ever
since the days of Origen in the third century, but their meaning could
not be established with any certainty until we knew more about the
music of the Jewish Synagogue on the one hand, and of the Byzantine
Church on the other. St. Paul must certainly have been referring to
a practice well known to the people to whom he wrote. 2 We may there
fore assume that three different types of chant were, in fact, in use
among them, and we can form an idea of their characteristics from the
evidence of Jewish music and later recorded Christian chant:
L Psalmody: the cantillation of the Jewish psalms and of the
canticles and doxologies modelled on them.
2. Hymns: songs of praise of a syllabic type, i.e. each syllable is
sung to one or two notes of the melody.
3. Spiritual Songs: Alleluias and other chants of a jubilant or
ecstatic character, richly ornamented. 3
1 . In these early days of the Church chanting must have kept to sim-
plemelodic types. 4 There are no indications of a development peculiar
to the new creed, either in words or in music. It was only gradually that
a new element was introduced. Words like 'Amen' and short versicles
were added to the chants sung by a soloist. These responses were sung
by the congregation. This practice was taken over at an early date, as
we can see from the version of the Pater noster preserved in the
Mozarabic chant (see Ex. 30, p. 82). This is cited by Peter Wagner as
probably the oldest specimen of ecclesiastical chant which has
come down to us in the West. 5 The insertion of whole versicles can
1 See pp. 10-13 and 35-37.
* Cf. F. Leitner, Der gottesdienstliche Volksgesang imjUdischen und christlichen Alter-
turn (Freiburg, 1906), p. 77.
8 I have dealt with the problem more fully in A History of Byzantine Music and
Hymnography (Oxford, 1949), pp. 24-34.
4 Cf. E. Werner, *
Notes on the Attitude of the Early Church Fathers towards Hebrew
Psalmody', The Review of Religion (1943), p. 346.
6
Gregorianische Formenlehre (Leipzig, 1921), pp. 58-59.