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EARLY CHRISTIAN CHANT 5
is built up of a group of formulas. 1 This principle is characteristic of
Semitic melody construction, and is not to be found in ancient Greek
music. As Christianity spread to the countries of the Mediterranean
basin it carried with it this principle of composition, which is there
fore to be found in both Eastern and Western chant, and which con
stitutes a proof of their ultimate Semitic origin. 2 The fragment of a
'Hymn to the Holy Trinity', therefore, is not only a unique and
valuable document of the music sung by Greek-speaking Christians
in Egypt: it also proves that a principle of composition which we find
to be characteristic of Christian chant was securely established as early
as the third century outside the immediate sphere of Palestine.
3. The third group consists of chants of the melismatic type, the
most important of which are the Alleluias. In his Exposition of the
Ninety-ninth Psalm St. Augustine describes the character of the songs
of exultation: *He who jubilates speaks no words: it is a song of joy
without words.' 3 The spiritual songs of which St. Paul speaks were
obviously the melismatic melodies of the Alleluias and other exultant
songs of praise, which, again, the Jewish Christians brought with them
into the Christian Church from the Temple and Synagogue. The
Hebrew word itself has never been translated by either the Greek or
the Latin Church, and it has always been accepted that the chants
derived from the Jewish liturgy. As early as 636 Isidore of Seville
suggested a Hebrew origin for the atteluia-jubili: 'Laudes, hoc est
alleluia canere, canticum est Hebraeorum' 4 (the praises, that is to say,
the singing of Alleluia, is a song of the Hebrews). This view is sup
ported by the musical structure of the Alleluias of the Ambrosian rite,
the oldest specimens of the type which survive in manuscript.
When we consider these three main forms of ecclesiastical music it
becomes obvious that from the very beginnings of Christian worship
1 Cf. E. Wellesz, 'The Earliest Example of Christian Hymnography', The Classical
Quarterly, xxxix (1945), pp. 43-45. Transcriptions of the hymn, but without taking into
account the dynamic signs, are given by H. Stuart Jones, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part xv;
T. Reinach, *Un Ancetre de la musique d'6glise j
, Revue Musicale, My 1922, p. 24;
R. Wagner, *Der Oxyrhynchos-Notenpapyrus', Phihlogus, Ixxix (N.F. xxxiii), 1923,
pp. 201-21; H. Abert, loc. cit, p. 527. A full transcription, showing all the lacunae, is
given on pp. 42-43 of my article.
* It was at first assumed that the principle of formulas was confined to Arabic music,
cf. A. Z. Idelsohn, 'Die Maqamen der arabischen Musik', Sammelbdnde der inter-
nationalen Musikgesellschaft, xv (1913-14), pp. 1 ff., but, as I showed in an article,
'Die Struktur des serbischen Oktoechos', Zeitschriftfur Musikwissenschaft, ii (1919-20),
pp. 140-8, it is in fact characteristic of Semitic music all over the Middle East. This prob
lem is also discussed in my Eastern Elements in Western Chant, Monumenta Musicae
Byzantinae, Subsidia, ii, American Series 1, 1947, p. 89.
* 'Qui jubilat, non verba dicit, sed sonus quidem est laetitiae sine verbis' (J. P. Migne,
Patrologia Latina, xxxvii. 1272).
4 De ecclesiasticis officiis, i. 13; Patrologia Latina, Ixxxiii. 750.