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Music, Culture and the Early Church
Friday, September 15, 2006
As I mentioned in the previous entry, the church has always had a complex task in the evaluation and integration of the creations of culture within its mission. The church must play a redeeming role with the surrounding culture while not valuing that which is antithetical to its purpose. The use of music in its worship is an excellent illustration of the inherent tensions in this task. The decision of the early church with regard to music was a unique one in ecclesiastical history and bears looking at.
The early church had a single response to instrumental music in the church: it did not belong. The style did not matter. The instrumentation did not matter. The lyrics did not matter. Instrumental music in the Graeco-Roman culture was a part of pagan religious celebrations and licentious entertainments and therefore had no place in the church. It was even debated whether singing should be allowed. The concern was that the emotional response from the melody may be greater than that of the words. Augustine went so far as to call it sin. In his Confessions, he writes about his struggles with music:
“I realize that all the varied emotions of the human spirit respond in ways proper to themselves to a singing voice and a song... Yet sensuous gratification ... often deceives me: not content to follow meekly in the wake of reason, in whose company it has gained entrance, sensuous enjoyment often essays to run ahead and take the lead. And so in this respect I sin inadvertently and only realize it later.”
For the words of a hymn or psalm were extremely important to the early church and so distractions from them were wrong. In 364 the Council of Laodicea decided that a lesson ought to be given after the singing of each psalm (Canon 17). I would guess that Gregorian chant came out of this emphasis on the words.
A full treatment of this topic would also have to cover the discussions and struggles of the church through many more centuries. It is one that I do not have the knowledge or time to complete. One resource that was extremely helpful to me for the early church time period is Music in Early Christian Literature by James W. McKinnon. It contains readings from the works of the early church fathers.
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Comments
My family used to discuss the quality of the music after a church service far more often than we discussed the lesson in the words.
I think Augustine had a point, then...but we could do the same thing with a sermon, so I am not advocating throwing out all instrumental music, but only a select few types and instruments.
There is definitely something to be said for the comment preview!
Posted by: Shannon on Sunday, September 17, 2006
> The early church had a single response to instrumental music in the church: it did not belong.
Just a note that some Christian churches still follow this, e.g. most Eastern Orthodox churches, in part because they try to follow "early church practices" as closely as possible.
Here is a short example http://www.oca.org/QA.asp?ID=88&SID=3.
Posted by: semi-anonymous on Saturday, October 14, 2006