About church singing and music

Contents Three types of singing in the Ancient Church. Limitation of people's participation in singing The nature of singing in the Ancient Church Osmoglasie. Musical signs Singing in the Western Church Instrumental performance of church hymns Three types of singing in the Ancient Church. Limiting people's participation in singing How were hymns or chants performed in the ancient Christian church during worship? From the very concept of a hymn as a chant, it is clear that its performance was performed through singing or vocal music. This connection of the hymn with singing is clearly indicated by the blessed one. Augustine, when he notes about the first, that he presupposes the following three conditions: a) it must be a song of praise, 2) a song for the glory of God, and 3) certainly a song, i.e. performed through singing. All these conditions took place in the liturgical practice of the ancient Christian church. We have to pay attention to the implementation of the last of them and become more familiar with the method of musical and vocal performance of church chants during the service. According to the degree of participation of performers in the ancient church, there were three types of singing: 1) single, 2) antiphonal, or variable, and 3) general. It is only possible to trace and accurately determine the meaning of each of these three singing elements in the composition of ancient singing. Single singing in its pure form was rarely practiced, but either merged with antiphonal singing, during the performance of a melody, which was then picked up by the whole assembly, or was associated with the chanting of psalms, gospels, apostles, and scriptures in general, and this latter, reading or uttering a recitative, was something between reading and singing. Antiphonal or alternating singing was based on the general technique of alternating performers; it was based on the division of singing between two performing parties: between the singer, or the leader of the singing, and the people, between the psalt and the choir, or between two separate choirs. The performance itself consisted in the fact that the melody performed by one choir was repeated without any change in its composition by the other. In modern terms, this was singing in the choirs and involved dividing the performers, and sometimes everyone present, into two parts or sides, one of which at times consisted of men, the other of women. The east, mainly Syria and Antioch, is considered the birthplace of antiphonal singing. But long before the adoption of this type of singing in the Christian world, it was already known in the practice of the Greek theater, where the performance of any stanza alternately by two choirs of singers was called ufstsyu and bhfiufsptsyu. Philo says about the therapists that during their meetings for prayer they formed two choirs: one of men, the other of women, and sang hymns to the glory of God - sometimes all together unanimously, sometimes separately, alternately, accompanying their singing with gestures. Although church tradition traces the beginning of antiphonal singing to the time of Ignatius the God-Bearer, who, according to the testimony of Socrates, being transferred to the sphere of the celestials, heard there how angelic faces alternately sang the trisagion, but since this news first comes through Socrates, who lived in the 4th century, its chronological reliability can only be assessed from the point of view of that time. The precedent for this legend is found in the book of the prophet Isaiah, which speaks of the same exemplary, antiphonal singing of angels who called out to each other the song of praise “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts,” and therefore the custom of the Antiochian Church already had its basis in the Old Testament example. The essence of Socrates' legend can be reduced to the simple historical conclusion that it was in the Syrian Church that this type of singing first appeared and was adopted; here it was associated with the name of the famous representative of the ancient Syrian church, Ignatius the God-Bearer, and from here in the 4th century it spread far beyond its borders, becoming known in the west. Positive evidence of the use of this type of singing in the church concerns both the East and the West and belongs to the 4th century. Blessed Theodoret says the following about the beginning of antiphonal singing: when the Bishop of Antioch, Leontius, changed Orthodoxy and began to sing a small doxology in Arian, then two presbyters, Flavian and Diodorus, broke off communication with their bishop and began to gather with the Orthodox in the church and sing the Psalms of David antiphonally. They were the first, says the historian, dividing the choir into two halves, and began to sing the psalms of David alternately, and this began from Antioch. In the west, it was introduced by Ambrose of Milan and, as historical evidence clearly shows, it was borrowed by the latter from the east. Contemporaries liked this singing so much that the heretics themselves used it to attract people to their churches when performing their hymns. This was the case with the Arians in Constantinople under John Chrysostom, and this was also the case in the Church of Milan under Ambrose. A special type or technique of antiphonal singing (in its pure, so to speak, form) was hypophonic singing. It consisted in the fact that the singer, in a measured and euphonious voice, began and performed the psalm, and the people participated in singing with him, repeating the last words of well-known verses of the psalm or hymn, or accompanying each individual verse with one verse or chorus. In the ancient church language it was called: erptsschmeYan' erbchpayein' succinere - to sing along. The oldest indication of this type of singing is preserved in the Apostolic Constitutions (II, 57, Russian translation, p. 90), which says that after the reader has performed two readings from the Old Testament at the Liturgy of the Catechumens, “let someone else (the chosen psalt) sing the songs of David, and let the people sing along with the last words of the verses.” Dionysius the Areopagite speaks of a similar performance of the psalms by the primate and the clergy present at the altar. Epiphonic singing came close to this method of singing psalms and hymns, when people added some kind of refrain or formula to well-known stanzas or verses of the hymn. Such refrains were in the ancient church: “Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,” “Amen,” “For His mercy endures forever” (Athanasius) and others. Traces of epiphonic singing have been preserved very clearly in present-day church practice in the choruses of antiphons, in prokeemnas and in the performance of psalms. The third type of singing was common singing, performed by everyone present in the church. Everyone sang together, everyone who could and knew how to sing took part in the singing. This method of performing church hymns (and prayers) was especially common in the early Christian era, serving as an expression of the close moral and religious connection that united members of the Christian community. The testimony of Pliny in a letter to Emperor Trojan about the nightly meetings of Christians, the testimony of Tertullian about the method of performing agape in the early Christian world, and the observations of the most ancient liturgical records do not leave any doubt on this score. This practice continued in full force during the time of John Chrysostom. “Once upon a time,” he says, “believers came together and sang together; We do the same now... Men and women, old men and young men, differ only in gender and age, but not in singing, because the spirit, controlling the voice of each, creates one common melody from all of them.” But this system of singing did not last long, and could not survive due to disciplinary conditions that changed the structure of church-liturgical relations. The first symptom of its downfall was the establishment of a special class of singers or psaltists. We must, however, distinguish these latter from the psalts of the early Christian era, which were actually the founders of singing, singers, canonarchs and served as its representatives or luminaries in the hypophonic system. Tertullian considered the very existence of such praecentores to be anti-Christian, perhaps because they were taken from the practice of the Greek theater, where a prominent role was played by the luminaries of the choir or singers, who gave the tone and composition of the melody. But in addition, Tertullian saw in their duties an encroachment on the freedom of prayer. The prayer of a Christian, according to him, is determined by the disposition of his heart; it is free because it is not prompted by others, but is aroused and develops by itself in the mysterious depths of the soul. Knowing the main motive of the often harsh and eccentric judgments of Tertullian, who in word and deed tried to resurrect the simplicity and purity of early Christian practice in the church of his time, which was already beginning to regulate the free forms of ancient Christian cult, it is easy to understand that Tertullian was armed here against restrictions on the rights of the community in the matter of prayer and expression of their religious beliefs. But over time, the singers received a stronger official position and little by little pushed the people away from participating in singing, concentrating this responsibility in a closed circle of persons specially appointed to perform singing and receiving authority to do so through initiation. In this sense, the 17th rule of the Council of Laodicea was drawn up regarding singers, which legalizes that except for singers who are members of the clergy, have the right to ascend to the pulpit and wear a phelonets, no one else can sing in church. Here, obviously, we are talking about a special class of singers with a different purpose than the psalts or monitors of the ancient Christian church, although, according to Balsamon’s explanation, this rule supposedly only gave the singers control over singing, but did not prohibit the people from singing along. We do not want to say that by this rule the participation of the people in singing should be stopped everywhere and absolutely; it continued here and there, but occurred as a sporadic phenomenon. So says Isidore of Spain. The reduction or limitation of popular participation in singing was caused by many reasons. The order of worship became more and more complicated over time, church works relied on notes and were performed according to the model of a well-known melody, which required preliminary study and skill in singing. Church discipline began to find it impermissible for women to participate in singing, and Cyril of Jerusalem spoke of it as one that was more suitable for the stage and contained effeminate motives. Isidore Pelusiot also stood on his side, who expressed the same idea more fully and motivated it more thoroughly. As a result of all these conditions, the people could participate in singing, pronouncing only small formulas known to them by skill and, moreover, the simplest chant, but as for the performance of longer, recorded liturgical songs, this was accessible only to connoisseurs of singing and literate people. And we see that in the 4th century singing schools began to emerge, and at large churches numerous singing choirs were formed, under the direction of domestics or experts in singing and music. During the time of Theodosius the Great, a special singing school already existed in Constantinople, from which singing teachers emerged. One of these teachers taught the singers of St. John Chrysostom. At large churches there were entire choirs of singers, and in the St. Sophia Cathedral there were imperial staff. Justinian was supposed to consist of 25 singers, with whom 100 individual readers shared this position. In monasteries, where most of the monks were literate, and the illiterate were obliged to memorize the psalter and the most common church songs, the entire brotherhood, thanks to this, could participate in singing in the ancient Christian way. The nature of singing in the Ancient Church Melodically, the singing of the ancient church bore little resemblance to that which we hear today. Only the lightest modulations of the voice were used there, so this singing can rather be called recitative or melodious speaking than melodic singing with a developed vocalization system. This especially needs to be noted about the performance of psalms during worship. Blazh. Augustine says that in the church of his time “the psalms were uttered in such an even voice and with such weak modulations that they came closer to speaking than to singing,” and Isidore of Seville directly states that in the early church the psalmody was performed in such a way that it was more like sonorous pronunciation than singing, in the strict sense of the word. With this manner of singing, it goes without saying that great skill was not required from the singers; monotony itself protected against disharmony, and the absence of a melodic element made the participation of weak and poorly processed voices tolerable. This method of singing performance was applied to all those cases when a more complete, intelligible and separate reading was required, so to speak, chanting. This is how the apostle and the gospel read it, which has been partially preserved to this day. Manuscripts have come down to us in which the readings of the biblical text, the apostle and the gospel, are set, as it were, to notes, and the raising and lowering of the voice is indicated by special singing signs. The separation of the apostle and the gospel, made by the deacon Euphaly in the 5th century, had, among other things, the purpose of simplifying their reading in church and making it easier to read in a chant. More freedom and artificiality were allowed in the singing of hymns. The folk singing of the Greeks, with its developed technique, could and did have a strong influence on the singing melody of ancient Christian hymn works. The strict Doric mode was especially convenient for such a purpose, which the Greeks spoke of with special respect, and which found connoisseurs in the history of church singing. We will not outline the technical side of ancient singing and characterize various tunes, especially loved by the ancient Greeks. We will only note that the leading church generally adhered to the rule that gentle melodic singing has too much of an effect on the sensory impression and can thus distract thought from the content of hymns and prayers, and therefore it could only assimilate the tunes of the ancient Greeks with a limitation and strict selection of suitable musical elements. She treated the musical tender and aesthetic style of singing with distrust and condemned it as unworthy. The famous Pavel Samosatsky was distinguished by a special passion for the brilliant atmosphere of worship, loved drama in delivering sermons, demanded that those present applaud him and, among other things, formed a choir of women who served as singers during his services. Paul's accusers found in all these actions his traces of innovation and deviation from the strict laws of ancient church practice. But music has always been a powerful means of influencing the human heart and constituted one of the most powerful motives for arousing religious feelings. This circumstance, unfortunately, for a long time not recognized by the rigoristic view of the ancient ascetics, was brought to light and put to work by the heretics, who took advantage of the melodic tunes of their hymns to attract people to their meetings and to better disseminate their teachings. We have already mentioned the Aryan processions, accompanied by antiphonal singing of male and female choirs. But the Syrian Gnostic Bardesan and his disciple Harmonius distinguished themselves even more in this field. They wrote many hymns in which they expressed their teaching in rhythmic language and set these hymns to music. Ephraim the Syrian, according to his biographer, saw that the Vardesan sect was strengthening thanks to the beautiful melodies of Vardesan’s hymns, and that with them he poured destructive poison into the hearts of those who listened to his songs. And so Ephraim decided to do in his church the same thing that his opponents tried with such success: for his part, he wrote Orthodox hymns and organized a choir of women. By singing these hymns, they kept the people in the church with their pleasant singing. The impetus given by the ingenuity of the heretics soon became a general rule and found justification in the ecclesiastical circumstances of that time. It was, of course, completely in the order of things to pay attention to the organization of church singing at a time when the church was so concerned about expanding its cult and strengthening its liturgical appearance. And, indeed, its best representatives, striving to cleanse church singing from secular motives, spectacular and whimsical modulations, at the same time tried to give it a certain degree of musical processing, technical completeness, and for their part took a lot of care about establishing a certain law for liturgical singing. The East, the birthplace of Greek art, famous for its love of music and singing, also developed a system of church singing, which, later adopted in the West, has been preserved in the liturgical use of the Eastern Church to this day. The fundamental law of the singing melody of the Greek church is osmoglasis. Its implementation in practice, its liturgical application and the subordination of various melodies of church music to this law constitute the merit of the East and are closely associated with the name of St. John of Damascus. Osmoglasie. Musical signs We do not intend to go into consideration of the technical side of the osmoglas system, since this would lead us far into the theory and history of music, but we will limit ourselves to only the general observation that the eight voices of church singing are nothing more than eight different ways of vocal performance of church hymns. Each of these voice performances is based on a certain sequence of musical tones and is thus subject to a certain theoretical law, that is, each voice rotates in the area of ​​certain sounds peculiar to it alone, or, better said, is based on their peculiar combination. Of these tones, some are called dominant, that is, the most repeated, others are initial and final, judging by their position. Let us add that these voices were based on modes or tunes used by the Greeks and known as Doric, Phrygian, Lydian and Mixolydian. The first four voices or tunes were called straight or high and were designated in order: first, second, third, fourth, etc. The remaining four are closely related to the melody of these main tunes and were called side tunes. They, as they say in the singing language, from relatives, musically correspond to the four main voices, and therefore were designated in the monuments of ancient liturgical writing: the fifth - as a secondary voice of the first, the 6th - a secondary voice of the second, the 7th - a secondary voice of the third or heavy, the 8th - a secondary voice of the fourth. This musical construction of the voice according to the system of Greek folk singing first occurred, developed and took shape in the east. So Anatoly of Constantinople writes his stichera in eight voices, Romanus the Sweet Singer composes his kontakia in no more and no less than eight voices, Jacob of Edessa sets his hymns on the same number of tunes in the week of Vai (The Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem or Palm Sunday). Osmoglanie in this way was already known in the 6th century; but there is no indication that these technical rules of consonant church melody were then elevated to a definite law and theory. In this last respect, church singing in the east owes much to St. John of Damascus. Damascene, distinguished by his special systematicity in his verbal works, set out the ancient osmoglanie of the Eastern Church in a strict musical system and thus compiled a theory for the practice of church singing. This significance of Damascus in the history of church singing is indicated by the general tradition of the Eastern Church, in full accordance with which is the major work of Damascus - the octoiches or the arrangement of Sunday church services on the basis of this ancient singing law. John of Damascus, with his octoechus, rendered that important service to church singing, which gave it completeness, stability, and thereby protected the church melody from the arbitrariness and profanation of the singers. By limiting the singing melody to eight voices or individual tunes and subordinating to this system the entire variety of church hymns, he thereby established the solid foundations of their singing performance and preserved for subsequent times the strict motives of ancient church singing. It is impossible to say how much the main original melodies laid down by Damascene have been preserved in our current musical octoechus, because not only the musical osmoglasik of the latter, but also the musical provisions of the time closest to it have not been preserved to us. But that modern church singing is based on an ancient melody, this proves the connection of the current osmoglasnik with its original and the path of historical tradition. Since the octoich was intended for singing use and was supposed to serve as an indication of the melody for all voices, then, without a doubt, its melodies were set to notes and indicated by certain musical signs. What were these signs? Today's musical notes have a rather later origin. The ancients did not know such signs, but used a more complex and varied semiography. The Greeks used the letters of their alphabet for this purpose; they were placed above the text and served as chanting indicators. When musical technique became more complex, the area of ​​tones itself expanded, and the requirements for rhythm or cadence in performance increased, then the system of signs itself turned out to be insufficient, and they tried to expand it, giving the letters of the alphabet different positions: they were written abbreviated, straight, sideways, elongated, and in other ways. To save time, when copying notes, they subsequently began to resort to abbreviated cursive representation of musical signs, which is why they lost their original graphic form and became known as neumas or hooks, which later replaced the completely alphabetical system of musical semiography. As its further development, there is a new way of depicting a melody through notolinear signs, which by their position between the lines indicate the pitch or quality of the tone, and by their appearance indicate its duration and determine the rhythm or cadence of the musical melody. The church singing of the Western Church is based on the same musical law as the singing of the Eastern Church. brought into a strict system by John of Damascus. It stood in close connection with the history of singing in the east and was borrowed from the Greeks, like church hymnography. Ambrose of Milan introduced in his church the use of four main tunes or modes: Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian and Mixolydian, and based on them he built the singing melody of church hymns in his church. But Ambrosian singing soon underwent distortions in church practice, lost its simplicity and purity, so that by the time of Gregory the Great (VI-VII centuries) there was already an urgent need to improve church singing, and Gregory worked a lot in this field and gained liturgical fame in the West. To the four voices or modes of Ambrosian chant, he added four more, and thus osmoglasia was introduced into the Western Church on the model of the Eastern. It cannot be said that the method introduced by Gregory was distinguished by sonority and pleasantness. His cantus planus - an even melody was aimed at limiting new and refined motives of secular singing and consisted of a combination of tones that were more or less monotonous and of the same duration, without any vocal contortions or rises. This singing was a kind of musical recitation, unison singing. Many of the later historians of church music rebelled against the so-called Gregorian chant, finding it dry, lifeless, alien to any exciting motives. And it really was like that musically. To ensure the fate of the system of church singing he introduced, Gregory founded a large school near Rome, where children of single parents studied music and singing. They received their maintenance here from church funds, and the more successful of them reached the highest hierarchical degrees. The school founded by Gregory was very famous in its time and attracted numerous students from different countries. Others were modeled on it in smaller cities, and Western missionaries spread Gregorian chant in Germany and Britain. The direction given to church singing by Pope Gregory seemed to be the best way to protect the strict church style of singing from any changes and mixing it with alien motives of secular music; but in reality this did not happen. Canonical singing, introduced by Gregory, despite its rigor and monotony, the absence of modulations, was so difficult to study and perform that the most hardworking and capable students of his school could barely master the rules of this singing at the age of ten. The technical side of Gregorian chant was extremely intricate, and the musical signs (neumas) were distinguished by such diversity in arrangement and conventionality in their meaning that it took a long and persistent study of the matter, a long-term habit, in order to. be able to make out these small, peculiar figures with which the scores of the so-called Gregorian chant were dotted. The immediate consequence of this difficulty was that the people could not take part in church singing and only in the final ones: Amen, Lord have mercy, etc., raised their voices. The people had neither the leisure nor the means to learn this cunning art; experienced teachers were hard to come by; Until the 18th century, organs did not yet have a good design, and therefore could not serve the purposes of musical education. And so the former strict motives, due to insufficiently diligent study of them, began to fall into oblivion, many variants appeared, and the strict style diversified to the point that the cantus firmus turned into a discantus, or that living motive that prevailed in popular use and little by little replaced unison singing. By the end of the 15th century, the figurative nature of church singing in the West became so strong that it inspired the fathers of the Council of Trent with great fears for the direction of church music. These fears might have led to the same unmelodic and dry motives of church singing that were once introduced by the so-called Gregorian school, if at that time Italy did not have a great musical talent in the person of the composer Palestrina, who can be considered the father of the new music school (born in 1524, Palestrin after the city of Praeneste). Palestrina, even before the strict definition of the Council of Trent regarding the then church singing and music, was already known for his spiritual cantatas, which were often performed in church and made a deep impression on listeners. They remembered Palestrina and his motives and decided to postpone the last judgment about the new church music until Palestrina wrote a test composition and set the Latin missa to music. It was required that the musical work of this maestro, with the deep religious nature of its motives, be free from secular frivolity, be publicly accessible and satisfy the feeling of piety. Palestrina's experiment was a brilliant success. He wrote music for three missas (for six voices), and one of them, performed in the presence of Pope Pius IV, earned universal approval and was received with delight. After listening to the brilliant composition, the pope exclaimed: “Here in earthly Jerusalem, John (Johann - that was Palestrina’s name) gives us a foretaste of the sweetness of the new song, which the apostle once heard in spiritual delight in heavenly Jerusalem. The strictly ecclesiastical works of Palestrina and his closest disciples were a repetition of the strict motives of Gregorian chant, as a result of which they remained for a long time in the church practice of Rome, and to this day his classical transcriptions of the type: Stabat mater dolorosa are performed in the Sistine Chapel. But regardless of the strictly ecclesiastical style, music was formed under the influence of Palestrina, which gave content and life to operatic music. The reason for the development of this new musical style was the general fascination of educated people of that time with the ideas of classical antiquity. At the house of one of these lovers of ancient art, the Florentine Count Giovanni Bardi, from time to time a society of artists and scientists gathered, among whom was Galileo, the father of the famous astronomer. Once the conversation turned to Greek art and stopped at music. It goes without saying that when assessing the artistic merits of this latter, they spoke out in her favor most ardently and wished her success in the musical world of modern times. In response to the question, what is the peculiarity of ancient music and its advantage over the newest, Galileo, one of the experts on ancient art, wrote a dialogue in which, believing the perfection of ancient music to be in unison. reproached the newest compositions for the excessive variety of tones and diversity of musical content. He pointed to the recitation and recitative of ancient Greek tragedy as the best means of musical performance. Strange as it may seem, this return to the manner of ancient Gregorian chant, and especially in the field of secular music, was nevertheless followed, and soon experiments in new musical compositions appeared in the taste of ancient Greek music. In this family, the idyllic operetta Daphne was written for the first time, which was performed in the palace of the then famous Greekophile and philanthropist of Korea and earned everyone's surprise. In 1600, Kakuini wrote his first opera: Eurydice. These plays, musically, were nothing more than an imitation of the strict manner of ancient church singing, but with an admixture of suitable motives from the field of ancient Greek music in its strict style. These plays took the first step towards the creation of operatic music and laid the foundation for a new musical method, which, having existed for two and a half centuries, developed the musical style that we admire in the best classical plays of modern music. Of course, based on the latest findings, it is difficult to judge the basic principles of the movement, and who would have thought that the ancestor of our latest spectacular music was the unison motif of Gregorian chant, the strictly ecclesiastical musical style in which psalms and spiritual hymns were sung by Christians of the primal church? Of course, secular opera music could not stop at unison; it could not exist without calling on harmonic sound combination for help, without breaking out of the shackles of this oppressive musical monotony. In the application of this element to the music of modern times, the famous creator of classical music Sebastian Bach (1754) and his compatriot Handel (t 1759), contemporaries and natives of Germany, gained great fame. The latter is especially famous for his oratorios, a new musical form which, having originated in Italy, found its final development and systematic treatment in Germany under the hand of the famous Handel. What kind of musical type is an oratorio? Even much earlier than the era in question, dramatic performances of religious content, the so-called mysteries, began to be given in monasteries, and in general all the dramatic poetry of the ancient era had a purely religious character. These religious dramas begin in the earliest medieval era and arise from the ruins of the ancient theater, influenced by its legends. Thus, in the monasteries of the time of Charlemagne, the monks were engaged in composing dramatic plays, imitating the ancient Latin classics. This religious opera, the main parts of which were accompanied by music, caused by sympathy for the examples of Greco-Roman drama, was a brilliant success and, in the best possible way, suited the taste of the time when in Italy and Germany poetic creativity tried its hand at religious subjects, and the Christian epic of the 15th and subsequent centuries was imbued with a classical religious character. It is enough to pay attention to Dante's Divine Comedy, Klopstock's Messiad, Milton's Paradise Lost in order to judge the elements that were part of the literary and artistic productions of this time, and to understand their close connection with the oratorios of Haydn, many of the classical plays of Beethoven and Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Of course, these and similar plays were for the most part above the musical development of the common people, but they were used as an accompaniment to drama and stage performances, to which the majority always felt a special attraction. On holidays, especially when the theater was closed, these spiritual dramas, as well as possible, replaced stage performances of secular content and became more and more famous. They formed an average half-church, half-theatrical style and provided the necessary elements for the development of new operatic music. Instrumental performance of church hymns Let us now say a few words about the instrumental performance of church chants, about how the ancient church treated it. In the era contemporary with the beginning of the Christian Church, there were two methods of performance. pure, vocal, vocal, and vocal performance, accompanied by instrumental music. The cult of the ancient world used both of these methods to the same extent. and whoever knows with what ceremonies and under what conditions the games and religious holidays of the ancient Greeks took place will well understand the participation of the instrumental musical element in the cult practice of the ancient world. Jewish worship was also accompanied by music. The ancient Christian Church, which expressed strong doubts against sculpture and partly painting, looked even more suspiciously at the use of music during worship. Church teachers said that in the Old Testament church it was allowed to accompany singing by playing musical instruments out of condescension for the carelessness, cowardice and spiritual weakness of the Jews, and that God wanted with this permission to arouse their sensual mind to more lively and energetic activity. In the Apostolic Constitutions, instrumental playing directly refers to subjects prohibited for every Christian, and it is forbidden to teach the sacrament of baptism to players on the violin, harp and lyre. Thus, the performance of lyrical works was vocal. “We use one organ - the word,” said Tertullian: “with the word, and not with the psalter, with the trumpet of tympans and with the flute, we honor God.” The organ of human speech, in its physical structure, is indeed one of the most perfect instruments. Although the human voice far from covers the space of all acts performed by a string instrument, on the whole it is capable of forming polyphonic harmony with the richest and most elegant harmonies. In addition, the human voice expresses the inner state of the soul more naturally, more vividly and, so to speak, more subjectively and serves as a conductor of its movements. i.) due to these advantages, vocal performance or singing was generally accepted in the ancient church. Only at the beginning of the Middle Ages, and then in the West, did instrumental music come into use in churches, and organs appeared in churches. According to the annalists, the first organ known in the West was received by Pepin as a gift from the Greek emperor Constantine Copronymus and was, in all likelihood, a household instrument such as those used in Constantinople. Based on the model of another large organ sent from Byzantium to Charlemagne, the latter ordered the same one to be built for the Aachen Church, and since then the organs have been spreading throughout Western churches: they have become especially famous since the 13th - 14th centuries, when the technical side of this instrument received significant improvements. By the time of the Council of Trent, the use of organs in church practice had already become so rooted and was so popular that its members, speaking about church discipline, did not say anything against the organ, but canonically, so to speak, sanctified its use, while at the same time prohibiting the use of any other instruments in the church. This shows that in addition to the organ there were other musical instruments that served as an accompaniment to singing. But this variety of instrumental music is a matter much later than the use of the organ in church practice. Thomas Aquinas at one time said that the church does not allow musical instruments, such as the zither and psalter, so as not to seem Judaizing, but later this rule was changed. Along with the spread of figurative music, which allowed for polyphonic parts, exquisite modulations and the most whimsical melodic motifs, and partly under the influence of operatic music, based on the same church motifs, musical accompaniment received a more complex production, and in addition to the organ, singing was accompanied by violins, trumpets and timpani. The very design of the organ has changed to accommodate this conditionally. In the 15th century, mechanical parts began to be attached to the organ, performing various kinds of imitative sounds. Angels appeared with trumpets, blew them and beat kettledrums; the rooster, flapping its wings, crowed; the birds filled the air with their cries and chirps. And to this day in the West, during ceremonial services, a whole orchestra of wind and string instruments participates in performing the melody. – In the Greek church, instrumental music never had a place in worship; but this provision is not absolute, and there were cases when instrumental music was permitted. Thus, from Kodin we can conclude that during solemn ceremonies, such as the coronation of the emperor, and also during royal appearances, the singing of the choir was accompanied by the accompaniment of instrumental music. It is also known from Byzantine writers that after the many years proclaimed to the king on Christmas Day before the end of the liturgy, the same thing was repeated by various kinds of musical instruments: resonantibus organus, puae varia sunt, or; Organa satis multo prostepunt, or: organis qenuo ad modicum tempus resonantibus. But these cases are not exceptional and, it seems, took place only in court churches and at home ceremonies of the Byzantine court, but instrumental singing did not enter into general church practice. You might be interested in: