GREATER NEWT YORK CHAPTER 25The Music of the Spheres
Otto Kinkeldey (NE)(APRIL 5, 1947, NEW YORKPUBLICLIBRARY)
[See abstract in NE Chapter reports for January 20, 1946]Origins
of Byzantine Music
Egon Wellesz (Lincoln College, Oxford University)(MAY 10, 1947,
NEW YORI PUBLICLIBRARY)
IN A PASSAGEn the Epistle to the Ephesians (v. I9) St. Paul
tells thefollowers of Christ to speak to themselves in "psalms and
hymns andspiritual songs." Similar advice is given in the Epistle
to the Colossians(iii. i6). The meaning of Paul's three terms has
been widely discussedever since Origen, Basil, Jerome, and
Augustine first tried to explainthem. Modern scholars have
suggested that they were used almostsynonymously and that Paul had
no clear distinction in mind. But fromthe context of the passage in
the Epistle to the Colossians it is clearthat Paul referred to a
liturgical usage with which his readers werewell acquainted. The
three groups of chants to which the Apostle referscorrespond to the
three different kinds of singing customary through-out the Eastern
and Western Churches.In the early days of Christianity, psalms were
mainly sung in theway usual in the Jewish Synagogue. The precentor
sang the wholepsalm and the congregation responded after each verse
with an inter-polated phrase. The performance varied from simple
recitation toelaborate cantillation with the character of the feast
and in accordancewith the liturgical prescription for the
particular part of the service.The Church was especially
conservative in preserving the psalm-tunes.The initial formulas and
cadences have changed so little that some ofthe toni psalmorum sung
today by Jews from Arabia, Persia, andMorocco are practically
identical with those of the Roman Church inthe tenth century and
only slightly different from the version now used.Like the chanting
of psalms, the singing of hymns was a religiouscustom deeply rooted
in the practice of Temple and Synagogue andconsequently familiar to
the first generation of Christians. But becausethese hymns were
free paraphrases and not based exclusively on thewords of the
Scriptures, there was an orthodox reaction against themin the
middle of the third century. This explains why'so few hymnssurvive
from the beginnings of Christianity.The spiritual songs of which
Paul speaks were obviously themelismatic melodies of the Alleluias
and other exultant songs of praise
8/3/2019 1948 Wellesz Origins of Byzantine Music
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26 BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETYwhich the
Jewish converts brought with them into the ChristianChurch. As
early as 636 Isidore of Seville suggested a Hebrew originfor the
singing of the Alleluia jubilus. This view is supported by
themusical structure of the Alleluias of the Ambrosian rite. Some
spiritualsongs are similar to the more elaborate hymns sung at
solemn feasts,while others are so richly ornamented that the words
are no longerintelligible. This kind of melismatic ornamentation,
found in the earliestgroup of spiritual songs, should not be
confused with the lavish colora-tura of late Byzantine and
Neo-Greek melodies.When we consider these three main types of
ecclesiastical musicwe realize that from the very beginning of
Christian worship liturgicalchant was an integral part of the
service and that its development isinseparably bound up with that
of the liturgy. Though only a fewfragments of music are preserved
in Early Christiandocuments, we mayassume that a core of Byzantine
chant, as of plainsong, goes back to theearliest days of the church
and therefore to the practice of the Chris-tian communities in
Palestine and Syria.It was long held that Byzantine chant derived
from classical Greekmusic. The words were Greek, the modes were
Greek, the musicaltheory was Greek. It was concluded that the
melodies too must be ofGreek origin. The argument that the melodies
are sung to Greek wordsloses much of its validity when it is
realized that many of the Greektexts are translations or
adaptations of Syriac poetry. The second argu-ment is equally
ill-founded: the Byzantine system of eight modes, theOktoechos,
actually goes back to the Oktoechos of Severus, theMonophysite
Patriarch of Antioch (512-519), although the choice ofeight for the
number of modes may have been due to Hellenistic in-fluence. The
third argument is only valid if we ignore the Greektheorists whom
the monks, composing and singing for the ByzantineChurch, no longer
knew, and limit ourselves to those Platonic andNeoplatonic writers
who discuss the essence of music and its effecton the listener.This
earlier view becomes altogether untenable once the
Byzantinemelodies are considered in relation to Ambrosian music. It
now be-comes obvious that the oldest versions of both Byzantine and
Gregorianmelodies must go back to a common source, the chants of
the Churchesof Antioch and Jerusalem, which in their turn derive
from the musicof the Jews. On the pattern of these melodies the
Eastern and WesternChurches develop their own ecclesiastical music,
adding to and trans-forming their originals as the necessities of
their different rites demand.[Discussionfollowed, led by Oliver
Strunk.]
