We have then at the beginning of the Christian era a veneer of Greek culture covering a gross materialism in the West and a decadent, mystic symbolism in the East. Into this situation was born the new cult with its utter negation of everything the ancient world, pagan or theistic, held precious. Christianity from the beginning was at war with its environment—Greek, Roman, and Hebraic. Though its roots lay in Jewish philosophy, its pessimistic attitude toward the world, its view of life as an evil, poisoned condition, was directly opposed to the spirit of a people with whom, as Renan says, ‘the evils of life were never chronic complaints’ (‘pour qui les maux de la vie ne deviennent pas des maladies chroniques’). Its opposition to all the teachings and practices of paganism was, of course, absolute and uncompromising.
Nevertheless, Christianity absorbed from its environment the material of its ritual as inevitably as the tree draws nurture from the soil and atmosphere that underlies and surrounds it. That it absorbed those elements unconsciously, even unwillingly, goes a long way to explain our ignorance of the manner in which the liturgical music of the Church developed. It seems practically certain that among the most devout early Christians music was looked upon with suspicion, and its use, especially in connection with the worship of God, was probably discouraged as far as possible. Even as late as the fourth century we find a Syrian monk warning one of his brethren that we should approach God with sighs and tears, with reverence and humility, and not with song. When, through the inevitable pressure of environment, music had become an integral part of the Christian ritual, the Church fathers, with characteristic naïveté, completely ignored the source from which it was drawn, and, in what is obviously simple faith, attributed to it a divine origin. ‘Our singing,’ says St. John Chrysostom, ‘is only an echo, an imitation of that of the angels. Music was invented in heaven. Around and above us sing the angels. If man is musical it is by a revelation of the Holy Ghost; the singer is inspired from on high.’ St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose, Justin Martyr, St. Basil, St. Benedict, and other early fathers talk in the same strain. John de Muris, more historical and less mystical, can find no more definite origin for liturgical music than a vague tradition.[43]
With those who were practically eye-witnesses to the growth of early Church music so serenely blind to the influences that determined its course, the task of the modern historian in reconstructing those influences becomes practically impossible. If, however, we understand clearly the conditions under which liturgical music took shape we can formulate a theoretical sketch of its history, which is probably not far from the truth. In this connection it will help us considerably if we remember that during the early centuries of the Christian era the Roman church was far from being the dominant and unifying factor which it later became, and that the great institution to which we are wont to refer simply as ‘the church’ resulted from the confluence of many independent streams, and not from the expansion of any single one. These streams were divided, so to speak, between two main watersheds, one of which was Asia Minor and the other Italy. In Asia Minor the church was surrounded by a Semitic civilization shot through with Hellenic elements; in Italy it grew up in an environment of Græco-Roman culture.
It might be well to take a glance here at the state of music in Rome at the beginning of the Christian era. Roman music previous to the conquest of Greece (146 B. C.) had borrowed its forms from the Etruscans and the Greeks. Etruscan influences were probably predominant in the early centuries of the Republic.[44] The nature of these influences is not known to us. It would seem that the Etruscans were originally a Greek race, and the fountain-head of their musical art was consequently Hellenic. But they were, as their vases show, a race dowered with artistic ideals and genuine creative impulses, and they must have modelled their musical inheritance into something new, characteristic, and beautiful. But, if we are to believe Dionysius, Strabo, and other Roman writers who have touched on the subject, we must conclude that the Romans merely imitated such music of the Etruscans as was useful for religious and military purposes, choosing, presumably, the cruder forms of the art. We may accept this conclusion all the more readily since we know that the Romans, even down to Imperial times, remained obtuse and obtrusive Philistines.
It does not seem that the Romans borrowed much directly from Greece until after Greece became a Roman province. They were not, in fact, interested at all in art. But, after repeated conquests had made them rich and luxurious, they began to cultivate—or rather patronize—art as a sort of fashionable and expensive luxury. The result was a gradual growth, among the leisure classes in Rome, of a very real literary and æsthetic taste. By the time of Augustus Rome was able to produce such excellent imitators of Greek models as Virgil, Horace, Ovid, and Catullus. In music, however, the imperial people never rose so high. Hellenic music had already degenerated when Rome fell under its influence. ‘Besides pantomime with chorus,’ says Gevaert, ‘Greek musicians brought to Rome only the instrumental solo and the song with kithara or lyre accompaniment.’[45] This branch of the art flourished apace in Rome, where, however, like Italian opera in later centuries, it became distorted into a craze for meaningless virtuosity. We know less about the music itself than we know about the famous kithara players who were the favorites of emperors and were accorded the honors and dignity of princes. History speaks to us about Tigellius, the friend of Augustus, and Mesomedes, of Crete, the intimate of Hadrian. Nero gained a humorous immortality by his pretensions as a singer and kithara player. The story of his journey through Greece, where he won the kithara prize at the Olympic games and defeated in public competition the most famous performers in every city he visited, is surely one of the most ludicrous narratives in all history.
Until the third century A. D. the kitharœdic chant was purely Hellenic, as we might surmise from the names of its most famous exponents, such as Terpnos, Menecrates, Diodorus, Chrysogones, Pollion, Echion, and Glaphyros. In the second century Ptolemy, writing his ‘Harmonics,’ founded his system of tones and modes on the practice of the kithara and lyre players.[46] Practically all of the pieces which have come down to us from the Græco-Roman period, and which we have noted in the last chapter, belong to the literature of the kithara. The kitharœdic chants were narratives in the style of Timotheus, or lyrics, chiefly hymns to some divinity. These compositions were not in strophic form. The melody was divided into sections of unequal length (commata) and varied more or less from one end of the poem to the other. Until the beginning of the fourth century the texts were usually in Greek. The Latin kitharœdic songs, such as those of Horace and Catullus, were scarcely heard except at banquets and private reunions. Greek was, indeed, the prevailing musical language, as we may learn from Vitruvius, who prefaces to the chapter on music in his work on Architecture a warning that musical theory is practically a sealed book to those who do not know Greek.[47] After the removal of the seat of empire to Byzantium in 330 A. D., the use of Greek disappeared, and with it the use of musical notation by means of Greek letters. The transmission of music then became oral and the art of the kithara song and its accompaniments gradually vanished.[48]
II
Now the founders of Christianity were Jews, and Oriental influences were never absent from the church, even in Rome. Furthermore the apostles of Christianity in Rome were humble, untutored men, and the majority of their converts were drawn from the same class—the class which in all ages has naturally taken refuge in any creed which contradicts the views and practices of its masters and oppressors. Christ’s message of hope to the humble in spirit came home first to the humble in material possessions. ‘Deposuit potentes de sede et exaltavit humiles.’ For three centuries the Christians in Italy were subjected to constant oppression and often to fiercely violent persecution. Their rites were performed in dark and secret places and, presumably, without any noise that could be avoided. Under the circumstances one is tempted to conclude that music was severely ignored by the first Christians in Rome. They had every reason to avoid it. It was likely to attract undesirable attention; it was associated primarily in their minds with the sensual orgies of their pagan oppressors, and, finally, the first Christians themselves were not of the class likely to possess much musical culture. Nevertheless, it is practically certain that they intoned some of their services in a simple, discreet way. They must have chanted their psalms, at least, probably as the Hebrews did. This chant, it would perhaps be safe to assume, was responsorial and consisted of a low, more or less monotonous, recitative.
By the time the Edict of Milan (313 A. D.) struck off the fetters that bound Christianity the Church had already gathered to her bosom many of the most influential and cultured Roman citizens. Their advent must have changed gradually the whole complexion of the Roman church. With their cultivated taste for art they probably furnished the prime impulse toward the æstheticism which gradually came to be a distinguishing feature of the church ritual. After the Edict of Milan the church jumped almost at a bound to a position of social and political influence which soon became one of social and political predominance. The most influential of its members no longer came from the lowly and oppressed, but from the rich and powerful. Every reason that had operated against the use of music in the primitive church had disappeared, and with it had disappeared for a time the Oriental tendencies which the founders of the church had consciously or unconsciously incorporated with it. There is little doubt that during the third and fourth centuries Græco-Roman culture penetrated to the innermost shrine of Western Christianity and remained an active agent in the formulation of liturgical music long after the Orient had again become a predominant influence through the removal of the seat of empire to Byzantium.