music in worship

songs in scripture

• After escaping from the Egyptians and crossing the Red Sea, the people of Israel sang a song to the Lord (Exod. 15).

• Singing was part of Israel's formal worship in both tabernacle and temple (1 Chron. 6:31-32, 16:42).

• The Psalms bear rich testimony that in joy and sorrow, in praise and lament, the faithful raise their voices in song to God.

• Hymn singing was practiced by Jesus and his disciples (Matt. 26:30).

• The Apostle Paul instructed the Colossians, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him" (Col. 3: 16-17).

gregorian chants

• Plainchants (or Gregorian Chants) is an ancient form of music that is usually sung unaccompanied and to a limited range of notes (known for its monophonic sound)

• Plainchants is used in monasteries to sing the divine office in Latin

• Forms the core of the musical repertoire of the Roman Catholic Church

psalms

• The Old Testament contains the book of Psalms. These are 150 pieces of poetry that were originally written down to be sung during Jewish prayer
  The Catholic church uses psalms every day; they form the backbone of the Divine Office that every priest, monk, and nun must recite. Wherever possible, when they have to recite the Divine Office together, they sing it

• The psalms are centred around the praise of God, though they touch on all aspects of life: sickness, seeking forgiveness, praying for the harvest etcetera
  The psalms acknowledge that everything people have comes from God, and without God they are nothing
  Singing for joy is one of the recurring themes of the psalms. Joy comes from knowing that God is with his people, guiding them and protecting them

christian hymns - catholicism

• Many hymns are formed from the psalms
  Thomas Aquinas defined a hymn as ‘the praise of God with song; a sing is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice’

• The earliest Christian hymns are mentioned around year 64 by St Paul in his letters

protestantism + hymns

The Protestant Reformation resulted in two conflicting attitudes to hymns:

• ●  Zwinglians, Calvinists, and other radical reformers considered anything that as not directly authorised by the Bible

  to be offensive, so all hymns that were not direct quotes from the Bible fell into this category and were banned. Instead of hymns, biblical psalms were chanted (known as exclusive psalmody and still found in some free churches in Scotland)

• ●  The other approach, favoured by Martin Luther, produced a burst of hymn writing and congregational singing. Luther and his followers used hymns to teach tenets of the faith

contemporary christian music

• Predominantly in the US, there has been a recent development of Contemporary Christian music (CCM) which includes Christian pop, rock, metal, punk, and other secular genres. e.g. trisha paytas’ i love you jesus
  It began as a form of evangelism for the youth, and now plays a significant role in Evangelical christian worship

• In 1960 the II Vatican council allowed the Mass to be said in a country’s own language rather than in Latin
  This led to the desire to have more contemporary music to encourage people to sing. Because of this, there has been a vast increase in the number of hymns and songs produced for use in worship in Catholic liturgies

denominational differences: methodism

• Charles Wesley's hymns spread Methodist theology, not only within Methodism, but in most Protestant churches. He developed a new focus:

• expressing one's personal feelings in the relationship with God as well as the simple worship seen in older hymns.

• The Methodist Revival of the 18th century created an explosion of hymn writing in Welsh, which continued into the first half of the 19th century.

african american use of music

• African-Americans developed a rich hymnody out of the spirituals sung during times of slavery.

• During the Second Great Awakening in the United States, this led to the emergence of a new popular style.

• Fanny Crosby, Ira D. Sankey, and others produced testimonial music for evangelistic crusades.

• These are often designated "gospel songs" as distinct from hymns, since they generally include a refrain (or chorus) and usually (though not always) a faster tempo than the hymns.

• As examples of the distinction, "Amazing Grace" is a hymn (no refrain), but "How Great Thou Art" is a gospel song.

• During the 19th century the gospelsong genre spread rapidly in Protestantism and, to a lesser but still definite extent, in Roman Catholicism. The gospel-song genre is unknown in the worship per se by Eastern Orthodox churches, which rely exclusively on traditional chants, and disallow instrumental accompaniment.