Origins of Christian music

It could be said therefore that we know less about music at the dawn of Christian era than we do about Greek music in the time of Aristoxenes. the first four centuries of our era are still hidden under a thick veil after that we can gradually discern the outlines of a liturgical music as to the sound of which we know nothing until the ninth century when a rudimentrary system of notation that was decipherable allowing for a certain margin of hypothesis first made its appearance .After this progress will be relatively rapid and above all will reveal a remarkable degree of continuity. According to the historians the year 1453 marked a definite severance between the stages of civilisation the middle ages and the Renaissance in reality however this severance was not more noticeable in music than in other spheres of human activities at least not at that time. If there was a break in continuity between two ways of thinking and feelings this happened well before the fall of Constantinople during that confused period which lasted until the end of the barbarian
invasions when Gerco-Roman civilisation collapsed and its successor was not yet strong enough to assert it self.
it is on emerging from this tunnel that modern music begin to develop. we can see the beginning of that evolution most clearly in sacred music for the following simple reasons:
it was not part of the duties of theoreticians who were mostly monks and still less of the Fathers of church to give us information about secular music moreover the first music to b written down was liturgical music which had an all=important part to play. furthermore the popular musicians strolling fiddlers and jugglers whose art was primarily one of improvisation had neither the knowledge required to commit their inspiration to paper nor probably any desire to make them available in this way to possible rivals
but it is clear that secular music existed and that it assumed many forms such as songs inspired by places or trades or magic war-like satirical or drinking songs and more all of which had various origins some dating back to Gerco-Roman antiquity and even earlier and generally inspired by historical events migration and invasions cultural advances and set backs and those vagaries of fashion which in the fourth century aroused the indignation of St. Basil: "there are towns where from morning to evening one can attend all sorts of public spectacles and one is obliged to admit that the more the people hear of lascivious and immoral songs the more they wish to hear" However several centuries will elapse before we have any written record of this secular music . but to return to sacred music in early Church it had primarily a utilitarian function it was found that an excellent method of assisting worshippers to pray together was to base the prayer on a very simple chant very much in nature of a recitation designed on simple rhythmic and melodic lines evangelisation having spread from western asia to the boundaries of country where the Herbrew psalmody had been adpoted many historians think that this psalmody must have served as a model indeed sufficiently characteristic resemblances between the jeweish and Christian liturgies have been found to suggest that they were affiliated not to mention the actual borrowing of forms of acclamation such as alleluia or amen.