Tracing the history of Western sacred music from the Old Testament to the Baroque Era, three main points emerge. First, Christian music has undergone much change but always returns to glorifying God. Second, Jewish music traditions heavily influenced early Christian music. Third, Gregorian chant inspired much Western music until the 16th century and remains central to Catholic liturgy.

2. Tracing the history of Western music in the
church, one quickly realizes how much
change sacred music has undertaken from
the Old Testament to the Baroque Era. Yet
throughout the history, Christian music
always seems to return to one thing. We
will see this music used in thanksgiving, in
worship, and in prayer and with all its uses,
the one thing it all comes back to is
glorifying God.

3.  The full history of the origins of
music in the Church,
"Nevertheless it is clear that
although medieval theoreticians
accepted some of the theoretical
bases of ancient Greek musical
theory, the practice of music was
far more heavily indebted to the
traditions of Jewish music."

4.  Early on in the Bible, evidence of
Jewish music and instruments is
found. We find a wonderful example
of the Israelites using instruments to
praise and thank God for parting the
Red Sea. Exodus 15:20 says "Then
Miriam the prophetess, the sister of
Aaron, took the timbrel in her hand;
and all the women went out after her
with timbrels and with dances."

5.  However, a more detailed description
of the style of music in Israel is found
in the book of Psalms. "Certain
headings to the psalms would seem
to suggest that the use of modes, one
of the most marked characteristics of
all Middle Eastern music, was well
known to the Levites." These Hebrew
psalms later became significant in
Christian liturgy under the name of
"responsorial psalmody".

6.  In the early church, sacred music
had chiefly a utilitarian purpose.
"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 the nature of a
recitation designed on simple
rhythmic and melodic lines.

7.  At first, a soloist sang the melody, but
some psalms ended with an alleluia or
some short refrain that was easily
remembered, and it soon became
ordinary for this to be sung in unison.
The pinnacle of reform for the liturgy
and the chant appears to have been
largely due to Gregory I (The Great),
Pope from 590 to 604. As Pope for just
fourteen years, his accomplishments
were amazing.

8.  "He recodified the liturgy and
reorganized the Schola Cantorum; he
assigned particular items of the
liturgy to the various services
throughout the year in an order that
remained essentially untouched until
the sixteenth century; he gave
impulse to the movement which
eventually led to the establishment of
a uniform repertoire of chant for use
throughout the Church in all
countries."

9.  That is why this entire body of music is
called the Gregorian Chant. Three
main types of chants existed, the
reciting formulas, the melismatic
songs, and the refrains sung by the
choir or congregation. The melodies of
these were constructed according to
Jewish fashion and the traditional
standard melodic method within a
given mode.

10.  Gregorian chants were the inspiration
behind much of Western music up to
the sixteenth century. Continuing on
in the Dark Ages, we find the
development of polyphony, "the
simultaneous sounding of two or
more melodic lines." In the eleventh
century, an Italian monk and musical
theorist named Guido of Arezzo wrote
the "Micrologus", which was crucial to
the development of polyphony.

11.  Also, he revolutionized the meaning of
pitch by notation when he used horizontal
lines to show the relative pitch of
particular notes. Early in the twelfth
century, the center of musical liveliness
moved to the church of Notre-Dame in
Paris until the fourteenth century when it
moved to Florence, Italy. Perhaps the
greatest achievement of church music in
the fourteenth century was Machaut's
"Notre-Dame" mass for four voices.


12.  Entering into the Renaissance Period, we find
that while secular music takes on as many
new ideas as possible, the Church attempts to
remain as conservative as possible. "Liturgical
practice dictated that the mass and the motet
remain the chief forms of sacred vocal music.
Compared with secular music, their style was
conservative, but inevitably some of the
newer secular techniques crept in and figured
effectively in the music of the Counter-
Reformation within the Roman Catholic
Church.

13.  ." With the outbreak in the church
caused by the Reformation, many new
forms of sacred music appeared in
Protestant worship services. The
German Lutheran worshipped with
hymn tunes arranged from plainsong
or a secular melody. The Anglican
Church had its own form of the motet,
and the Calvinist played psalm tunes.

14.  Into this environment, the Baroque era begins,
and with it two of the most influential composers
of all time, Johann Sebastian Bach and George
Frideric Handel. These two men received an
incredible gift from God and they used it to glorify
him. Both were raised in the Lutheran Church, but
because of different musical training, Handel was
primarily a dramatic composer, writing opera,
oratorio, and secular cantatas while Bach works
included Passions, cantatas for church services,
liturgical organ pieces, and harpsichord
compositions. Their music impacted the church so
much that several of their songs appear today in
hymnals.

15.  Throughout history, the wonder and
beauty of sacred music appears. Yet
from the psalms of the Old Testament
and the Gregorian Chants, to the
oratorios, Passions, and hymns of the
seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, the beauty of sacred music
is that it can mold to the preference of
the time and still be used to glorify
God.