Early Christian music
The music of the early Christian era, arising from a mixture of Near Eastern, Jewish, and Greek traditions.
What it means
Early Christian music is the music of the earliest Christian centuries. Its roots lie in the Near East: contrary to older assumptions that it simply grew out of Jewish temple chant and ancient Greek music, it is now regarded as a product of a syncretistic movement in which several traditions overlapped.
Babylonian influences had already shaped Hebrew hymn-writing substantially, and through this route also affected Christian music, which should therefore be understood not as a straight continuation of a single source but as a confluence of several Near Eastern and Mediterranean traditions.
Musical use
The first major flowering of early Christian music took place in Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt. From there it spread by various routes to Armenia, Georgia, and Persia, and later reached Europe via Byzantium, Ravenna, and Marseille, as well as along the Iberian and Irish coasts.
According to current understanding, the earliest chants were not elaborately composed art works but folk-song-like forms with a strongly national character, depending on whether they were of Syriac, Coptic, or Armenian origin. The oldest datable example of early Christian music is the so-called Oxyrhynchus hymn from the late third century, which already combines Hellenic with Near Eastern elements.
From these early, regionally shaped traditions the great liturgical chant traditions of the Middle Ages later developed, including Ambrosian chant in Milan and eventually Gregorian chant in the western church.
Performance practice
Anyone studying early liturgical music should understand early Christian music as a preliminary stage whose sound survives only in fragments. For comparison, listen to various later liturgical traditions that grew out of this shared origin, to get a sense of the stylistic diversity of the early Christian era.