course that the origins of Christian liturgical music went back, like the rest of Christian practice and
belief, to the “sacred bridge” connecting the Christian religion with Judaism, out of which it had
originated as a heresy. The textual contents of the Gregorian antiphoner consisted overwhelmingly of
psalm verses, and the recitation of psalms, along with other scriptural readings, is to this day a common
element of Jewish and Christian worship.
It turns out, however, that neither the psalmody of the Christian liturgy nor that of today’s synagogue
service can be traced back to pre-Christian Jewish worship, let alone to Old Testament times. Pre-
Christian Jewish psalmody centered around temple rites that came to an end when the temple itself was
destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. One has only to read some famous passages from the psalms
themselves, as well as other biblical texts, to become aware of this disjuncture. Psalm 150, the climax of
the Psalter, or Book of Psalms, is in fact a description of ancient temple psalmody—singing God’s praises
—in fullest swing. It reads, in part:
Praise him with fanfares on the trumpet,
praise him upon the lute and harp;
praise him with tambourines and dancing,
praise him with flute and strings;
praise him with the clash of cymbals,
praise him with triumphant cymbals;
let everything that has breath praise the LORD!One will not find such goings-on in any contemporary Catholic church or synagogue; nor were they
ever part of pre-Reformation Christian worship. (The Eastern Orthodox church, in fact, expressly bans the
ritual use of instruments, and does so on the basis of the last line of this very psalm, for instruments do not
have “breath,” that is, a soul.) Nor can one find today much reflection of the “antiphonal” manner of
psalmody described in the Bible, despite the later Christian appropriation (in modified form and with
modified meaning) of the word “antiphon.”
In its original meaning, antiphonal psalmody implied the use of two choirs answering each to each, as
most famously described in the high priest Nehemiah’s account of the dedication of the Jerusalem walls in
445 BCE, when vast choirs (and orchestras!) mounted the walls on opposite sides of the city gates and made
a joyful noise unto the Lord. The verse structure of the psalms themselves, consisting of paired
hemistichs, half-lines that state a single thought in different words (as in the extract above), suggests that
antiphony was their original mode of performance.
And yet, although it was (and remains) the central musical activity in Jewish worship services,
psalmody was—perhaps surprisingly—not immediately transferred from Jewish worship to Christian. It
does not figure in the earliest accounts of Christian worship, such as Justin Martyr’s description of the
Sunday Eucharist (ritual of blessings) or Lord’s Supper, later known as the communion service or Mass,
at Rome sometime around the middle of the second century. Justin mentions readings from the prophets
and apostles, sermons, prayers, and acclamations, but no psalms. In short, there is nothing in the earliest
descriptions of Christian worship to correspond with the later repertory of Gregorian chant. That
repertory was not a direct inheritance from Christianity’s parent religion. It originated elsewhere, and
later.
Exactly when cannot be pinpointed, but psalmody had entered the Christian worship service by the
beginning of the fifth century, when the Spanish nun Egeria sent a letter back home from Jerusalem
describing the services she had witnessed in the oldest and holiest Christian see. “Before cockcrow,” she