Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: m SONG D? THE EARLY CHRISTIAN CHURCH The age of the apostles and the fathers of the Christian church possesses an interest for the student of church music analogous to that which the same period offers to students of doctrine, liturgiology and church government. The subjects of inquiry include the rise of liturgies, rites and ceremonies, and their alliance with music; the origin and use of hymns; the foundation of the liturgic chant; the degree of participation enjoyed by the laity at the beginning, and the causes of the abandonment of congregational singing in the eu- charistic service and the transference of this office to a choir of minor clericals. The tendency by which church music became essentially ritualistic and clerical was a phase of the transition from the simple and homogeneous system of the apostolic age to the hierarchical organization which became consolidated under the Western popes and Eastern patriarchs. A thorough study of this subject involves a general view of ohi .ch history and liturgies in the early Christian centuries. Among the great number of authorities may be mentioned: Sehaff, History of the Christian Church; Milman, History of Latin Christianity; Pressense', Early Yean of Christianity; Fisher, History of the Christian Church; Al/.og, Unirersal Church History (a standard work written from the Catholic standpoint); Stanley, Lectures on tin History of the Eastern Church. These works ooutain general accounts of pre-Gregorian liturgies. For the liturgies themselves, or a more detailed account of them: the liturgies of St. Mark, St. James, etc., translated into English in the Ante- Nicene Christian Library, Edinburgh, Clark; the Constitutions of the Apostle, translated, same series; McClintock and Strong's Cyclopedia, article Liturgies; Encycl...