Sacred Music

To understand the origins of chant, we must go back to the Church’s Hebrew roots. The tradition of chanting Scripture—a practice known as cantillation—began at least 1,000 years before the birth of Christ. In the Old Testament, the Book of Psalms and the Books of Chronicles speak of musical instruments and the central function of music in temple worship. There were two basic forms of worship for the Israelite: the bloody sacrifice, involving the death and destruction of an animal, which represents the total surrender of one’s being to God in adoration, obedience, and humble self-effacement; and the chanted psalter, expressing our praises and petitions, as “verbal incense” offered up to God by our intellects. Since the Psalter of David was composed for the very purpose of divine worship and was seen as the messianic book par excellence, the first Christians spontaneously chose the Psalter for their prayer book. We see Peter, Paul, and the Apostolic Fathers quoting it countless times in their preaching and letters. Moreover, Christians saw the Lord’s offering of Himself on the Cross as the fulfillment of all the bloody animal sacrifices; the Eucharist makes present the reality and fruits of this supreme sacrifice in an unbloody manner suitable for those who have been redeemed. Thus, all Christian liturgy can be said to spring from the combination of Psalter and Sacrifice. We should not be surprised, then, to find that the traditional Roman rite of Mass, which is primarily a sacrificial offering, is permeated throughout with verses from the Psalms; and that the other great public prayer of the Church, the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours, is primarily composed of Psalms, yet with incense burned at the altar during the Gospel canticles—an acknowledgement of the one supreme sacrifice that unites heaven and earth.