RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Psalmody
tone, and by others with the eighth, although it strictly accords with neither, so that it is also termed the " irregular tone." Each Psalm tone is characterized, in the first place, by the tone to be followed in the intonation of the Psalm text in question. This is always the dominant of the given key to which the Psalm tone belongs, and is called the tone of intonation, leading tone, " common tone," or, as a rule, simply " dominant." Again, each Psalm tone is distinguished by the melodic csesura, which ends the first half of the verse, and which is termed the mediante, middle, medium, or mediatio; as well as by the melodic intonation which ends the entire verse, this terminal phrase being known as the finale, " conclusion," or " cadence." The conclusion of the Psalm tone is not identical with the so-called final tone of the key, nor need it coalesce with the latter tone at all, so that it does not determine the church tone to which the Psalm tone belongs. Each Psalm tone has also a festal and a ferial form. In the latter the preliminary melodic embellishment (initium, inchoatio, intonatio) is omitted, while the mediante is simplified by resolving the ligatures and substituting syllabic chanting. The ferial form is employed on ordinary doubles, Sundays, and semidoubles at prime, terce, sext, none, and compline, as well as on simples and on ordinary week-days, and invariably in the office for the dead. The festal form is used throughout the office on all doubles of the first and second class and on greater doubles; and it is also employed, at least at matins, lauds, and vespers, on ordinary doubles, Sundays, and semi-doubles, as well as in the canticles from the New Testament, the Magnificat and Benedictus. This festal form is characterized by its initium, or " beginning," a melodic embellishment of the introductory note which forms the transition to the recitative, or intonation proper. This festal embellishment, however, is retained for every verse only in the case of the " greater Psalms," or New- Testament canticles, for in the " lesser Psalms," or Psalms of the Old Testament, it is omitted after the second verse. Each Psalm must end with the Gloria Patri, which makes it a prayer of the Christian Church. Complete ritual also demands the antiphon (q.v.), and a distinction is accordingly drawn between the " Psalm without antiphon " (or " direct Psalm "), when the Psalm has no introductory antiphon and is sung without additions and interruptions, and the " Psalm with an antiphon."
With the Psalter the Christian Church naturally adopted the traditional mode of psalmody. While the musical details are obscure, this adoption doubtless involved Christian antiphonal 5. Origin of singing as essential to psalmody, being
Christian based on the parallelism of Hebrew Psalmody, poetry. A distinction is drawn between the responsory, in which the precentor renders the entire Psalm, while the choir or congregation sings a refrain after each verse, an Amen or Hallelujah (cf. Rev. v. 14, xix. 4), some form of praise contained in the Psalm itself, or some such doxology as the Gloria Patri (cf. Apostolic Constitutions, ii. 57 [ANF, vii. 421]: " Let some other person sing the hymns of David, and let the people join at the conclusions of the verses "),
and the antiphonal style, in which either the precentor and the choir (or congregation), or two choirs, or the two halves of the choir, alternate in rendering the Psalm (cf . Basil, Ep. ccvii. 3 [NPNF, 2 ser., viii. 247]: " Divided into two parts, they sing antiphonally with one another, . afterward they again commit the prelude of the strain to one, and the rest take it up ").
To prove that the highly developed music of classic antiquity affected the evolution of antiphonal singing is more difficult, for this involved the adoption of a system of artificial music which strict Christian sensibilities abhorred and mistrusted, possibly implying the use of antiphons sung by many voices or accompanied by instrumental music. In classical music " antiphonal " denoted the consonance of the octave, and the proper antiphon was produced where men and children sang together with voices differing as to pitch. At the same time, in this style of joint choral and polyphonic song appeal could be made to the precedent of the Jewish Temple. The problem was not the introduction of antiphonal singing (in contrast with what was later understood as non-antiphonal song), but the adoption of artistic antiphonal singing in distinction from the simple psalmody of the time. The artistic amplification of liturgical singing after the prototype of the trained choirs of the Greeks is implied, moreover, in the account given by Philo (quoted by Eusebius, Hist, eccl, II., xvii. 22 [NPNF, 2 series, i. 119]) of the ritual of the Therapeutse, which is compared with that of the contemporary Christian worship. Basil the Great likewise states (Epist. ccvii. 3 [Eng. transl. in NPNF, 2 ser., viii. 247]) that he had the Psalms rendered by skilled precentors after the manner of the triumphal odes of Pindar, the congregation joining, at the closing verse, with an accompaniment of lyres.
At all events, the liturgical rendering or chanting of the Psalms became the function of a specially trained precentor at a very early date in the Christian Church, if, indeed, this was not the case from
the very first, especially as no other 6. History, practise has been transmitted from
the synagogue itself; and the congregation gave only the responses. As the connection of the Church with Judaism became broken, the liturgical forms and modes of Jewish psalmody must have grown strange; yet even when psalmody became transformed under the influence of classical music, its form of expression could be no common and familiar one, but was necessarily a work of art. Psalmody accordingly came to be more and more exclusively the province of duly trained and practised singers, the choir. The fifteenth canon of the Synod of Laodicea (c. 360) prescribes that " no others shall sing in the Church, save only the canonical singers, who go up into the ambo and sing from a book " [NPNF, 2 series, xiv. 132]. In the Greek Church, the Psalms are rendered by the choir in two sections, alternating verse by verse, with or without interpolation of a brief sentence of praise (embolism) as the Psalm proceeds; and in the Roman Catholic Church the proper chanting of Psalms is accounted a test of the good liturgical training of the choir. The antiphon is
Psalmody Psalms