Music and liturgy in early Christianity

Abstract

The goal for this dissertation was to research the music in liturgy and daily life of early Christians (of the first two centuries AD) and to reveal the main factors affecting the fornation of music and liturgy in the early church. Therefore the music backgrounds of the early Christians (the Jewish and Hellenistic music cultures) together with the evidences from early Christian literature (New Testament and some of the Church Fathers) have been examined. On the strength of the investigations done, the author concludes that Christianity inherited musical traditions first of all from Judaism, and later on, as it was extended to the entire Roman Empire, it was influenced by Hellenism as well. Consequently, there was not a united form of worship in early Christian church, and from the very beginning the music of different communities could vary depending on their cultural backgrounds.Thus, music life of Jewish Christianity differed from the churches consisting mainly of Christians from the Gentiles.