A New Song for an Old World: Musical Thought in the Early Church (review)

The author aims to acquaint the present church with its ancient Christian ancestors’ thinking about music (1–4). In particular, he wants to bring the pre-Enlightenment perspective on music found in the church fathers into conversation with a post-Enlightenment church that finds itself in a cultural situation similar to that of the church fathers (4–9). In addition to a foreword by John Witvliet, the book includes eleven chapters: an introduction (ch. 1), an overview of music in the New Testament (ch. 2), a discussion of patristic musical thought in the second and third centuries (ch. 3), focused examinations of Clement of Alexandria (ch. 4) and Tertullian (ch. 5), a general survey of the fourth century (ch. 6), focused treatments of Ambrose (ch. 7) and John Chrysostom (ch. 8), a discussion of early Christian attitudes to pagan music (ch. 9), a survey of Christian use of psalms and hymns (ch. 10), a focused study of Augustine (ch. 11), and a concluding reflection on the relevance of the study for contemporary Christian music (ch. 12).

One welcomes such a volume since, as the author notes, no recent survey of early Christian musical thought is available. The nearest equivalent is Johannes Quasten’s masterful but dated Music and Worship in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (first German ed. 1920; rev. 1973; English translation made in 1973 and published in 1983). Stapert knows Quasten’s work, but his bibliography and notes lack two other very valuable (although also dated) studies, i.e., Josef Kroll’s survey of Christian hymnody (Die christliche Hymnodik bis zu Clemens von Alexandrien (1921; corrected edition, 1968) and Robert Skeris, XPΩMA ΘEOY (1976), an annotated anthology of early Christian texts containing references to music together with additional chapters on musical thought and imagery in the church fathers. The absence of Kroll’s book reflects Stapert’s exclusive reliance on scholarship published in English.

Stapert offers generally enlightening and balanced summaries of early Christian musical thought in the first four centuries, and his focused examinations of individual church fathers provide helpful introductions to their views. Moreover, much good scholarship by specialists in patristics has been thoughtfully digested and incorporated into this study. Nevertheless, the book has some basic weaknesses. Stapert is a professor of music and admits to being an “amateur in the field of early Christian studies” (10). He has done very well for an amateur but certain failings show. For one, he has had to rely entirely on translations of the sources, a limitation which can easily lead astray. At one point he asserts that “the phrase ‘sing aloud’” in Ignatius, Eph. 4.2 (Staniforth/Louth translation) shows that Ignatius is speaking literally. The Greek, however, has no “phrase” but only (“sing”), which is probably meant allegorically in this context. Because Stapert is also out of his depth when it comes to the study of paganism and pagan music, he makes some dubious generalizations. For example, we hear that Jewish temple music was word-oriented while pagan religious music was not—it was noisy and orgiastic (153). Yet there was a long tradition in ancient Greek music of the primacy of the words, which the music was to serve, and it is hard to imagine that the Greek cult hymns that have come down to us were performed in a way that obscured the texts (granting that there was also the presence of instrumental music in some Greek religious ceremonies where the musical sound was primary). In this connection one is also disappointed that a specialist in music does not seek to elucidate the fathers from the standpoint of ancient Greek music theory and philosophies of music, which are well represented by surviving treatises and other works.

More might also have been said about the sound of the music itself in the church and in...