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12 The National Music of America.
there chorus-singing at the Agapae, the love-feasts of the Christians of the first century, but the fathers of the Church speak of choral music that must have been very much like the religious music that the Protestants employed centuries later.
The music of the time of the apostles is described chiefly by tradition, but there is so much of verisimilitude in the accounts, and the stories agree so well with each other, that there is at least a strong inference that congregational music existed even in their epoch. Eusebius states that St. Mark taught the first Egyptian converts to chant their prayers together; St. John Chrysostom in his sixth homily declares that the apostles composed the first hymn; Tertullian affirms that the Roman Christians chanted in deep tones; Clemens Romanus (contemporary of St. Paul) states that at the evening meal the Christians generally sang the twenty-third Psalm, and there is evidence that Exodus |
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