Harmony and Discord: The Evolution of Christian Worship Music

Navigating Tradition and Innovation in Church Music

[A quick note to say that I’m exhausted from Holy Week and have come down with a cold. In place of a post, please enjoy a sneak peek at chapter two of my forthcoming book on Blending Contemporary and Traditional Music in the Church.]

No book on Christian worship music would be complete without a small primer on how we got here in the first place. As a student of Christian History and a church musician, I find myself comforted by early liturgical leaders and musicians navigating problems that sound strikingly familiar.

Let's begin at the beginning, shall we?

Early Church Music

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In the beginning, there were arguments. And these arguments have long roots in the church.

For the very early church, the music sprung out of older Jewish traditions. Music has been a part of Judaism for as long as we have records; David is the musician king, and Miriam leads the masses via tambourine. The psalms are certainly an early version of a hymnal. Christians used things they were familiar with to branch off.

[For fun, I’ve made a Spotify playlist so you can hear the music types mentioned in this post. Each piece gives a good flavor of the era. Click the button below to hop to Spotify. I will mark in italics the corresponding pieces.]

The Odes of Solomon, for example, are among the earliest Christian hymns, exhibiting a clear evolution from Jewish psalms. (Proverbs, pt 1 in playlist)

The foundational music traditions of the Jewish people included psalms (sacred songs) and cantillation (the chanting of sacred texts). But Christianity was also influenced by the Graeco-Roman culture, who believed that melody was a celestial gift from the divine realm, appreciated by the gods.¹

We see the push and pull of the two cultures on the young religion. 

The Greeks, too, had ritual hymn performances and liturgies for their gods, as well as a music notation system that dates back at least 400 years before Christ. A mix of instruments like the lyre, flute, trumpet, percussion, pipe, and harp were used by both Jews and Romans in their ceremonies.

So the early church began to argue about music.

Writings from early church leaders preserve a few crucial differences between the emerging Christian music and the established Jewish and Roman traditions.  First, the Christians began to stay away from instruments, and in particular, percussion. (If you thought the “satanic panic” over drums was new, think again!)

Early Christians felt that instrumental music and drumming were too Roman. These instruments were common in their athletic and temple rituals and often had an ecstatic, Bacchanalian feel that the early bishops thought unseemly. Clement in particular argued to use only “the body as an instrument of worship…a superior instrument as compared to other musical instruments, such as the flute or lyre."²

Christianity also had one other major difference that set it apart: singing in unison. (Compline, Latin in Playlist) Father Ignatius emphasized the importance of singing together as one, and it became a popular analogy for expressing Christian unity in later writings. Perhaps a bit grouchier, Clement adds his voice, saying, "‘chromatic harmonies are therefore to be abandoned to immodest revels, and to florid and meretricious music.”³

Plainchant versus harmonies and the use of instruments versus unaccompanied singing are disagreements still preserved in pockets of the church. It is, quite literally, an argument as old as the church itself.

It can essentially be framed as: 

People want to be able to sing along corporately, and people want to express themselves artistically. 

If we squint, we can see the shape of that same argument in hymns versus contemporary music, but with differing opinions on which music is what.

Taking over from Clement’s hated florid, complex vocal lines, Gregorian chant takes center stage. Gregorian chant is monophonic singing, consisting of a single melody line without accompaniment, focused on chanting the sacred Latin texts of the church. It was also oddly re-popularized briefly in the 1990s. (Kyrie in Playlist.)

Later in history, the church still hadn’t settled the argument. Benedetto Guidi recounts this conversation with Abbot Andrea Pampuro: 

"What displeasure you had [when you] heard the Lamentations of Jeremiah during Holy Week...sung with so many ornaments and vocal cacophony, that they seemed a chaotic banging and noise, rather than intelligible, pious, and devout music."⁴

So we see that we’re back to complex vocal lines and flourishing harmonies. More than that, musical notation had advanced, and the church was starting to compose in polyphony, multiple melodies sung at once. From Catholic bishop Pier Paolo Vergerio, we get this iconically cranky missive after he was made to sit through a campy set of Holy Week services.

"I know that the Popes, who had nothing better to do, ordered this comedy, or tragedy . . . As for the psalms, we praise them as the divine thing that they are, and we have good translations, whereas yours is horribly corrupt, even though the awful “Council” of Trent has preferred it above all others. And we have translated them into the vernaculars, German, French, and English, and we often sing them, not only in churches but also in houses and in the streets, in order to rejoice in the glory of God. And we understand what we are singing, whereas your [monks] do not understand a thing, not even you who are listening to them. Would you perhaps understand the line sung in polyphony? Another one of the stupid practices… the word of God, which should be preached clearly and understood, is kept buried and hidden among you...not only because it is spoken in Latin, but also [buried] underneath the notes of your polyphony, and inside the pipes of your organs, and sometimes under the sounds of bagpipes, cornetti, and cornamuses all mixed together."⁵

Something about those quotes make me laugh.  What worship leader hasn't overheard something with the same bite? Or thought something equally snarky about someone else’s service?

To the dread of certain bishops, polyphonic music began to take over again. (Praise the Lord, Romania) Polyphony introduced a rich texture to church music, allowing for more expressive and complex compositions. This was further developed into motets, vocal compositions with three or more melodies sung together using sacred texts. The emergence of motets can be seen as the result of technological advancements in music notation and a growing desire for artistic expression within the liturgy. (Motet: Parce, Domine)

It’s a consistent push and pull in the church: Accessibility versus Art.

As Christianity spread, it absorbed musical styles and instruments from different cultures, enriching the church’s musical tapestry. The Eastern Orthodox church created soaring masses, ornate and complex. The growing Celtic church in the far west also had its version of mass (that were stamped out by Pope Gregory and have been lost to time.)

Photo by John Cafazza on Unsplash

And then came the Reformation.

The Reformation, a pivotal period in the 16th century, led by figures such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Huldrych Zwingli, reformed every aspect of the church, music included. Reformers wanted understandable, simple music, foregoing the complex motets of professional musicians and the Latin used in Gregorian chants. Luther, in particular, championed the idea that worship should be accessible to every believer, not only clergy.

The role of common language in hymnody can’t be understated. Hymn writers could now write in their native tongue to be understood by all. The Reformers also realized that music was a powerful way of communicating religious truths and theology. (Simple Gifts) Instead of simply singing biblical texts or psalms, people composed poetic hymns on religious ideas. 

The emphasis on personal salvation and a direct relationship with God, characteristic of Protestant theology, found expression in the deeply personal and emotive language of hymns. This was a radical departure from the Latin texts used in mass, often not understood by the lay congregation. 

Moreover, the further development of music notation and printing technology facilitated the spread of hymns. Printed hymnals could be produced in large quantities and distributed widely, enabling congregations across different regions to sing the same hymns. 

A oft-repeated myth states that hymn writers merely changed the words to popular drinking songs, which is misleading. A more nuanced take is that Luther and other hymnists took music that was accessible to regular folks and built songs around those familiar scales and progressions. It’s similar to what contemporary Christian music does today–yes, there are certainly Christian parodies of secular songs– but most contemporary worship pieces are simply songs built on the framework of popular music.

A good note to make here is that hymns were once the contemporary form of worship, and marked a contested departure from traditional Latin chanting of biblical texts, whether harmonized or sung in unison.

Hymnody picked up speed, gathering up scales, progressions, tunes, meters, and somewhat ironically, more harmonic complexity and instruments such as the organ. (A Mighty Fortress is Our God) Many countries added in their folk music influences and their vernacular languages. As denominations formed, different theological expressions were carried in song.

But not everyone was on board with these developments. Hymns were only officially accepted by the Church of England in 1820, several hundred years after the Reformation. Prior to that, England and Scottish churches mostly only accepted the use of sung psalms or biblical texts.⁶

In America, hymnody settled in to stay. Many churches today operate with different collections of hymns (I have a rather rabbit-like collection of hymnals in my basement, I look away and they seem to spawn more), but as the modern ear gets further from the hymn-dominated centuries, the less it can pick a part the difference between those hymnals.

Consider: if you were a commoner or a peasant or even an American settler, you could hear music two ways: music you made by yourself or with friends, or music from the church.

Music was fairly stable during this period, outside of the live performances of the classical world, which were inaccessible to most. It’s why hymns from 1500 and hymns from 1900 can all go together in the same hymnal and your average listener couldn’t pin them to any one time period.

Can you imagine that today? Show an average listener-–heck, show a teenager-–a song from any decade from 1950 to now, and they’ve got a pretty good shot at getting within the decade.

The ability to record music globalized the musical landscape. The first gramophone was released for the masses at the turn of the 19th century, record players and radio were popular in the 1930s, and hit their golden era stride in the 1970s. You could now listen to music in your home, performed by a first-rate artist from anywhere in the world. And anything that globalizes, evolves.

Photo by Victrola Record Players on Unsplash

People experienced musical cultures to which they had no prior access. We saw the rise of gospel, jazz, folk, and later, rock and pop. Church music didn’t fade, but it also didn’t dominate as it once did. Music in the home had become the most accessible way to listen to music. Music was now something you could have “taste” in as an average listener. We could develop and explore our preferences, opinions, and favorites.

We could have favorite songs and experience them again and again, in exactly the same way, like never before. What the average person thought of when they thought of “music” had altered forever.

This period can be seen as a great confluence where various musical streams merged into a river of music, creating a vibrant and diverse musical ecosystem.

As in all the other periods, some artists wanted to make music devoted to the divine experience. A “Jesus People” spiritual revival came in a wave in the 60s and 70s, and so did Jesus People music. Many Jesus People artists were guitar-derived folk musicians, marking one of the first steps away from the organ, choral, or piano-driven worship music that the church had known. (Lovely Jesus, Here I am)

Now, your average citizen didn’t listen to organ or choral music when they experienced music daily, they listened to songs that had guitars, keyboards, and percussion. So people did what they always do, which is express their experience of the divine in and through the familiar musical frameworks that they enjoyed. Many of us alive witnessed the rise of praise and worship music, a genre characterized by simple, repetitive musical structures and lyrics that focus on adoration and devotion to God. This style marked a significant shift in worship music, moving away from the heightened, poetic language of traditional hymnody towards a more informal, intimate style of worship. (Gather Us In.)

Soon, worship spawned as many sub-genres of itself that can be imagined. I picked up an Encyclopedia of Contemporary Worship Music in preparation for this book, and while dated, it went up to the year 2000. At that time, the introduction of the book was 12 pages, the other 1078 pages were artist biographies and discograpy.

Considering contemporary worship, which was “coined as the euphemism for Christian rock music back in the days when many Christians could not bring themselves to admit that they were listening to the supposedly demonic sounds of a rock ‘n’ roll,”⁷ had only begun in the 60’s, the growth in forty years is astounding. And it hasn’t stopped. (I Could Sing of Your Love Forever)

Many church hymnals today now include songs that were written in that early contemporary era. Darlene Czech, Marty Haugen, and Marantha Music are familiar artists who allow the traditional-leaning church to participate in contemporary worship. (How Deep the Father’s Love For Us.)

Photo by Scott Broome on Unsplash

I’ve noted that several of my traditional friends call these pieces “hymns.” It led to an interesting discussion on whether those pieces could be called contemporary today, and also what was a hymn and what wasn’t. We never decided.

Today, contemporary Christian music can be done with some configuration of guitar, keyboard, bass, drums, and vocalist. (Oceans) Traditional music is often done with some amalgam of organ, piano, choir, and cantor. 

Some savvy folks may also notice that the most recent Christian music also uses loops, samples, synths, drum pads, and that the melodies tend to be more complex. It’s made it harder for your average church to replicate and reflects both our tendency to add complexity and the influence on electronica on popular music and what we find familiar. (So Will I, A Million X)

We are already seeing Latin- and African-influenced worship songs, which I only expect to grow as the center of global Christianity drifts south.

So, as a church musician, how do we reconcile this massive palette of music with what we can do as singular artists, most of us part-time? How do we begin to stretch our congregation and ourselves, as we work to find that important balance between accessible and artistic when the target is always moving?

I don’t pretend this is an easy task. It requires thought, care, bravery, and imagination.

But it is doable. And it must be done. We have a calling to embrace the diversity of worship music as a reflection of the church's universal and timeless nature.

Key points

• At one time, Christian music was unaccompanied and predominantly Scripture sung in unison as a way for Christians to demonstrate unity.

• The early arguments centered around the use of instruments and harmony.

• Arguments later centered around the use of Latin vs. vernacular or common languages, and a continued question over the rightness of complex music vs. plain.

• Hymns arose around the Reformation as an answer to accessibility for the common person, eschewing both Latin and the boundaries of using only biblical texts. Worship took on a poetic, theological nature.

• After recorded music changed the landscape and allowed musical styles to cross-pollinate, worshipful music was created in every genre imaginable. Contemporary Christian music, in the rock and pop templates, gained mainstream popularity. Entire churches were formed around this new style, creating a split between contemporary and traditional churches.

1. Weimar, Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Ritual, 226.

2. Ibid, 278. 

3. Clement, Paed. II, 4; PG VIII 445.

4. Kendrick, Singing Jeremiah, pg 9.

5. Ibid, 10.

6. Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. "hymn." Encyclopedia Britannica, November 28, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/topic/hymn.

7. Powell, Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music, pg 12.