II.

Origins

Hymn singing within the Western religions, Judaism and Christianity, dates from at least the time of the biblical Book of Psalms, the Hebrew name for which, Tehillim, means “Praise Songs.” The Eastern Christian churches at Antioch and Constantinople (present-day İstanbul) were the centers of the hymn-writing movement in the early church. The first collection of Christian hymn texts, the Gnostic Psalter, contained paraphrases of the Psalms. The success of this work led the Syrian monk St. Ephrem of Edessa to write hymns in Syriac in order to spread the Christian faith.

In the 3rd and 4th centuries ad, hymn texts were written in Greek by such writers as Methodius, the bishop of Olympus; Synesius, the bishop of Ptolemaïs in Cyrenaica; and the Eastern Church prelate St. Gregory of Nazianzus. The music to which these hymns were sung was chant. Only a few ancient Christian chant melodies survive, the earliest dating from about ad300.