Like the Pythagoreans, the early Christian Church embraced an ideal of unity and harmony rather than duality and disharmony. In musical terms, this meant that it rejected all heterophony and polyphony, preferring the monophonic (unharmonised, single-part) vocal music, known as plainchant or plainsong. Just as all souls were to be united in the Christian liturgy, so all voices were to join in a single symphony. This is expressly stated by Clement of Alexandria, the 2nd-century church father, in his Protrepticos:
We want to strive so that we, the many, may be brought together into one love, according to the union of the essential unity. As we do good may we similarly pursue unity … The union of many, which the divine harmony has called forth out of a medley of sounds and division, becomes one symphony, following the one leader of the choir and teacher, the Word, resting in that same truth and crying out, “Abba, Father” (Protrepticos 9. quoted in Quasten, p. 67).
The divine harmony is thus epitomised by the plainsong which consists of melodies composed in free rhythm, depending on the accentuation of the words, and sung in unison.
The patrons of this Christian singing are the biblical David, the “sweet psalmist”, Miriam, the prophetess, and Deborah, as well as all the other performers of songs and dances of victory, whose role was to enhance the divine worship in the Jerusalem temple. The music Clement wishes to ban is chromatic music “with its colourful harmonies … Thracian music, which follows Jubal” (Quasten, p. 67) Jubal is named in Genesis as the father of all who play the lyre and flute and Clement is here referring to all the instrumental music which originated with the cithara. In a tone reminiscent of Plato, he remarks in the Pedagogue, his work on Christian education:
But we shall choose temperate harmonies; we shall keep far away from our virile minds all liquid harmonies which by modulating tones lead to a dangerous art which trains to effeminacy and langour. Austere and temperate songs protect against wild drunkenness; therefore we shall leave chromatic harmonies to immoderate revels and to the music of courtesans (Paidagogos. 2, 4. quoted in Quasten, p. 68).
Curiously, Jubal was initially respected in the scriptures, but the alarm generated by David’s frenzied dancing before the Ark of the Covenant suggests an ambivalent attitude towards music and dance among the Israelites and with the destruction of the Second Temple, in 70 ce, instrumental music was no longer a part of Jewish worship. The early Christians preserved the musical influences of the Jews and were also mindful of Plato’s warnings in The Republic about the detrimental consequences of “lascivious” music. Text-dominated chanting in praise of God, propagated in the name of Pope Gregory I (who reigned from 590–604) and commonly known as Gregorian chants, became the ideal form of Christian worship.
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Naming
The taboo on naming, the secrecy of names, and the power conferred upon one who knows or discovers the secret name, is a topic that has long fascinated anthropologists, folklorists and religious historians. The tale of Rumpelstilzchen, collected by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the 19th century and still told to children today, exemplifies the belief. In the story, a poor miller’s daughter promises her first-born to a dwarf because he has spun straw into gold and thereby saved her life. After marrying the cruel king who had locked her in the room and compelled her to spin the straw, she becomes queen and, when her first child is born, the dwarf returns to collect his fee. Distraught, she begs him not to take the child, and he, more merciful than the king, agrees not to take the child if, within the next three days, she can guess his name. After two unsuccessful days, someone chances upon the dwarf at night, hopping round a fire and crying his name. His name discovered, he furiously drives his foot into the ground and tears himself in two.
Names are mysterious things; the name of a person, a deity, a spirit, or any other phenomenon is often thought to be linked to its very essence. Merely to pronounce a name is sufficient to raise a spirit or expel a demon. In Hinduism the recitation of divine names, and especially that of Krishna, helps to bring release from the round of constant reincarnations. In Mahayana Buddhism it is Buddha’s name that must be invoked while every Muslim whose name contains that of the prophet Mohammed will go to paradise. The Netsilik Inuit (Eskimo) are forbidden to practise female infanticide once the child has been named and conversely, in ancient Egypt and China, the removal of a name meant that the person (or god) ceased to exist (Denny, p. 300–307). According to Jewish tradition, the divine name of God, Yahweh, is too holy to be pronounced. It is not clear whether it is God, an angel or a man who fights Jacob as he crosses the ford of the Jabbok (Genesis 32, 26–9), but whoever it is, he refuses to tell Jacob his name.
It is because names are so powerful, and the knowledge of them so often dangerous if revealed, that they are surrounded by so many taboos. An attempt to classify name taboos has been made by George B. Foucart. He divides the prohibition on names into five categories:
a. taboos on mentioning the personal name of an individual, sometimes even by the person himself; b. prohibitions on pronouncing the names of gods, genii, spirits and animistic powers;
c. the same taboos applied to those secret names conferred at initiations and consecrations upon those chosen to act as intermediaries between the human and spirit worlds;
d. taboos on naming the dead and;