This book is the most comprehensive single study to date of Jewish and Christian music in antiquity. Smith writes as a historian, and his primary goal is to set forth what can be known of the musical practices of Jews and Christians from the time of the First Temple through the fourth century C.E.
Following an introductory preface and an opening chapter on the historical setting of ancient Israelite music, Smith turns in chapter 2 to the music of Israel at the First Temple. He observes that Hebrew words based on the šyr root (words for sing/song) and zmr root (words for plucked instruments and singing to plucked instruments) were reserved for descriptions of cultic activity in the temple, which suggests a musical distinction between cultic music and other kinds of music.
Chapters 3 and 4 treat the Second Temple period. Levitical musicians enter the picture here, and Smith provides a careful treatment of their organization and duties. The vast majority lived outside Jerusalem and performed in the Temple only occasionally (by rotation). Sacrificial music continued to be vocal song with plucked instruments, but pipes may also have been used occasionally. Jewish music from this period is not documented notationally, but a few Babylonian and Hurrian “scores” may be suggestive.
Chapter 5 examines music of religious devotion outside the Temple during the Second Temple era. Smith discusses the Passover Hallel (probably sung), domestic devotional song, liturgical singing among the Therapeutae, and evidence for song at Qumran. The synagogue did not include singing of Psalms or hymns until late antiquity, when scripture readings, including the Hallel, were probably cantillated.
Chapter 6 surveys music among Jews outside the Temple—at weddings, funerals, banquets, other celebrations, in work, and during war.
Chapter 7 treats Christian music of the first three centuries. Topics include patristic polemic against musical instruments, references to singing in the New Testament, information in other early Christian writings about music in the church (including song at the agape and the Eucharist), passages in the New Testament that may have been sung or intoned, passages in scripture eventually adopted as liturgical canticles, and early Christian hymns (notably the dance hymn in the Acts of John, Phōs hilaron, and P.Oxy. 1786).
Chapter 8 examines Christian music in the third and fourth centuries. Monastic and cathedral psalmody are a central focus, as is further evidence of hymnody, including controversies about hymns as vehicles of heresy. The intoning of biblical psalms and canticles was the chief musical staple in liturgy from the fourth century on. This psalmody was not melodic but a kind of “semi-musical recitative” (211).
Chapter 9 discusses the relation between Jewish and Christian music. Smith suggests that there was likely mutual influence well into the Middle Ages, but he rejects the older view of scholarship that the first-century synagogue included psalmody which the earliest church adopted as part of its worship. He also touches on the earliest evidence of musical notation in liturgical texts.
The detail of this book is remarkable, and the coverage is impressive. Topics are treated judiciously and without excessive speculation where evidence fails. A few shortcomings and points of debate may be noted. A good deal of critical scholarship—some older but still valuable studies, some newer—do not appear in the bibliography or notes. To give a few examples: Michael Lattke's extensive studies of the Odes of Solomon, including The Odes of Solomon: A Commentary (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009); the fresh collation of P.Oxy. 1786 in Egert Pöhlmann and Martin West's Documents of Ancient Greek Music (Oxford: Clarendon, 2001); and Johannes Quasten's Musik und Gesang in den Kulten der heidnischen Antike und christlichen Frühzeit (Munster: Aschendorff, 1973; rev. ed. 1983).
A few additional comments may illustrate that the book, for all its breadth, lacks coverage of some topics and is perhaps not always fully conversant with the admittedly vast scholarship pertinent to its subjects. The gospel reference to Jesus and his disciples singing a hymn at their last meal together is possibly based on a factual historical reminiscence about Jesus leading the Hallel at a Passover (or “Passover-like”) meal (121); but even if singing took place at their last meal, the connection of that meal to Passover remains highly disputed in scholarship; moreover, the reference to singing may reflect a eucharistic custom of the church read back into the Last Supper. The carmen addressed to Christ by Christians according to Pliny could be a sung hymn (177), but might be a spoken confession. The absence of any reference to song in Justin's description of Sunday worship (1 Apol. 65–67) strikes some scholars as significant, but Smith never discusses the question. In surveying early Christian hymns incorporated into the New Testament, he mentions Ephesians 5:14, 1 Timothy 3:16, and various “acclamations” in the gospels and in Revelation, but he does not deal with scholarship on the pre-Lukan history of the Lukan canticles or on putative “unmarked” New Testament hymns to which much scholarship has been devoted (Phil. 2:6–11; Col. 1:15–20; John 1:1–14, and so on). He makes brief mention in a footnote of Clement's hymn at the end of Paedagogus, commenting that it is too erudite to have been used in worship and is more suitable for “intellectual appreciation” (211n86), but that kind of distinction calls for consideration of hymns put to devotional and/or didactic use, such as the following: Sib. Or.6, P.Bod. 12, the song against Marcus (apud Irenaeus, Haer. 1.15.6), and the Valentinian and Naasenean hymns quoted by Hippolytus (Haer. 5.9.8–9; 5.10.2; 6.37.7). There is no reference to the hymns of Gregory of Nazianzus. Moreover, Greek music, which is well documented by treatises and scores (and which no doubt both reflected and influenced ancient Mediterranean music generally) is relevant to imaging the music of the early church and deserves a substantial discussion.
The preceding are mostly minor criticisms. Overall, the scholarship of this book is high and the detail rich. Smith's survey makes a significant and welcome contribution to the history of music in the greater ancient Mediterranean world.
