Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1786 is a scrap of paper gathered as part of the large-scale excavation in the early part of last century of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. On one side is part of a grain account; on the other, notation encoding in a very particular way the music of a Christian hymn. The Oxyrhynchus hymn is the oldest example of a Christian hymn, with music, to survive – this source probably dates from the latter half of the third century – and we have enough of it to get a pretty good idea of the piece as a whole.
That much – and a whole lot more social, historical and musical context for the hymn – we get from chapter vi of Charles Cosgrove's all-encompassing study of the papyrus. The chapter might have served better at the start of the book, which instead opens with a detailed discussion of scholarly debates surrounding the music and in particular whether it reflects Greek or Jewish traditions. (On this point, Cosgrove satisfactorily restores P. Oxy. 1786 to the Greek camp, wresting it from the influence of Egon Wellesz who had argued for an ‘Oriental’ or Jewish/Syrian origin.) The book continues with detailed readings of the text and music, including thorough analyses of both theological and musical constituents, and supported by a lengthy appendix on melodic structures in Greek music which will, in itself, provide a useful resource for students of Greek music.
The main disappointment of the volume for this reviewer – coming from a musical rather than theological background – was the absence of a facsimile of the fragment. The fragment is viewable online (at www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk/POxy) but it would have been helpful to view the actual notation side-by-side with the author's discussion in chapter ii.
The musical notation employed by the scribe of P. Oxy. 1786 is of a kind which encodes pitches in letter form, with no relative heightening or lowering of note-names to provide a visual analogy to the ascent and descent of melody. The methodology is not unlike that of traditional solfège, and as with solfège was presumably employed so that the melody could be taught with precision, without being vulnerable to problems inherent in oral dissemination. That in itself tells us something of the status of the hymn – and Cosgrove's hypotheses about why the hymn was committed to paper are all intriguing in this respect. But it also surely tells us something about the sophistication of the melody – one whose athletic leaps and intervallic patterns are a good deal more expansive and virtuosic than much of the early ‘Gregorian’ chant repertory. Cosgrove refers on occasion to a ‘composer’; and while scholars of early Christian chant generally avoid such declarations of authorial integrity, the contours which are described by the melody P. Oxy. 1786 are not those which seem to be naturally occurring, worn down by years of oral tradition, but rather chiselled by design. Notwithstanding Cosgrove's impressive comparison of Greek melodic forms (which, nevertheless, could do with some examples in modern notation), there are elements in this music which are still eccentric and captivating (the descent of a major sixth in one leap being but one example).
It is something about which I often have cause to wonder since – and here I must declare my hand – the Oxyrhynchus hymn is sung every week by the Girls’ Choir of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, which I direct. So far as I know, it is the only place where the hymn is sung regularly in a liturgical context. With its call for silent contemplation of the Trinity, and its jubilant Amen, it provides the perfect ending to a service of contemplation. But it is also a great tune to teach – particularly as a means of instilling a good ear for fourths: the tetrachords which provided the main unit of division of musical space in Greek and early medieval theory. One is tempted to speculate on the pedagogical nature of this ‘work’ and the complementarity of notation and music in this respect.
Music, as Richard Taruskin reminds us, is instantiated in both text and act. Cosgrove also reminds us of this in his final two chapters when he turns away from P. Oxy. 1786 as museum artefact and discusses possible functions for the hymn. His remit here is extensive, and includes everything from the lung capacity of the average ancient Greek singer to what the composer might have deemed an appropriate tempo for performance. (Many a performer might wince at this point: how many composers are good judges of tempo for their own pieces?) But Cosgrove's study encourages us to consider still further: that musical sources – the notation which they bear, the form in which they are presented, the materials employed in their creation; they also are instantiations of ‘text’ and ‘act’. There is the impulse to preserve and pass on to others a tune; but there also is the ambition to create a musical and spiritual document to be prized in itself – not for what it can facilitate in sound, but for what it presents in itself. This, for sure, is the status that P. Oxy. 1786 that has now achieved after almost two millennia: as a treasured artefact as well as a portal to a distant, exotic music.
