Book Description

"This is the first full-length comparative study of the music of the Christian and Jewish liturgies. It is designed to show the liturgical and musical interdependence of Church and Synagogue during the first millennium of the Christian era and to highlight the series of cultural exhanges between East and West that occurred during those centuries. With a wealth of scholarly evidence, the author tells the story of the development of the Christian forms of worship, both Eastern and Roman. At the same time he explains the modifications made in Jewish ceremonies and rituals, in areas where Jews and Christians lived side by side, with resulting exchange in both directions, from Church to Synagogue as well as from Synagogue to Church. Professor Werner first examines Jewish practices of worship at the time of the beginnings of Christianity and then traces the spread and modifications of these ancient Jewish, and even pre-Jewish, conceptions of sacred music and ritual as they were adapted by various Christian groups. Historical, philological, and musicological scholarship is used to discover the complex interrelationship between Christian and Hebraic elements in prayer books, poetry and psalmody, hymns, devotional music, and all the other aspects of sacred liturgy. Professor Werner has used many sources previously neglected and has reexamined those already available. Scholars of theology, liturgy, and music, and historians as well, will find much that will stimulate further research, and all interested in the formation of the religions of the West will stand to profit from this scholarly work on the interplay of two great religious movements." --Jacket.