"ACAPPELLA MUSIC"
Larry Yarber
"Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord;" (Ephesians 5:19).
Upon their first visit to a Church of Christ, many may find it strange to hear acappella music, only. Webster tells us that acappella means, "acappella, a-ka-pel-a, a, [< It. a cappella, in chapel style.] Mus. In the style of chapel music; without instrumental accompaniment" (WEBSTER, 1973, pg. 6). The word acappella derived its meaning from the musical practice of the early church. God's people sang without any type of instrumental accompaniment. However, today, most religious groups use instrumental music in their worship of God? Why and how did this come to pass?
Let's see what some historians have to say about this momentous question. "Pope Vitalian is related to have first introduced organs into some of the churches of Western Europe, about 670; but the earliest trustworthy account is that of one sent as a present by the Greek emperor Constantine Copronymus to Pepin, King of the Franks in 1075" (The American Encyclopedia, Vol. 12, pg. 688). (Neander, in General Church History, Vol. 1, pg. 414) says, "Church psalmody, also, passed over from the synagogue to the Christian Church. The apostle Paul exhorts the primitive churches to sing spiritual songs. For this purpose were used the psalms of the Old Testament, and partly hymns composed expressly for this object, especially hymns of praise and of thanks to God, and to Christ, such having been known to Pliny, as in customary use in the Christians of his time." Others, close to the Apostolic age wrote: (Justin Martyr, 139 A. D.), "The use of singing with instrumental music was not received in the ChristianChurches, as it was among the Jews in their infant state, but only the use of plain psalm." The Bible, not man, should be, and is, the only true source for the use or non-use of instrumental music in New Testament worship. The above quotes are used only to establish when and how the introduction of instrumental music found its way into New Testament worship.
Now let's see what other leaders of prominent religious movements in the past, have had to say about the use of the instrument in New Testament worship. "I believe that David was not authorized by the Lord to introduce that multitude of musical instruments into the Divine worship of which we read; and I am satisfied that his conduct in this respect is most solemnly reprehended by this prophet; and I further believe that the use of such instruments of music in the Christian Church, is without the sanction and against the will of God; that they are subversive of the spirit of true devotion, and that they are sinful. If there was a woe to them that invented instruments of music, as did David under the law, is there no woe, no curse to them who invent them, and introduce them into the worship of God in the Christian Church? I am an old man, and an old minister; and I here declare that I never knew them productive of any good in the worship of God; and I have reason to believe that they were productive of much evil. Music, as a science, I esteem and admire: but instruments of music in the house of God I abominate and abhor. This is the abuse of music; and here I register my protest against all such corruptions in the worship of the Author of Christianity" (Adam Clarke, Methodist, and one of the world's best-known Bible commentators).
We will continue our look at acappella music in next week's article.