THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PROFESSIONAL CHRISTIAN MUSIC IN THE EARLY MEDIEVAL TIME

Abstract

The article deals with the formation of sacred music by Christians in the early Middle Ages. Basing on the historical sources and scientific literature, the authors show a connection between the musical traditions of Rome, the Western Goths of Spain and the empire of Charlemagne. The teaching of professional church singers, the birth of Mass, the complexity of the musical pattern of Christian singing, the educational ideas of Isidore of Seville and Alcuin of York, the metriz school timely opened by Christian mentors – all of it contributed to the formation of the early medieval educational process. Alcuin is the author of many (about 380) Latin instructive, panegyric, hagiographic, and liturgical poems (among the most famous are The Cuckoo (lat. De cuculo) and The Primate and Saints of the York Church (lat. De pontificibus et sanctis Ecclesiae Eboracensis )). Alcuin also wrote puzzles in poetry and prose. Alkuin conducted the extensive correspondence (with Charles the Great, Anguilbert, Pope Leo III and many others, a total of 232 letters to various people); Alcuin's letters are an important source on the history of the Carolingian society. At the Palace Academy, Alquin taught trivium and quadrivia elements; in his work On True Philosophy, he restored the scheme of the seven liberal arts, following Kassiodor’s parallel between the seven arts and the seven pillars of the temple of Wisdom of Solomon. He compiled textbooks on various subjects (some in a dialogical form). The Art of Grammar (lat. Ars grammatica) and the Slovene of the Most Noble Young Man Pipin with Albin Scholastic (Lat. Disputatio regalis et nobilissimi juvenis Pippini cum Albino scholastico) became very famous. Alcuin’s textbooks on dialectics, dogmatics, rhetoric, and liturgy are also known.