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Robert D Reynolds
Music sung by choruses without text seems a curiosity, since text expression has been for centuries a primary goal of composers in Western civilization. Other cultures may well have textless choral music, but only music of Western civilization is considered in this article. Western textless choral music has been in existence for a long time, although, as this article will show, it has only recently become somewhat popular. 1
The earliest recorded instances of textless singing, according to Iamblichus of Chalcis (late third, early fourth century Before Common Era [BCE]), were Pythagoras and his students (c. 572-c. 500 BCE), who, before retiring, sang certain songs to cleanse the mind of the day's cares; in the morning they sang other songs, sometimes without words, to banish sleepiness. 2 Iamblichus's Greek does say, "... sometimes songs without words ... the noun lexis, the word for 'speech,' 'discourse,' related to lego ['say'], hence 'what is said.' Iamblichus's phrase is interesting ... because to have songs aneu lexeos is to have songs that don't say anything, don't convey any idea through speech . This is not the same idea as ohne Wörter, sans paroles . The Greek word for "word" is not there; rather what is at issue is the idea of conveying idea through speech, and the Pythagoreans (evidently) sometimes even sang songs without words at all...." 3
When the Church Fathers make mention of the jubilus ... they do so in only one circumstance: when, in the composition of a Psalm Commentary, they encounter some form of the word "jubilar" --for example, at the beginning of Psalm 65, Jubilate deo omnis terra . The patristic Psalm Commentary, with few exceptions, adheres to the so-called allegorical method, which calls for a figurative explanation of every key word.... Hilary of Poitiers (d. 367 BCE) was the author of the first Latin Psalm Commentary. According to the conventions of our language, we give the name jubilus to the sound of a pastoral and rustic voice. 4
A few decades later, St. Augustine (354-430 BCE) established the meaning of the term jubilus as it endured for a millennium in Christian literature....