Hallelujah

From around 500 to 1400 A.D. the dominance of the Catholic church was ever growing amongst society, and with it came religious music. One early form of religous music is the Gregorian chant, a monophonic style, meaning it has only one melody without any harmonic accompaniment and the music did not follow any set tempo, the name Gregorian is said to come from Pope Gregory (590-604) but there is no solid evidence of how much he actually contributed to the Gregorian chant. I've put up an example of this styel of chant to listen to so you can see how free flowing it is and get a general feeling for the music. the song is called " Victimae paschali laudes" and talks about Christ's triumph over death, it remains one of the most famous Easter songs amongst the Church.

Religous music mostly speaks of becoming free and reaching God in some way or other and is used to give that very feeling, with similar psychological functions going on whilst singing the chants, a high level of adrenaline can go through the crowd giving off a real buzz and excitement that allows them to believe it is the feeling of being in the presence of God, however, I don't intend to offend anyone's belief's but that's just the information i've collected and doesn't mean that's my own opinion.

 Compared to the caveman style of using music for hunting, we now have music that is used as a means of worship and idolising, with lyrics that have been thought about and the use Greek scales, a lot different to the major and minor we know today but also a lot different to the chants of hunter/gatherers.

Now that people have established the use of music for something that isn't directly linked to basic human survival, it can also be used for ceremonial events such as celebrations for rulers of the country or for a big national event, you could even say that some of the Gregorian chants are ceremonial as they had specific songs for Easter, Christmas etc. one example of music being used for ceremonial purposes is at a funeral, a time where people can gather and remember the life of a loved one who has recently died, so music would be something people would see as sacred and helping their loved one across to the afterlife. You therefore put a link between ceremonial and religious music. Ceremonial music continues to be used today, the best example I can think of would be the familiar "Happy Birthday" song.