Present-day Christian religious bodies known for conducting their worship services without musical accompaniment include many Oriental Orthodox Churches (such as the Coptic Orthodox Church), many Anabaptist communities (such as the Amish, Old German Baptist Brethren, Old Order Mennonites and Conservative Mennonites), some Presbyterian churches devoted to the regulative principle of worship, Old Regular Baptists, Primitive Baptists, Plymouth Brethren, Churches of Christ, Church of God (Guthrie, Oklahoma), the Reformed Free Methodists, Doukhobors, and the Byzantine Rite of Eastern Christianity. Divine Liturgies and Western Rite masses composed by famous composers such as Peter Tchaikovsky, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Alexander Arkhangelsky, and Mykola Leontovych are fine examples of this. In keeping with this philosophy, early Russian musika which started appearing in the late 17th century, in what was known as khorovïye kontsertï (choral concertos) made a cappella adaptations of Venetian-styled pieces, such as the treatise, Grammatika musikiyskaya (1675), by Nikolai Diletsky.
In the Orthodox Church today, as in the early Church, singing is unaccompanied and instrumental music is not found." This a cappella behavior arises from strict interpretation of Psalms 150, which states, Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Bishop Kallistos Ware says, "The service is sung, even though there may be no choir. In the Byzantine Rite of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Eastern Catholic Churches, the music performed in the liturgies is exclusively sung without instrumental accompaniment. This was a near requirement for this type of piece, and the parts of the crowd were sung while the solo parts which were the quoted parts from either Christ or the authors were performed in a plainchant. Five of Schutz's Historien were Easter pieces, and of these the latter three, which dealt with the passion from three different viewpoints, those of Matthew, Luke and John, were all done a cappella style. Learning from the preceding two composers, Heinrich Schütz utilized the a cappella style in numerous pieces, chief among these were the pieces in the oratorio style, which were traditionally performed during the Easter week and dealt with the religious subject matter of that week, such as Christ's suffering and the Passion. Other composers that utilized the a cappella style, if only for the occasional piece, were Claudio Monteverdi and his masterpiece, Lagrime d'amante al sepolcro dell'amata (A lover's tears at his beloved's grave), which was composed in 1610, and Andrea Gabrieli when upon his death many choral pieces were discovered, one of which was in the unaccompanied style.
Such is seen in the life of Palestrina becoming a major influence on Bach, most notably in the Mass in B Minor. Recent evidence has shown that some of the early pieces by Palestrina, such as those written for the Sistine Chapel, were intended to be accompanied by an organ "doubling" some or all of the voices. Sixteenth-century a cappella polyphony, nonetheless, continued to influence church composers throughout this period and to the present day. By the 16th century, a cappella polyphony had further developed, but gradually, the cantata began to take the place of a cappella forms. The early a cappella polyphonies may have had an accompanying instrument, although this instrument would merely double the singers' parts and was not independent. The polyphony of Christian a cappella music began to develop in Europe around the late 15th century AD, with compositions by Josquin des Prez. The Psalms note that some early songs were accompanied by string instruments, though Jewish and Early Christian music was largely a cappella the use of instruments has subsequently increased within both of these religions as well as in Islam. The madrigal, up until its development in the early Baroque into an instrumentally accompanied form, is also usually in a cappella form. Gregorian chant is an example of a cappella singing, as is the majority of secular vocal music from the Renaissance. Religious origins Ī cappella music was originally used in religious music, especially church music as well as anasheed and zemirot. while the earliest that has survived in its entirety is from the first century A.D.: a piece from Greece called the Seikilos epitaph. The earliest piece of sheet music is thought to have originated from times as early as 2000 B.C. Research suggests that singing and vocables may have been what early humans used to communicate before the invention of language. 2.1.3 Acceptance of instruments in worshipĪ cappella could be as old as humanity itself.2.1.2 Opposition to instruments in worship.