Christian music

Common themes of Christian music include praise, worship, penitence and lament, and its forms vary widely around the world.

Most Christian music involves singing, whether by the whole congregation (assembly), or by a specialized subgroup—such as a soloist, duet, trio, quartet, madrigal, choir, or worship band— or both.

Believing that complexity had a tendency to create cacophony, which ruined the music, Gregory I kept things very simple with the chant.

The singing of the Eastern Orthodox is also generally unaccompanied, though in the United States organs are sometimes used as a result of Western influence.

Some of the most well-known exponents of such organ compositions include Johann Sebastian Bach, Dieterich Buxtehude, George Frideric Handel, François Couperin, César Franck and Charles-Marie Widor to name a few.

The church sonata (for orchestra and chamber group) and other sacred instrumental musical forms also developed from the Baroque period onwards.

A chant is the iterative speaking or singing of words or sounds, often primarily on one or two main pitches called reciting tones.

In the later Middle Ages some religious chant evolved into song (forming one of the roots of later Western music).

Some examples of psalters are: A Reformation approach, the normative principle of worship, produced a burst of hymn writing and congregational singing.

Mostly used by Protestant churches, principally Lutheran, Methodist, and Hussite traditions, but in some areas also by Roman Catholic and Anabaptists.

Some examples of famous hymnals are: From the latter half of the 20th century to the present day in Western Christendom—especially in the United States and in other countries with evangelical churches—various genres of music originally often related to pop rock, have been created under the label of Contemporary Christian Music ("CCM") for home-listening and concert use.

[8] Similar developments took place in other language, for example the German Neues Geistliches Lied and Korean Contemporary Christian music.

By the 1990s the genre had eclipsed classical, jazz, and new-age music, and artists began gaining acceptance in the general market.

Other famous artists include Chris Tomlin, Casting Crowns, Amy Grant, and Skillet.