Hymns in the context of "Byzantine music"

The Book of Psalms (/sɑː(l)mz/ SAH(L)MZ, US also /sɔː(l)mz/; Biblical Hebrew: תְּהִלִּים‎, romanized: Tehillīm, lit. 'praises'; Ancient Greek: Ψαλμός, romanized: Psalmós; Latin: Liber Psalmorum; Arabic: مَزْمُور, romanized: Mazmūr, in Islam also called Zabur, Arabic: زَبُورُ, romanized: Zabūr), also known as the Psalter, is the first book of the third section of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) called Ketuvim ('Writings'), and a book of the Old Testament.

The book is an anthology of Hebrew religious hymns. In the Jewish and Western Christian traditions, there are 150 psalms, and several more in the Eastern Christian churches. The book is divided into five sections, each ending with a doxology, a hymn of praise. There are several types of psalms, including hymns or songs of praise, communal and individual laments, royal psalms, imprecation, and individual thanksgivings. The book also includes psalms of communal thanksgiving, wisdom, pilgrimage, and other categories.

Ancient Egyptian literature was written with the Egyptian language from ancient Egypt's pharaonic period until the end of Roman domination. It represents the oldest corpus of Egyptian literature. Along with Sumerian literature, it is considered the world's earliest literature.

Writing in ancient Egypt—both hieroglyphic and hieratic—first appeared in the late 4th millennium BC during the late phase of predynastic Egypt. By the Old Kingdom (26th century BC to 22nd century BC), literary works included funerary texts, epistles and letters, hymns and poems, and commemorative autobiographical texts recounting the careers of prominent administrative officials. It was not until the early Middle Kingdom (21st century BC to 17th century BC) that a narrative Egyptian literature was created. This was a "media revolution" which, according to Richard B. Parkinson, was the result of the rise of an intellectual class of scribes, new cultural sensibilities about individuality, unprecedented levels of literacy, and mainstream access to written materials. The creation of literature was thus an elite exercise, monopolized by a scribal class attached to government offices and the royal court of the ruling pharaoh. However, there is no full consensus among modern scholars concerning the dependence of ancient Egyptian literature on the sociopolitical order of the royal courts.

A hymnwriter (or hymn writer, hymnist, hymnodist, hymnographer, etc.) is someone who writes the text, music, or both of hymns. The Christian tradition views the composition of hymns as dating back to before the time of David, who is traditionally believed to have composed many of the Psalms. The term hymnodist, in the United States more than in other regions, broadens the scope to include the study of hymns.

Musaeus of Athens (Greek: Μουσαῖος, Mousaios) was a legendary Greek polymath, philosopher, historian, prophet, seer, priest, poet, and musician, said to have been the founder of priestly poetry in Attica. He composed dedicatory and purificatory hymns and prose treatises, and oracular responses.

Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Its roots are in blues, ragtime, European harmony, African rhythmic rituals, spirituals, hymns, marches, vaudeville song, and dance music. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation.

As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. However, jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisational style), and gypsy jazz (a style that emphasized musette waltzes) were the prominent styles. Bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music" which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, linear melodic lines.

The Liturgy of the Hours (Latin: Liturgia Horarum), Divine Office (Latin: Divinum Officium), or Opus Dei ("Work of God") is a set of Catholic prayers comprising the canonical hours, often also referred to as the breviary, of the Latin Church. The Liturgy of the Hours forms the official set of prayers "marking the hours of each day and sanctifying the day with prayer." The term "Liturgy of the Hours" has been retroactively applied to the practices of saying the canonical hours in both the Christian East and West–particularly within the Latin liturgical rites–prior to the Second Vatican Council, and is the official term for the canonical hours promulgated for usage by the Latin Church in 1971. Before 1971, the official form for the Latin Church was the Breviarium Romanum, first published in 1568 with major editions through 1962.

The Liturgy of the Hours, like many other forms of the canonical hours, consists primarily of psalms supplemented by hymns, readings, and other prayers and antiphons prayed at fixed prayer times. Together with the Mass, it constitutes the public prayer of the church. Christians of both Western and Eastern traditions (including the Latin Catholic, Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Assyrian, Lutheran, Anglican, and some other Protestant churches) celebrate the canonical hours in various forms and under various names. The chant or recitation of the Divine Office therefore forms the basis of prayer within the consecrated life, with some of the monastic or mendicant orders producing their own permutations of the Liturgy of the Hours and older Roman Breviary.

Entheogens are psychoactive substances used in spiritual, religious, recreational, therapeutic, and experimental contexts to induce altered states of consciousness. While the term itself emphasizes ritual and sacred applications, the same substances are also frequently employed recreationally—sometimes in ways that diverge from or disregard traditional protocols. Hallucinogens such as the psilocybin found in so-called "magic" mushrooms have been used in sacred contexts since ancient times. Derived from a term meaning "generating the divine from within", entheogens are, in religious and shamanic contexts, intentionally employed in the attempt to facilitate experiences of transcendence, healing, divination, and mystical insight.

Entheogens have been used in religious rituals in the belief they aid personal spiritual development. Anthropological study has established that entheogens are used for religious, magical, shamanic, or spiritual purposes in many parts of the world. Civilizations such as the Maya and Aztecs used psilocybin mushrooms, peyote, and morning glory seeds in ceremonies meant to connect with deities and perform healing. They have traditionally been used to supplement diverse practices, such as transcendence, including healing, divination, meditation, yoga, sensory deprivation, asceticism, prayer, trance, rituals, chanting, imitation of sounds, hymns like peyote songs, drumming, and ecstatic dance.

Congregational singing is the practice of the congregation participating in the music of a church, either in the form of hymns or a metrical Psalms or a free form Psalm or in the form of the office of the liturgy (for example Gregorian chants). It is contrasted with music being sung exclusively by a choir or cantor(s). Congregational singing was largely the invention of the Protestant Reformation. Before then, singing in churches, especially in larger urban churches, was largely left to professionals. The reformers in Strasbourg, in particular, reduced the church service largely to a sermon bookended by congregational singing and prayers.