ANTHEM (Gr. Antiphona; Ital. and Span. Antifona; Eng. Antiphon). The idea of responsive singing, choir answering to choir, or choir to priest, seems inherent in the term, and was anciently conveyed by it; but this, as a necessary element of its meaning, has disappeared in our modern Anglicised synonym ‘anthem.
’ This word—after undergoing several changes in its Anglo-Saxon and Early-English forms, readily traceable in Chaucer, and those writers who preceded and followed him, and subsequently used...
