ANTHEM, derived from the Gr. avrl4wva, through the Saxon ante/n, a word which originally had the same meaning as antiphony (q.v.). It is now, however, generally restricted to a form of church music, particularly in the service of the Church of England, in which it is appointed by the rubrics to follow the third collect at both morning and evening prayer, "in choirs and places where they sing." It is just as usual in this place to have an ordinary hymn as an anthem, which is a more elaborate composi tion than the congregational hymns. Anthems may be written for solo voices only, for the full choir, or for both, and according to this distinction are called re spectively Verse, Full, and Full with Verse. Though the anthem of the Church of England is anal ogous to the motet of the Roman Catholic and Lutheran Churches, both being written for a trained choir and not for the congrega tion, it is as a musical form essen tially English in its origin. Ta11is, Tye, Byrd and Farrant in the 16th century ; Orlando Gibbons, Blow, and Purcell in the 57th, and Croft, Boyce, James Kent, James Nares, Benjamin Cooke, and Samuel Arnold in the 18th were composers of anthems.
(See also NATIONAL ANTHEMS.)