THE RISE OF THE LUTHERAN HYMNODY
The music of the Protestant Church of Germany, while adopting many
features from its great antagonist, presents certain points of contrast
which are of the highest importance not only in the subsequent history of
ecclesiastical song, but also as significant of certain national traits
which were conspicuous among the causes of the schism of the sixteenth
century. The musical system of the Catholic Church proceeded from the
Gregorian chant, which is strictly a detail of the sacerdotal office. The
Lutheran music, on the contrary, is primarily based on the congregational
hymn. The one is clerical, the other laic; the one official, prescribed,
liturgic, unalterable, the other free, spontaneous, and democratic. In
these two forms and ideals we find reflected the same conceptions which
especially characterize the doctrine, worship, and government of these
oppugnant confessions.
The Catholic Church, as we have seen, was consistent in withdrawing the
office of song from the laity and assigning it to a separate company who
were at first taken from the minor clergy, and who even in later periods
were conceived as exercising a semi-clerical function. Congregational
singing, although not officially and without exception discountenanced by
the Catholic Church, has never been encouraged, and song, like prayer, is
looked upon as essentially a liturgic office.
In the Protestant Church the barrier of an intermediary priesthood
between the believer and his God is broken down. The entire membership of
the Christian body is recognized as a universal priesthood, with access
to the Father through one mediator, Jesus Christ. This conception
restores the offices of worship to the body of believers, and they in
turn delegate their administration to certain officials, who, together
with certain independent privileges attached to the office, share with
the laity in the determination of matters of faith and polity.
It was a perfectly natural result of this principle that congregational
song should hold a place in the Protestant cultus which the Catholic
Church has never sanctioned. The one has promoted and tenaciously
maintained it; the other as consistently repressed it,--not on aesthetic
grounds, nor primarily on grounds of devotional effect, but really
through a more or less distinct perception of its significance in respect
to the theoretical relationship of the individual to the Church. The
struggles over popular song in public worship which appear throughout the
early history of Protestantism are thus to be explained. The emancipated
layman found in the general hymn a symbol as well as an agent of the
assertion of his new rights and privileges in the Gospel. The people's
song of early Protestantism has therefore a militant ring. It marks its
epoch no less significantly than Luther's ninety-five theses and the
Augsburg Confession. It was a sort of spiritual _Triumphlied_,
proclaiming to the universe that the day of spiritual emancipation had
dawned.
The second radical distinction between the music of the Protestant Church
and that of the Catholic is that the vernacular language takes the place
of the Latin. The natural desire of a people is that they may worship in
their native idiom; and since the secession from the ancient Church
inevitably resulted in the formation of national or independent churches,
the necessities which maintained in the Catholic Church a common liturgic
language no longer obtained, and the people fell back upon their national
speech.
Among the historic groups of hymns that have appeared since Clement of
Alexandria and Ephraem the Syrian set in motion the tide of Christian
song, the Lutheran hymnody has the greatest interest to the student of
church history. In sheer literary excellence it is undoubtedly surpassed
by the Latin hymns of the mediaeval Church and the English-American
group; in musical merit it no more than equals these; but in historic
importance the Lutheran song takes the foremost place. The Latin and the
English hymns belong only to the history of poetry and of inward
spiritual experience; the Lutheran have a place in the annals of politics
and doctrinal strifes as well. German Protestant hymnody dates from
Martin Luther; his lyrics were the models of the hymns of the reformed
Church in Germany for a century or more. The principle that lay at the
basis of his movement gave them their characteristic tone; they were
among the most efficient agencies in carrying this principle to the mind
of the common people, and they also contributed powerfully to the
enthusiasm which enabled the new faith to maintain itself in the
conflicts by which it was tested. The melodies to which the hymns of
Luther and his followers were set became the foundation of a musical
style which is the one school worthy to be placed beside the Italian
Catholic music of the sixteenth century. This hymnody and its music
afforded the first adequate outlet for the poetic and musical genius of
the German people, and established the pregnant democratic traditions of
German art as against the aristocratic traditions of Italy and France. As
we cannot overestimate the spiritual and intellectual force which entered
the European arena with Luther and his disciples, so we must also
recognize the analogous elements which asserted themselves at the same
moment and under the same inspiration in the field of art expression, and
gave to this movement a language which helps us in a peculiar way to
understand its real import.
The first questions which present themselves in tracing the historic
connections of the early Lutheran hymnody are: What was its origin? Had
it models, and if so, what and where were they? In giving a store of
congregational songs to the German people was Luther original, or only an
imitator? In this department of his work does he deserve the honor which
Protestants have awarded him?
Protestant writers have, as a rule, bestowed unstinted praise upon Luther
as the man who first gave the people a voice with which to utter their
religious emotions in song. Most of these writers are undoubtedly aware
that a national poesy is never the creation of a single man, and that a
brilliant epoch of national literature or art must always be preceded by
a period of experiment and fermentation; yet they are disposed to make
little account of the existence of a popular religious song in Germany
before the Reformation, and represent Luther almost as performing the
miracle of making the dumb to speak. Even those who recognize the fact of
a preexisting school of hymnody usually seek to give the impression that
pure evangelical religion was almost, if not quite, unknown in the
popular religious poetry of the centuries before the Reformation, and
that the Lutheran hymnody was composed of altogether novel elements. They
also ascribe to Luther creative work in music as well as in poetry.
Catholic writers, on the other hand, will allow Luther no originality
whatever; they find, or pretend to find, every essential feature of his
work in the Catholic hymns and tunes of the previous centuries, or in
those of the Bohemian sectaries. They admit the great influence of
Luther's hymns in disseminating the new doctrines, but give him credit
only for cleverness in dressing up his borrowed ideas and forms in a
taking popular guise. As is usually the case in controversy, the truth
lies between the two extremes. Luther's originality has been overrated by
Protestants, and the true nature of the germinal force which he imparted
to German congregational song has been misconceived by Catholics. It was
not new forms, but a new spirit, which Luther gave to his Church. He did
not break with the past, but found in the past a new standing-ground. He
sought truth in the Scriptures, in the writings of the fathers and the
mediaeval theologians; he rejected what he deemed false or barren in the
mother Church, adopted and developed what was true and fruitful, and
moulded it into forms whose style was already familiar to the people. In
poetry, music, and the several details of church worship Luther recast
the old models, and gave them to his followers with contents purified and
adapted to those needs which he himself had made them to realize. He
understood the character of his people; he knew where to find the
nourishment suited to their wants; he knew how to turn their enthusiasms
into practical and progressive directions. This was Luther's achievement
in the sphere of church art, and if, in recognizing the precise nature of
his work, we seem to question his reputation for creative genius, we do
him better justice by honoring his practical wisdom.
The singing of religious songs by the common people in their own language
in connection with public worship did not begin in Germany with the
Reformation. The German popular song is of ancient date, and the
religious lyric always had a prominent place in it. The Teutonic tribes
before their conversion to Christianity had a large store of hymns to
their deities, and afterward their musical fervor turned itself no less
ardently to the service of their new allegiance. Wackernagel, in the
second volume of his monumental collection of German hymns from the
earliest time to the beginning of the seventeenth century, includes
fourteen hundred and forty-eight religious lyrics in the German tongue
composed between the year 868 and 1518.[68] This collection, he says, is
as complete as possible, but we must suppose that a very large number
written before the invention of printing have been lost. About half the
hymns in this volume are of unknown authorship. Among the writers whose
names are given we find such notable poets as Walther von der Vogelweide,
Gottfried von Strassburg, Hartmann von Aue, Frauenlob, Reinmar der
Zweter, Kunrad der Marner, Heinrich von Loufenberg, Michel Behem, and
Hans Sachs, besides famous churchmen like Eckart and Tauler, who are not
otherwise known as poets. A great number of these poems are hymns only in
a qualified sense, having been written, not for public use, but for
private satisfaction; but many others are true hymns, and have often
resounded from the mouths of the people in social religious functions.
Down to the tenth century the only practice among the Germans that could
be called a popular church song was the ejaculation of the words _Kyrie
eleison, Christe eleison_. These phrases, which are among the most
ancient in the Mass and the litanies, and which came originally from the
Eastern Church, were sung or shouted by the German Christians on all
possible occasions. In processions, on pilgrimages, at burials, greeting
of distinguished visitors, consecration of a church or prelate, in many
subordinate liturgic offices, invocations of supernatural aid in times of
distress, on the march, going into battle,--in almost every social action
in which religious sanctions were involved the people were in duty bound
to utter this phrase, often several hundred times in succession. The
words were often abbreviated into _Kyrieles, Kyrie eleis, Kyrielle,
Kerleis_, and _Kles_, and sometimes became mere inarticulate cries.
When the phrase was formally sung, the Gregorian tones proper to it in
the church service were employed. Some of these were florid successions
of notes, many to a syllable, as in the Alleluia from which the Sequences
sprung,--a free, impassioned form of emotional utterance which had
extensive use in the service of the earlier Church, both East and West,
and which is still employed, sometimes to extravagant length, in the
Orient. The custom at last arose of setting words to these exuberant
strains. This usage took two forms, giving rise in the ritual service to
the "farced Kyries" or Tropes, and in the freer song of the people
producing a more regular kind of hymn, in which the _Kyrie eleison_
became at last a mere refrain at the end of each stanza. These songs came
to be called _Kirleisen_, or _Leisen_, and sometimes _Leiche_, and they
exhibit the German congregational hymn in its first estate.
Religious songs multiplied in the centuries following the tenth almost by
geometrical progression. The tide reached a high mark in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries under that extraordinary intellectual awakening
which distinguished the epoch of the Crusades, the Stauffen emperors, the
Minnesingers, and the court epic poets. Under the stimulus of the ideals
of chivalric honor and knightly devotion to woman, the adoration of the
Virgin Mother, long cherished in the bosom of the Church, burst forth in
a multitude of ecstatic lyrics in her praise. Poetic and musical
inspiration was communicated by the courtly poets to the clergy and
common people, and the love of singing at religious observances grew
apace. Certain heretics, who made much stir in this period, also wrote
hymns and put them into the mouths of the populace, thus following the
early example of the Arians and the disciples of Bardasanes. To resist
this perversion of the divine art, orthodox songs were composed, and, as
in the Reformation days, schismatics and Romanists vied with each other
in wielding this powerful proselyting agent.
Mystics of the fourteenth century--Eckart, Tauler, and others--wrote
hymns of a new tone, an inward spiritual quality, less objective, more
individual, voicing a yearning for an immediate union of the soul with
God, and the joy of personal love to the Redeemer. Poetry of this nature
especially appealed to the religious sisters, and from many a convent
came echoes of these chastened raptures, in which are heard accents of
longing for the comforting presence of the Heavenly Bridegroom.
Those half-insane fanatics, the Flagellants, and other enthusiasts of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, also contributed to the store of
pre-Reformation hymnody. Hoffmann von Fallersleben has given a vivid
account of the barbaric doings of these bands of self-tormentors, and it
is evident that their singing was not the least uncanny feature of their
performances.[69]
In the fourteenth century appeared the device which played so large a
part in the production of the Reformation hymns--that of adapting secular
tunes to religious poems, and also making religious paraphrases of
secular ditties. Praises of love, of out-door sport, even of wine, by a
few simple alterations were made to express devotional sentiments. A good
illustration of this practice is the recasting of the favorite folk-song,
"Den liepsten Bulen den ich han," into "Den liepsten Herren den ich han."
Much more common, however, was the transfer of melodies from profane
poems to religious, a method which afterward became an important reliance
for supplying the reformed congregations with hymn-tunes.
Mixed songs, part Latin and part German, were at one time much in vogue.
A celebrated example is the
"In dulce jubilo
Nu singet und seyt fro"
of the fourteenth century, which has often been heard in the reformed
churches down to a recent period.
In the fifteenth century the popular religious song flourished with an
affluence hardly surpassed even in the first two centuries of
Protestantism. Still under the control of the Catholic doctrine and
discipline, it nevertheless betokens a certain restlessness of mind; the
native individualism of the German spirit is preparing to assert itself.
The fifteenth was a century of stir and inquiry, full of premonitions of
the upheaval soon to follow. The Revival of Learning began to shake
Germany, as well as Southern and Western Europe, out of its superstition
and intellectual subjection. The religious and political movements in
Bohemia and Moravia, set in motion by the preaching and martyrdom of Hus,
produced strong effect in Germany. Hus struck at some of the same abuses
that aroused the wrath of Luther, notably the traffic in indulgences. The
demand for the use of the vernacular in church worship was even more
fundamental than the similar desire in Germany, and preceded rather than
followed the movement toward reform. Hus was also a prototype of Luther
in that he was virtually the founder of the Bohemian hymnody. He wrote
hymns both in Latin and in Czech, and earnestly encouraged the use of
vernacular songs by the people. The Utraquists published a song-book in
the Czech language in 1501, and the Unitas Fratrum one, containing four
hundred hymns, in 1505. These two antedated the first Lutheran hymn-book
by about twenty years. The Bohemian reformers, like Luther after them,
based their poetry upon the psalms, the ancient Latin hymns, and the old
vernacular religious songs; they improved existing texts, and set new
hymns in place of those that contained objectionable doctrinal features.
Their tunes also were derived, like those of the German reformers, from
older religious and secular melodies.
These achievements of the Bohemians, answering popular needs that exist
at all times, could not remain without influence upon the Germans.
Encouragement to religious expression in the vernacular was also exerted
by certain religious communities known as Brethren of the Common Life,
which originated in Holland in the latter part of the fourteenth century,
and extended into North and Middle Germany in the fifteenth. Thomas a
Kempis was a member of this order. The purpose of these Brethren was to
inculcate a purer religious life among the people, especially the young;
and they made it a ground principle that the national language should be
used so far as possible in prayer and song. Particularly effective in the
culture of sacred poetry and music among the artisan class were the
schools of the Mastersingers, which flourished all over Germany in the
fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.
Standing upon the threshold of the Reformation, and looking back over the
period that elapsed since the pagan myths and heroic lays of the North
began to yield to the metrical gospel narrative of the "Heliand" and the
poems of Otfried, we can trace the same union of pious desire and poetic
instinct which, in a more enlightened age, produced the one hundred
thousand evangelical hymns of Germany. The pre-Reformation hymns are of
the highest importance as casting light upon the condition of religious
belief among the German laity. We find in them a great variety of
elements,--much that is pure, noble, and strictly evangelical, mixed with
crudity, superstition, and crass realism. In the nature of the case they
do not, on the whole, rise to the poetic and spiritual level of the
contemporary Latin hymns of the Church. There is nothing in them
comparable with the Dies Irae, the Stabat Mater, the Hora Novissima, the
Veni Sancte Spiritus, the Ad Perennis Vitae Fontem, the Passion Hymns of
St. Bernard, or scores that might be named which make up the golden
chaplet of Latin religious verse from Hilary to Xavier. The latter is the
poetry of the cloister, the work of men separated from the world, upon
whom asceticism and scholastic philosophizing had worked to refine and
subtilize their conceptions. It is the poetry, not of laymen, but of
priests and monks, the special and peculiar utterance of a sacerdotal
class, wrapt in intercessory functions, straining ever for glimpses of
the Beatific Vision, whose one absorbing effort was to emancipate the
soul from time and discipline it for eternity. It is poetry of and for
the temple, the sacramental mysteries, the hours of prayer, for seasons
of solitary meditation; it blends with the dim light sifted through
stained cathedral windows, with incense, with majestic music. The simple
layman was not at home in such an atmosphere as this, and the Latin hymn
was not a familiar expression of his thought. His mental training was of
a coarser, more commonplace order. He must particularize, his religious
feeling must lay hold of something more tangible, something that could
serve his childish views of things, and enter into some practical
relation with the needs of his ordinary mechanical existence.
The religious folk-song, therefore, shows many traits similar to those
found in the secular folk-song, and we can easily perceive the influence
of one upon the other. In both we can see how receptive the common people
were to anything that savored of the marvellous, and how their minds
dwelt more upon the external wonder than upon the lesson that it brings.
The connection of these poems with the ecclesiastical dramas, which form
such a remarkable chapter in the history of religious instruction in the
Middle Age, is also apparent, and scores of them are simply narratives of
the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension, told
over and over in almost identical language. These German hymns show in
what manner the dogmas and usages of the Church took root in the popular
heart, and affected the spirit of the time. In all other mediaeval
literature we have the testimony of the higher class of minds, the men of
education, who were saved by their reflective intelligence from falling
into the grosser superstitions, or at least from dwelling in them. But in
the folk poetry the great middle class throws back the ideas imposed by
its religious teachers, tinged by its own crude mental operations. The
result is that we have in these poems the doctrinal perversions and the
mythology of the Middle Age set forth in their baldest form. Beliefs that
are the farthest removed from the teaching of the Scriptures, are carried
to lengths which the Catholic Church has never authoritatively
sanctioned, but which are natural consequences of the action of her
dogmas upon untrained, superstitious minds. There are hymns which teach
the preexistence of Mary with God before the creation; that in and
through her all things were created. Others, not content with the church
doctrine of her intercessory office in heaven, represent her as
commanding and controlling her Son, and even as forgiving sins in her own
right. Hagiolatry, also, is carried to its most dubious extremity. Power
is ascribed to the saints to save from the pains of hell. In one hymn
they are implored to intercede with God for the sinner, because, the
writer says, God will not deny their prayer. It is curious to see in some
of these poems that the attributes of love and compassion, which have
been removed from the Father to the Son, and from the Son to the Virgin
Mother, are again transferred to St. Ann, who is implored to intercede
with her daughter in behalf of the suppliant.
All this, and much more of a similar sort, the product of vulgar error
and distorted thinking, cannot be gainsaid. But let us, with equal
candor, acknowledge that there is a bright side to this subject.
Corruption and falsehood are not altogether typical of the German
religious poetry of the Middle Age. Many Protestant writers represent the
mediaeval German hymns as chiefly given over to mariolatry and much
debasing superstition, and as therefore indicative of the religious state
of the nation. This, however, is very far from being the case, as a
candid examination of such a collection as Wackernagel's will show. Take
out everything that a severe Protestant would reject, and there remains a
large body of poetry which flows from the pure, undefiled springs of
Christian faith, which from the evangelical standpoint is true and
edifying, gems of expression not to be matched by the poetry of Luther
and his friends in simplicity and refinement of language. Ideas common to
the hymnody of all ages are to be found there. One comes to mind in which
there is carried out in the most touching way the thought of John Newton
in his most famous hymn, where in vision the look of the crucified Christ
seems to charge the arrested sinner with his death. Another lovely poem
expresses the shrinking of the disciple in consciousness of mortal
frailty when summoned by Christ to take up the cross, and the comfort
that he receives from the Saviour's assurance of his own sufficient
grace. A celebrated hymn by Tauler describes a ship sent from heaven by
the Father, containing Jesus, who comes as our Redeemer, and who asks
personal devotion to himself and a willingness to live and die with and
for him. Others set forth the atoning work of Christ's death, without
mention of any other condition of salvation. Others implore the direct
guidance and protection of Christ, as in the exquisite cradle hymn of
Heinrich von Loufenberg, which is not surpassed in tenderness and beauty
by anything in Keble's _Lyra Innocentium_, or the child verses of Blake.
This mass of hymns covers a wide range of topics: God in his various
attributes, including mercy and a desire to pardon,--a conception which
many suppose to have been absent from the thought of the Middle Age; the
Trinity; Christ in the various scenes of his life, and as head of the
Church; admonitions, confessions, translations of psalms, poems to be
sung on pilgrimages, funeral songs, political songs, and many more which
touch upon true relations between man and the divine. There is a
wonderful pathos in this great body of national poetry, for it makes us
see the dim but honest striving of the heart of the noble German people
after that which is sure and eternal, and which could offer assurance of
compensation amid the doubt and turmoil of that age of strife and
tyranny. The true and the false in this poetry were alike the outcome of
the conditions of the time and the authoritative religious teaching. The
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, in spite of the abuses which made the
Reformation necessary, contained many saintly lives, beneficent
institutions, much philanthropy, and inspired love of God. All these have
their witness in many products of that era, and we need look no further
than the mediaeval religious poetry to find elements which show that on
the spiritual side the Reformation was not strictly a moral revolution,
restoring a lost religious feeling, but rather an intellectual process,
establishing a hereditary piety upon reasonable and Scriptural
foundations.
We see, therefore, how far Luther was from being the founder of German
hymnody. In trying to discover what his great service to religious song
really was, we must go on to the next question that is involved, and ask,
What was the status and employment of the folk-hymn before the
Reformation? Was it in a true sense a _church_ song? Had it a recognized
place in the public service? Was it at all liturgic, as the Lutheran hymn
certainly was? This brings us to a definitive distinction between the two
schools of hymnody.
The attitude of the Catholic Church to congregational singing has often
been discussed, and is at present the object of a great deal of
misconception. The fact of the matter is, that she ostensibly encourages
the people to share in some of the subordinate Latin offices, but the
very spirit of the liturgy and the development of musical practice have
in course of time, with now and then an exception, reduced the
congregation to silence. Before the invention of harmony all church music
had more of the quality of popular music, and the priesthood encouraged
the worshipers to join their voices in those parts of the service which
were not confined by the rubrics to the ministers. But the Gregorian
chant was never really adopted by the people,--its practical
difficulties, and especially the inflexible insistence upon the use of
Latin in all the offices of worship, virtually confined it to the priests
and a small body of trained singers. The very conception and spirit of
the liturgy, also, has by a law of historic development gradually
excluded the people from active participation. Whatever may have been the
thought of the fathers of the liturgy, the eucharistic service has come
to be simply the vehicle of a sacrifice offered by and through the
priesthood for the people, not a tribute of praise and supplication
emanating from the congregation itself. The attitude of the worshiper is
one of obedient faith, both in the supernatural efficacy of the sacrifice
and the mediating authority of the celebrant. The liturgy is inseparably
bound up with the central act of consecration and oblation, and is
conceived as itself possessing a divine sanction. The liturgy is not in
any sense the creation of the people, but comes down to them from a
higher source, the gradual production of men believed to have been
inspired by the Holy Spirit, and is accepted by the laity as a divinely
authorized means in the accomplishment of the supreme sacerdotal
function. The sacrifice of the Mass is performed for the people, but not
through the people, nor even necessarily in their presence. And so it has
come to pass that, although the Catholic Church has never officially
recognized the existence of the modern mixed choir, and does not in its
rubrics authorize any manner of singing except the unison Gregorian
chant, nevertheless, by reason of the expansion and specialization of
musical art, and the increasing veneration of the liturgy as the very
channel of descending sacramental grace, the people are reduced to a
position of passive receptivity.
As regards the singing of hymns in the national languages, the conditions
are somewhat different. The laws of the Catholic Church forbid the
vernacular in any part of the eucharistic service, but permit vernacular
hymns in certain subordinate offices, as, for instance, Vespers. But even
in these services the restrictions are more emphasized than the
permissions. Here also the tacit recognition of a separation of function
between the clergy and the laity still persists; there can never be a
really sympathetic cooperation between the church language and the
vernacular; there is a constant attitude of suspicion on the part of the
authorities, lest the people's hymn should afford a rift for the subtle
intrusion of heretical or unchurchly ideas.
The whole spirit and implied theory of the Catholic Church is therefore
unfavorable to popular hymnody. This was especially the case in the
latter Middle Age. The people could put no heart into the singing of
Latin. The priests and monks, especially in such convent schools as St.
Gall, Fulda, Metz, and Reichenau, made heroic efforts to drill their
rough disciples in the Gregorian chant, but their attempts were
ludicrously futile. Vernacular hymns were simply tolerated on certain
prescribed occasions. In the century or more following the Reformation,
the Catholic musicians and clergy, taught by the astonishing popular
success of the Lutheran songs, tried to inaugurate a similar movement in
their own ranks, and the publication and use of Catholic German
hymn-books attained large dimensions; but this enthusiasm finally died
out. Both in mediaeval and in modern times there has practically remained
a chasm between the musical practice of the common people and that of the
Church, and in spite of isolated attempts to encourage popular hymnody,
the restrictions have always had a depressing effect, and the free,
hearty union of clergy and congregation in choral praise and prayer is
virtually unknown.
The new conceptions of the relationship of man to God, which so altered
the fundamental principle and the external forms of worship under the
Lutheran movement, manifested themselves most strikingly in the mighty
impetus given to congregational song. Luther set the national impulse
free, and taught the people that in singing praise they were performing a
service that was well pleasing to God and a necessary part of public
communion with him. It was not simply that Luther charged the popular
hymnody with the energy of his world-transforming doctrine,--he also gave
it a dignity which it had never possessed before, certainly not since the
apostolic age, as a part of the official liturgic song of the Church.
Both these facts gave the folk-hymn its wonderful proselyting power in
the sixteenth century,--the latter gives it its importance in the history
of church music.
Luther's work for the people's song was in substance a detail of his
liturgic reform. His knowledge of human nature taught him the value of
set forms and ceremonies, and his appreciation of what was universally
true and edifying in the liturgy of the mother Church led him to retain
many of her prayers, hymns, responses, etc., along with new provisions of
his own. But in his view the service is constituted through the activity
of the believing subject; the forms and expressions of worship are not in
themselves indispensable--the one thing necessary is faith, and the forms
of worship have their value simply in defining, inculcating, stimulating
and directing this faith, and enforcing the proper attitude of the soul
toward God in the public social act of devotion. The congregational song
both symbolized and realized the principle of direct access of the
believer to the Father, and thus exemplified in itself alone the whole
spirit of the worship of the new Church. That this act of worship should
be in the native language of the nation was a matter of course, and hence
the popular hymn, set to familiar and appropriate melody, became at once
the characteristic, official, and liturgic expression of the emotion of
the people in direct communion with God.
The immense consequence of this principle was seen in the outburst of
song that followed the founding of the new Church by Luther at
Wittenberg. It was not that the nation was electrified by a poetic
genius, or by any new form of musical excitement; it was simply that the
old restraints upon self-expression were removed, and that the people
could celebrate their new-found freedom in Christ Jesus by means of the
most intense agency known to man, which they had been prepared by
inherited musical temperament and ancient habit to use to the full. No
wonder that they received this privilege with thanksgiving, and that the
land resounded with the lyrics of faith and hope.
Luther felt his mission to be that of a purifier, not a destroyer. He
would repudiate, not the good and evil alike in the ancient Church, but
only that which he considered false and pernicious. This judicious
conservatism was strikingly shown in his attitude toward the liturgy and
form of worship, which he would alter only so far as was necessary in
view of changes in doctrine and in the whole relation of the Church as a
body toward the individual. The altered conception of the nature of the
eucharist, the abolition of homage to the Virgin and saints, the
prominence given to the sermon as the central feature of the service, the
substitution of the vernacular for Latin, the intimate participation of
the congregation in the service by means of hymn-singing,--all these
changes required a recasting of the order of worship; but everything in
the old ritual that was consistent with these changes was retained.
Luther, like the founders of the reformed Church of England, was
profoundly conscious of the truth and beauty of many of the prayers and
hymns of the mother Church. Especially was he attached to her music, and
would preserve the compositions of the learned masters alongside of the
revived congregational hymn.
As regards the form and manner of service, Luther's improvements were
directed (1) to the revision of the liturgy, (2) the introduction of new
hymns, and (3) the arrangement of suitable melodies for congregational
use. Luther's program of liturgic reform is chiefly embodied in two
orders of worship drawn up for the churches of Wittenberg, _viz._, the
Formula Missae of 1523 and the Deutsche Messe of 1526.
Luther rejected absolutely the Catholic conception of the act of worship
as in itself possessed of objective efficacy. The terms of salvation are
found only in the Gospel; the worship acceptable to God exists only in
the contrite attitude of the heart, and the acceptance through faith of
the plan of redemption as provided in the vicarious atonement of Christ.
The external act of worship in prayer, praise, Scripture recitation,
etc., is designed as a testimony of faith, an evidence of thankfulness to
God for his infinite grace, and as a means of edification and of kindling
the devotional spirit through the reactive influence of its audible
expression. The correct performance of a ceremony was to Luther of little
account; the essential was the prayerful disposition of the heart and the
devout acceptance of the word of Scripture. The substance of worship,
said Luther, is "that our dear Lord speaks with us through his Holy Word,
and we in return speak with him through prayer and song of praise." The
sermon is of the greatest importance as an ally of the reading of the
Word. The office of worship must be viewed as a means of instruction as
well as a rite contrived as the promoter and expression of religious
emotion; the believer is in no wise to be considered as having attained
to complete ripeness and maturity, since if it were so religious worship
would be unnecessary. Such a goal is not to be attained on earth. The
Christian, said Luther, "needs baptism, the Word, and the sacrament, not
as a perfected Christian, but as a sinner."
The Formula Missae of 1523 was only a provisional office, and may be
called an expurgated edition of the Catholic Mass. It is in Latin, and
follows the order of the Roman liturgy with certain omissions, _viz._,
all the preliminary action at the altar as far as the Introit, the
Offertory, the Oblation and accompanying prayers as far as the Preface,
the Consecration, the Commemoration of the Dead, and everything following
the Agnus Dei except the prayer of thanksgiving and benediction. That is
to say, everything is removed which characterizes the Mass as a priestly,
sacrificial act, or which recognizes the intercessory office of the
saints. The musical factors correspond to the usage in the Catholic Mass;
Luther's hymns with accompanying melodies were not yet prepared, and no
trace of the Protestant choral appears in the Formula Missae.
Although this order of 1523 was conceived only as a partial or temporary
expedient, it was by no means set entirely aside by its author, even
after the composition of a form more adapted to the needs of the people.
In the preface to the Deutsche Messe of 1526, Luther cites the Latin
Formula Missae as possessing a special value. "This I will not abandon or
have altered; but as we have kept it with us heretofore, so must we still
be free to use the same where and when it pleases us or occasion
requires. I will by no means permit the Latin speech to be dropped out of
divine worship, since it is important for the youth. And if I were able,
and the Greek and Hebrew languages were as common with us as the Latin,
and had as much music and song as the Latin has, we should hold Masses,
sing and read every Sunday in all four languages, German, Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew." It is important, he goes on to say, that the youth should be
familiar with more languages than their own, in order that they may be
able to give instruction in the true doctrine to those not of their own
nation, Latin especially approving itself for this purpose as the common
dialect of cultivated men.
The Deutsche Messe of 1526, Luther explains, was drawn up for the use of
the mass of the people, who needed a medium of worship and instruction
which was already familiar and native to them. This form is a still
further simplification, as compared with the Formula Missae, and consists
almost entirely of offices in the German tongue. Congregational chorals
also have a prominent place, since the publication of collections of
vernacular religious songs had begun two years before. This liturgy
consists of (1) a people's hymn or a German psalm, (2) Kyrie eleison, (3)
Collect, (4) the Epistle, (5) congregational hymn, (6) the Gospel, (7)
the German paraphrase of the Creed, "Wie glauben all' an einen Gott,"
sung by the people; next follows the sermon; (8) the Lord's Prayer and
exhortation preliminary to the Sacrament, (9) the words of institution
and elevation, (10) distribution of the bread, (11) singing of the German
Sanctus or the hymn "Jesus Christus unser Heiland," (12) distribution of
the wine, (13) Agnus Dei, a German hymn, or the German Sanctus, (14)
Collect of thanksgiving, (15) Benediction.
It was far from Luther's purpose to impose these or any particular forms
of worship upon his followers through a personal assumption of authority.
He reiterates, in his preface to the Deutsche Messe, that he has no
thought of assuming any right of dictation in the matter, emphasizing his
desire that the churches should enjoy entire freedom in their forms and
manner of worship. At the same time he realizes the benefits of
uniformity as creating a sense of unity and solidarity in faith,
practice, and interests among the various districts, cities, and
congregations, and offers these two forms as in his opinion conservative
and efficient. He warns his people against the injury that may result
from the multiplication of liturgies at the instigation of indiscreet or
vain leaders, who have in view the perpetuation of certain notions of
their own, rather than the honor of God and the spiritual welfare of
their neighbors.
In connection with this work of reconstructing the ancient liturgy for
use in the Wittenberg churches, Luther turned his attention to the need
of suitable hymns and tunes. He took up this work not only out of his
love of song, but also from necessity. He wrote to Nicholas Haussmann,
pastor at Zwickau: "I would that we had many German songs which the
people could sing during the Mass. But we lack German poets and
musicians, or they are unknown to us, who are able to make Christian and
spiritual songs, as Paul calls them, which are of such value that they
can be used daily in the house of God. One can find but few that have the
appropriate spirit." The reason for this complaint was short-lived; a
crowd of hymnists sprang up as if by magic, and among them Luther was, as
in all things, chief. His work as a hymn writer began soon after the
completion of his translation of the New Testament, while he was engaged
in translating the psalms. Then, as Koch says, "the spirit of the
psalmists and prophets came over him." Several allusions in his letters
show that he took the psalms as his model; that is to say, he did not
think of a hymn as designed for the teaching of dogma, but as the
sincere, spontaneous outburst of love and reverence to God for his
goodness.
The first hymn-book of evangelical Germany was published in 1524 by
Luther's friend and coadjutor, Johann Walther. It contained four hymns by
Luther, three by Paul Speratus, and one by an unknown author. Another
book appeared in the same year containing fourteen more hymns by Luther,
in addition to the eight of the first book. Six more from Luther's pen
appeared in a song-book edited by Walther in 1525. The remaining hymns of
Luther (twelve in number) were printed in five song-books of different
dates, ending with Klug's in 1643. Four hymn-books contain prefaces by
Luther, the first written for Walther's book of 1525, and the last for
one published by Papst in 1545. Luther's example was contagious. Other
hymn writers at once sprang up, who were filled with Luther's spirit, and
who took his songs as models. Printing presses were kept busy, song-books
were multiplied, until at the time of Luther's death no less than sixty
collections, counting the various editions, had been issued. There was
reason for the sneering remark of a Catholic that the people were singing
themselves into the Lutheran doctrine. The principles of worship
promulgated by Luther and implied in his liturgic arrangements were
adopted by all the Protestant communities; whatever variations there
might be in the external forms of worship, in all of them the
congregational hymn held a prominent place, and it is to be noticed that
almost without exception the chief hymn writers of the Lutheran time were
theologians and preachers.
Luther certainly wrote thirty-six hymns. A few others have been ascribed
to him without conclusive evidence. By far the greater part of these
thirty-six are not entirely original. Many of them are translations or
adaptations of psalms, some of which are nearly literal transfers. Other
selections from Scripture were used in a similar way, among which are the
Ten Commandments, the Ter Sanctus, the song of Simeon, and the Lord's
Prayer. Similar use, _viz._, close translation or free paraphrase, was
made of certain Latin hymns by Ambrose, Gregory, Hus, and others, and
also of certain religious folk-songs of the pre-Reformation period. Five
hymns only are completely original, not drawn in any way from older
compositions. Besides these five many of the transcriptions of psalms and
older hymns owe but little to their models. The chief of these, and the
most celebrated of all Luther's hymns, "Ein' feste Burg," was suggested
by the forty-sixth Psalm, but nothing could be more original in spirit
and phraseology, more completely characteristic of the great reformer.
The beautiful poems, "Aus tiefer Noth" (Ps. cxxx.), and "Ach Gott, vom
Himmel sieh' darein" (Ps. xii.), are less bold paraphrases, but still
Luther's own in the sense that their expression is a natural outgrowth of
the more tender and humble side of his nature.
No other poems of their class by any single man have ever exerted so
great an influence, or have received so great admiration, as these few
short lyrics of Martin Luther. And yet at the first reading it is not
easy to understand the reason for their celebrity. As poetry they
disappoint us; there is no artfully modulated diction, no subtle and
far-reaching imagination. Neither do they seem to chime with our
devotional needs; there is a jarring note of fanaticism in them. We even
find expressions that give positive offence, as when he speaks of the
"Lamb roasted in hot love upon the cross." We say that they are not
universal, that they seem the outcome of a temper that belongs to an
exceptional condition. This is really the fact; here is the clue to their
proper study. They do belong to a time, and not to all time. We must
consider that they are the utterance of a mind engaged in conflict, and
often tormented with doubt of the outcome. They reveal the motive of the
great pivotal figure in modern religious history. More than that--they
have behind them the great impelling force of the Reformation. Perhaps
the world has shown a correct instinct in fixing upon "Ein' feste Burg"
as the typical hymn of Luther and of the Reformation. Heine, who called
it "the Marseillaise of the Reformation;" Frederick the Great, who called
its melody (not without reverence) "God Almighty's grenadier march;"
Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, who chose the same tune to symbolize
aggressive Protestantism; and Wagner, who wove its strains into the grand
march which celebrates the military triumphs of united Germany,--all
these men had an accurate feeling for the patriotic and moral fire which
burns in this mighty song. The same spirit is found in other of Luther's
hymns, but often combined with a tenderer music, in which emphasis is
laid more upon the inward peace that comes from trust in God, than upon
the fact of outward conflict. A still more exalted mood is disclosed in
such hymns as "Nun freut euch, lieben Christen g'mein," and "Von Himmel
hoch da komm ich her"--the latter a Christmas song said to have been
written for his little son Hans. The first of these is notable for the
directness with which it sets forth the Lutheran doctrine of
justification by faith alone. It is in this same directness and homely
vigor and adaptation to the pressing needs of the time that we must find
the cause of the popular success of Luther's hymns. He knew what the
dumb, blindly yearning German people had been groping for during so many
years, and the power of his sermons and poems lay in the fact that they
offered a welcome spiritual gift in phrases that went straight to the
popular heart. His speech was that of the people--idiomatic, nervous, and
penetrating. He had learned how to talk to them in his early peasant
home, and in his study of the folk-songs. Coarse, almost brutal at times,
we may call him, as in his controversies with Henry VIII., Erasmus, and
others; but it was the coarseness of a rugged nature, of a son of the
soil, a man tremendously in earnest, blending religious zeal with
patriotism, never doubting that the enemies of his faith were
confederates of the devil, who was as real to him as Duke George or Dr.
Eck. No English translation can quite do justice to the homely vigor of
his verse. Carlyle has succeeded as well as possible in his translation
of "Ein' feste Burg," but even this masterly achievement does not quite
reproduce the jolting abruptness of the metre, the swing and fire of the
movement. The greater number of Luther's hymns are set to a less strident
pitch, but all alike speak a language which reveals in every line the
ominous spiritual tension of this historic moment.
In philological history these hymns have a significance equal to that of
Luther's translation of the Bible, in which scholars agree in finding the
virtual creation of the modern German language. And the elements that
should give new life to the national speech were to be found among the
commonalty. "No one before Luther," says Bayard Taylor, "saw that the
German tongue must be sought for in the mouths of the people--that the
exhausted expression of the earlier ages could not be revived, but that
the newer, fuller, and richer speech, then in its childhood, must at once
be acknowledged and adopted. With all his scholarship Luther dropped the
theological style, and sought among the people for phrases as artless and
simple as those of the Hebrew writers." "The influence of Luther on
German literature cannot be explained until we have seen how sound and
vigorous and many-sided was the new spirit which he infused into the
language."[70] All this will apply to the hymns as well as to the Bible
translation. Here was one great element in the popular effect which these
hymns produced. Their simple, home-bred, domestic form of expression
caught the public ear in an instant. Those who have at all studied the
history of popular eloquence in prose and verse are aware of the
electrical effect that may be produced when ideas of pith and moment are
sent home to the masses in forms of speech that are their own. Luther's
hymns may not be poetry in the high sense; but they are certainly
eloquence, they are popular oratory in verse, put into the mouths of the
people by one of their own number.
In spite of the fact that these songs were the natural outcome of a
period of spiritual and political conflict, and give evidence of this
fact in almost every instance, yet they are less dogmatic and
controversial than might be expected, for Luther, bitter and intolerant
as he often was, understood the requirements of church song well enough
to know that theological and political polemic should be kept out of it.
Nevertheless these hymns are a powerful witness to the great truths which
were the corner-stone of the doctrines of the reformed church. They
constantly emphasize the principle that salvation comes not through works
or sacraments or any human mediation, but only through the merits of
Christ and faith in his atoning blood. The whole machinery of mariolatry,
hagiolatry, priestly absolution, and personal merit, which had so long
stood between the individual soul and Christ, was broken down. Christ is
no longer a stern, hardly appeasable Judge, but a loving Saviour,
yearning over mankind, stretching out hands of invitation, asking, not a
slavish submission to formal observances, but a free, spontaneous
offering of the heart. This was the message that thrilled Germany. And it
was through the hymns of Luther and those modelled upon them that the new
evangel was most widely and quickly disseminated. The friends as well as
the enemies of the Reformation asserted that the spread of the new
doctrines was due more to Luther's hymns than to his sermons. The editor
of a German hymn-book published in 1565 says: "I do not doubt that
through that one song of Luther, 'Nun freut euch, lieben Christen
g'mein,' many hundred Christians have been brought to the faith who
otherwise would not have heard of Luther." An indignant Jesuit declared
that "Luther's songs have damned more souls than all his books and
speeches." We read marvellous stories of the effect of these hymns; of
Lutheran missionaries entering Catholic churches during service and
drawing away the whole congregation by their singing; of wandering
evangelists standing at street corners and in the market places, singing
to excited crowds, then distributing the hymns upon leaflets so that the
populace might join in the paean, and so winning entire cities to the new
faith almost in a day. This is easily to be believed when we consider
that the progress of events and the drift of ideas for a century and more
had been preparing the German mind for Luther's message; that as a people
the Germans are extremely susceptible to the enthusiasms that utter
themselves in song; and that these hymns carried the truths for which
their souls had been thirsting, in language of extraordinary force,
clothed in melodies which they had long known and loved.
We lay especial stress upon the hymns of Luther, not simply on account of
their inherent power and historic importance, but also because they are
representative of a school. Luther was one of a group of lyrists which
included bards hardly less trenchant than he. Koch gives the names of
fifty-one writers who endowed the new German hymnody between 1517 and
1560.[71] He finds in them all one common feature,--the ground character
of objectivity. "They are genuine church hymns, in which the common faith
is expressed in its universality, without the subjective feeling of
personality." "It is always we, not I, which is the prevailing word in
these songs. The poets of this period did not, like those of later times,
paint their own individual emotions with all kinds of figurative
expressions, but, powerfully moved by the truth, they sang the work of
redemption and extolled the faith in the free, undeserved grace of God in
Jesus Christ, or gave thanks for the newly given pure word of God in
strains of joyful victory, and defied their foes in firm, godly trust in
the divinity of the doctrine which was so new and yet so old. Therefore
they speak the truths of salvation, not in dry doctrinal tone and sober
reflection, but in the form of testimony or confession, and although in
some of these songs are contained plain statements of belief, the reason
therefor is simply in the hunger and thirst after the pure doctrine.
Hence the speech of these poets is the Bible speech, and the expression
forcible and simple. It is not art, but faith, which gives these songs
their imperishable value."
The hymns of Luther and the other early Reformation hymnists of Germany
are not to be classed with sacred lyrics like those of Vaughan and Keble
and Newman which, however beautiful, are not of that universality which
alone adapts a hymn for use in the public assembly. In writing their
songs Luther and his compeers identified themselves with the congregation
of believers; they produced them solely for common praise in the
sanctuary, and they are therefore in the strict sense impersonal,
surcharged not with special isolated experiences, but with the vital
spirit of the Reformation. No other body of hymns was ever produced under
similar conditions; for the Reformation was born and cradled in conflict,
and in these songs, amid their protestations of confidence and joy, there
may often be heard cries of alarm before powerful adversaries, appeals
for help in material as well as spiritual exigencies, and sometimes also
tones of wrath and defiance. Strains such as the latter are most frequent
perhaps in the paraphrases of the psalms, which the authors apply to the
situation of an infant church encompassed with enemies. Yet there is no
sign of doubt of the justice of the cause, or of the safety of the flock
in the divine hands.
Along with the production of hymns must go the composition or arrangement
of tunes, and this was a less direct and simple process. The conditions
and methods of musical art forbade the ready invention of melodies. We
have seen in our previous examination of the music of the mediaeval
Church that the invention of themes for musical works was no part of the
composer's business. Down to about the year 1600 the scientific musician
always borrowed his themes from older sources--the liturgic chant or
popular songs--and worked them up into choral movements according to the
laws of counterpoint. He was, therefore, a tune-setter, not a tune-maker.
The same custom prevailed among the German musicians of Luther's day, and
it would have been too much to expect that they should go outside their
strict habits, and violate all the traditions of their craft, so far as
to evolve from their own heads a great number of singable melodies for
the people's use. The task of Luther and his musical assistants,
therefore, was to take melodies from music of all sorts with which they
were familiar, alter them to fit the metre of the new hymns, and add the
harmonies. In course of time the enormous multiplication of hymns, each
demanding a musical setting, and the requirements of simplicity in
popular song, brought about a union of the functions of the tune-maker
and the tune-setter, and in the latter part of the sixteenth century the
modern method of inventing melodies took the place of the mediaeval
custom of borrowing and adapting, both in the people's song and in larger
works.
Down to a very recent period it has been universally believed that Luther
was a musician of the latter order _i.e._, a tune-maker, and that the
melodies of many of his hymns were of his own production. Among writers
on this period no statement is more frequently made than that Luther
wrote tunes as well as hymns. This belief is as tenacious as the myth of
the rescue of church music by Palestrina. Dr. L. W. Bacon, in the preface
to his edition of the hymns of Luther with their original melodies,
assumes, as an undisputed fact, that many of these tunes are Luther's own
invention.[72] Even Julian's _Dictionary of Hymnology_, which is supposed
to be the embodiment of the most advanced scholarship in this department
of learning, makes similar statements. But this is altogether an error.
Luther composed no tunes. Under the patient investigation of a
half-century, the melodies originally associated with Luther's hymns have
all been traced to their sources. The tune of "Ein' feste Burg" was the
last to yield; Baeumker finds the germ of it in a Gregorian melody. Such
proof as this is, of course, decisive and final. The hymn-tunes, called
chorals, which Luther, Walther, and others provided for the reformed
churches, were drawn from three sources, _viz._, the Latin song of the
Catholic Church, the tunes of German hymns before the Reformation, and
the secular folk-song.
1. If Luther was willing to take many of the prayers of the Catholic
liturgy for use in his German Mass, still more ready was he to adopt the
melodies of the ancient Church. In his preface to the Funeral Hymns
(1542), after speaking of the forms of the Catholic Church which in
themselves he did not disapprove, he says: "In the same way have they
much noble music, especially in the abbeys and parish churches, used to
adorn most vile, idolatrous words. Therefore have we undressed these
lifeless, idolatrous, crazy words, stripping off the noble music, and
putting it upon the living and holy word of God, wherewith to sing,
praise, and honor the same, that so the beautiful ornament of music,
brought back to its right use, may serve its blessed Maker, and his
Christian people." A few of Luther's hymns were translations of old Latin
hymns and Sequences, and these were set to the original melodies.
Luther's labor in this field was not confined to the choral, but, like
the founders of the musical service of the Anglican Church, he
established a system of chanting, taking the Roman use as a model, and
transferring many of the Gregorian tunes. Johann, Walther, Luther's
co-laborer, relates the extreme pains which Luther took in setting notes
to the Epistle, Gospel, and other offices of the service. He intended to
institute a threefold division of church song,--the choir anthem, the
unison chant, and the congregational hymn. Only the first and third forms
have been retained. The use of chants derived from the Catholic service
was continued in some churches as late as the end of the seventeenth
century. But, as Helmore says, "the rage for turning creeds,
commandments, psalms, and everything to be sung, into metre, gradually
banished the chant from Protestant communities on the Continent."
2. In cases in which pre-Reformation vernacular hymns were adopted into
the song-books of the new Church the original melodies were often
retained, and thus some very ancient German tunes, although in modern
guise, are still preserved the hymn-books of modern Germany. Melodies of
the Bohemian Brethren were in this manner transferred to the German
songbooks.
3. The secular folk-song of the sixteenth century and earlier was a very
prolific source of the German choral. This was after Luther's day,
however, for it does not appear that any of his tunes were of this class.
Centuries before the age of artistic German music began, the common
people possessed a large store of simple songs which they delighted to
use on festal occasions, at the fireside, at their labor, in love-making,
at weddings, christenings, and in every circumstance of social and
domestic life. Here was a rich mine of simple and expressive melodies
from which choral tunes might be fashioned. In some cases this transfer
involved considerable modification, in others but little, for at that
time there was far less difference between the religious and the secular
musical styles than there is now. The associations of these tunes were
not always of the most edifying kind, and some of them were so identified
with unsanctified ideas that the strictest theologians protested against
them, and some were weeded out. In course of time the old secular
associations were forgotten, and few devout Germans are now reminded that
some of the grand melodies in which faith and hope find such appropriate
utterance are variations of old love songs and drinking songs. There is
nothing exceptional in this borrowing of the world's tunes for
ecclesiastical uses. We find the same practice among the French, Dutch,
English, and Scotch Calvinists, the English Wesleyans, and the hymn-book
makers of America. This method is often necessary when a young and
vigorously expanding Church must be quickly provided with a store of
songs, but in its nature it is only a temporary recourse.
The choral tunes sung by the congregation were at first not harmonized.
Then, as they began to be set in the strict contrapuntal style of the
day, it became the custom for the people to sing the melody while the
choir sustained the other parts. The melody was at first in the tenor,
according to time-honored usage in artistic music, but as composers found
that they must consider the vocal limitations of a mass of untrained
singers a simpler form of harmony was introduced, and the custom arose of
putting the melody in the upper voice, and the harmony below. This method
prepared the development of a harmony that was more in the nature of
modern chord progressions, and when the choir and congregation severed
their incompatible union, the complex counterpoint in which the age
delighted was allowed free range in the motet, while the harmonized
choral became more simple and compact. The partnership of choir and
congregation was dissolved about 1600, and the organ took the place of
the trained singers in accompanying the unison song of the people.
One who studies the German chorals as they appear in the hymn-books of
the present day (many of which hold honored places in English and
American hymnals) must not suppose that he is acquainted with the
religious tunes of the Reformation in their pristine form. As they are
now sung in the German churches they have been greatly modified in
harmony and rhythm, and even in many instances in melody also. The only
scale and harmonic system then in vogue was the Gregorian. In respect to
rhythm also, the alterations have been equally striking. The present
choral is usually written in notes of equal length, one note to a
syllable. The metre is in most cases double, rarely triple. This manner
of writing gives the choral a singularly grave, solid and stately
character, encouraging likewise a performance that is often dull and
monotonous. There was far more variety and life in the primitive choral,
the movement was more flexible, and the frequent groups of notes to a
single syllable imparted a buoyancy and warmth that are unknown to the
rigid modern form. The transformation of the choral into its present
shape was completed in the eighteenth century, a result, some say, of the
relaxation of spiritual energy in the period of rationalism. A party has
been formed among German churchmen and musicians which labors for the
restoration of the primitive rhythmic choral. Certain congregations have
adopted the reform, but there is as yet no sign that it will ultimately
prevail.
In spite of the mischievous influence ascribed to Luther's hymns by his
opponents, they could appreciate their value as aids to devotion, and in
return for Luther's compliment to their hymns they occasionally borrowed
some of his. Strange as it may seem, even "Ein' feste Burg" was one of
these. Neither were the Catholics slow to imitate the Protestants in
providing, songs for the people, and as in the old strifes of Arians and
orthodox in the East, so Catholics and Lutherans strove to sing each
other down. The Catholics also translated Latin hymns into German, and
transformed secular folk-songs into edifying religious rhymes. The first
German Catholic song--book was published in 1537 by Michael Vehe, a
preaching monk of Halle. This book contained fifty-two hymns, four of
which were alterations of hymns by Luther. It is a rather notable fact
that throughout the sixteenth century eminent musicians of both
confessions contributed to the musical services of their opponents.
Protestants composed masses and motets for the Catholic churches, and
Catholics arranged choral melodies for the Protestants. This friendly
interchange of good offices was heartily encouraged by Luther. Next to
Johann Walther, his most cherished musical friend and helper was Ludwig
Senfl, a devout Catholic. This era of relative peace and good-will, of
which this musical sympathy was a beautiful token, did not long endure.
The Catholic Counter-Reformation cut sharply whatever there might have
been of mutual understanding and tolerance, and the frightful Thirty
Years' War overwhelmed art and the spirit of humanity together.
The multiplication of hymns and chorals went on throughout the sixteenth
century and into the seventeenth with unabated vigor. A large number of
writers of widely differing degrees of poetic ability contributed to the
hymn-books, which multiplied to prodigious numbers in the generations
next succeeding that of Luther. These songs harmonized in general with
the tone struck by Luther and his friends, setting forth the doctrine of
justification by faith alone, and the joy that springs from the
consciousness of a freer approach to God, mingled, however, with more
sombre accents called forth by the apprehension of the dark clouds in the
political firmament which seemed to bode disaster to the Protestant
cause. The tempest broke in 1618. Again and again during the thirty
years' struggle the reformed cause seemed on the verge of annihilation.
When the exhaustion of both parties brought the savage conflict to an
end, the enthusiasm of the Reformation was gone. Religious poetry and
music indeed survived, and here and there burned with a pure flame amid
the darkness of an almost primitive barbarism. In times of deepest
distress these two arts often afford the only outlet for grief, and the
only testimony of hope amid national calamities. There were unconquerable
spirits in Germany, notably among the hymnists, cantors, and organists,
who maintained the sacred fire of religious art amid the moral
devastations of the Thirty Years' War, whose miseries they felt only as a
deepening of their faith in a power that overrules the wrath of man.
Their trust fastened itself unfalteringly upon those assurances of divine
sympathy which had been the inspiration of their cause from the
beginning. This pious confidence, this unabated poetic glow, found in
Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676) the most fervent and refined expression that
has been reached in German hymnody.
The production of melodies kept pace with the hymns throughout the
sixteenth century, and in the first half of the seventeenth a large
number of the most beautiful songs of the German Church were contributed
by such men as Andreas Hammerschmidt, Johann Crueger, J. R. Ahle, Johann
Schop, Melchior Frank, Michael Altenburg, and scores of others not less
notable. After the middle of the seventeenth century, however, the
fountain began to show signs of exhaustion. The powerful movement in the
direction of secular music which emanated from Italy began to turn the
minds of composers toward experiments which promised greater artistic
satisfaction than could be found in the plain congregational choral. The
rationalism of the eighteenth century, accompanying a period of doctrinal
strife and lifeless formalism in the Church, repressed those
unquestioning enthusiasms which are the only source of a genuinely
expressive popular hymnody. Pietism, while a more or less effective
protest against cold ceremonialism and theological intolerance, and a
potent influence in substituting a warmer heart service in place of
dogmatic pedantry, failed to contribute any new stimulus to the church
song; for the Pietists either endeavored to discourage church music
altogether, or else imparted to hymn and melody a quality of effeminacy
and sentimentality. False tastes crept into the. Church. The homely vigor
and forthrightness of the Lutheran hymn seemed to the shallow critical
spirits of the day rough, prosaic, and repellant, and they began to
smooth out and polish the old rhymes, and supplant the choral melodies
and harmonies with the prettinesses and languishing graces of the Italian
cantilena. As the sturdy inventive power of conservative church musicians
was no longer available or desired, recourse was had, as in old times, to
secular material, but not as formerly to the song of the people,--honest,
sincere, redolent of the soil,--but rather to the light, artificial
strains of the fashionable world, the modish Italian opera, and the
affected pastoral poesy. It is the old story of the people's song
declining as the art-song flourishes. As the stern temper of the Lutheran
era grew soft in an age of security and indifference, so the grand old
choral was neglected, and its performance grew perfunctory and cold. An
effort has been made here and there in recent years to restore the old
ideals and practice, but until a revival of spirituality strong enough to
stir the popular heart breaks out in Germany, we may not look for any
worthy successor to the sonorous proselyting song of the Reformation age.