CHAPTER VII
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 228[224] 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 229[225] 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 Ephraëm 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 230[226] 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 preëxisting 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 232[228] 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 be 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 233[229] hundred and forty-eight religious lyrics in the German tongue composed between the year 868 and 1518.⁶⁸⁶⁸Wackernagel, Das deutsche Kirchenlied von der ältesten Zeit bis zu Anfang des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 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, 234[230] 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 235[231] 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 236[232] was not the least uncanny feature of their performances.⁶⁹⁶⁹Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenliedes bis auf Luther’s Zeit.

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 237[233] 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 à 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 239[235] 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 preëxistence of Mary with God before the creation; that in and through her all things were created. Others, not 241[237] 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 242[238] 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 243[239] 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 245[241] 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 coöperation 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 247[243] 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 250[246] 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 251[247] 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’ 252[248] 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 253[249] 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, 254[250] 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 255[251] 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 256[252] 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 257[253] 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 258[254] 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.”⁷⁰⁷⁰Taylor, Studies in German Literature. 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 259[255] 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 260[256] 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 1560.⁷¹⁷¹Koch, Geschichte des Kirchenliedes und Kirchegesanges der christlichen insbesondere der deutschen evangelischen Kirche. 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 261[257] 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 262[258] 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 263[259] 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.⁷²⁷²Bacon and Allen, editors: The Hymns of Martin Luther set to their Original Melodies, with an English Version. 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; Bäumker 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 265[261] 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 266[262] 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 270[266] 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 Crüger, 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 271[267] 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.