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 [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 [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 [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.[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; 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.

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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 [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 [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.

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