5. German Hymnody.—Luther was a proficient in and a lover of music. He desired (as he says in the preface to his hymn-book of 1545) that this “beautiful ornament” might “in a right manner serve the great Creator and His Christian Luther. people.” The persecuted Bohemian or Hussite Church, then settled on the borders of Moravia under the name of “United Brethren,” had sent to him, on a mission in 1522, Michael Weiss, who not long afterwards published a number of German translations from old Bohemian hymns (known as those of the “Bohemian Brethren”), with some of his own. These Luther highly approved and recommended. He himself, in 1522, published a small volume of eight hymns, which was enlarged to 63 in 1527, and to 125 in 1545. He had formed what he called a “house choir” of musical friends, to select such old and popular tunes (whether secular or ecclesiastical) as might be found suitable, and to compose new melodies, for church use. His fellow labourers in this field (besides Weiss) were Justus Jonas, his own especial colleague; Paul Eber, the disciple and friend of Melanchthon; John Walther, choirmaster successively to several German princes, and professor of arts, &c., at Wittenberg; Nicholas Decius, who from a monk became a Protestant teacher in Brunswick, and translated the “Gloria in Excelsis,” &c.; and Paul Speratus, chaplain to Duke Albert of Prussia in 1525. Some of their works are still popular in Germany. Weiss’s “Funeral Hymn,” “Nun lasst uns den Leib begraben” (“Now lay we calmly in the grave”); Eber’s “Herr Jesu Christ, wahr Mensch und Gott” (“Lord Jesus Christ, true Man and God”), and “Wenn wir in höchsten Nöthen sein” (“When in the hour of utmost need”); Walther’s “New Heavens and new Earth” (“Now fain my joyous heart would sing”); Decius’s “To God on high be thanks and praise”; and Speratus’s “Salvation now has come for all,” are among those which at the time produced the greatest effect, and are still best remembered.
Luther’s own hymns, thirty-seven in number (of which about twelve are translations or adaptations from Latin originals), are for the principal Christian seasons; on the sacraments, the church, grace, death, &c.; and paraphrases of seven psalms, of a passage in Isaiah, and of the Lord’s Prayer, Ten Commandments, Creed, Litany and “Te Deum.” There is also a very touching and stirring song on the martyrdom of two youths by fire at Brussels, in 1523-1524. Homely and sometimes rugged in form, and for the most part objective in tone, they are full of fire, manly simplicity and strong faith. Three rise above the rest. One for Christmas, “Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her” (“From Heaven above to earth I come”), has a reverent tenderness, the influence of which may be traced in many later productions on the same subject. That on salvation through Christ, of a didactic character, “Nun freuet euch, lieben Christen g’mein” (“Dear Christian people, now rejoice”), is said to have made many conversions, and to have been once taken up by a large congregation to silence a Roman Catholic preacher in the cathedral of Frankfort. Pre-eminent above all is the celebrated paraphrase of the 46th Psalm: “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” (“A sure stronghold our God is He”)—“the production” (as Ranke says) “of the moment in which Luther, engaged in a conflict with a world of foes, sought strength in the consciousness that he was defending a divine cause which could never perish.” Carlyle compares it to “a sound of Alpine avalanches, or the first murmur of earthquakes.” Heine called it “the Marseillaise of the Reformation.”
Luther spent several years in teaching his people at Wittenberg to sing these hymns, which soon spread over Germany. Without adopting the hyperbolical saying of Coleridge, that “Luther did as much for the Reformation by his hymns as by his translation of the Bible,” it may truly be affirmed, that, among the secondary means by which the success of the Reformation was promoted, none was more powerful. They were sung everywhere—in the streets and fields as well as the churches, in the workshop and the palace, “by children in the cottage and by martyrs on the scaffold.” It was by them that a congregational character was given to the new Protestant worship. This success they owed partly to their metrical structure, which, though sometimes complex, was recommended to the people by its ease and variety; and partly to the tunes and melodies (many of them already well known and popular) to which they were set. They were used as direct instruments of teaching, and were therefore, in a large measure, didactic and theological; and it may be partly owing to this cause that German hymnody came to deviate, so soon and so generally as it did, from the simple idea expressed in the ancient Augustinian definition, and to comprehend large classes of compositions which, in most other countries, would be thought hardly suitable for church use.
The principal hymn-writers of the Lutheran school, in the latter part of the 16th century, were Nikolaus Selnecker, Herman and Hans Sachs, the shoemaker of Nuremberg, also known in other branches of literature. All these Followers of Luther wrote some good hymns. They were succeeded by men of another sort, to whom F. A. Cunz gives the name of “master-singers,” as having raised both the poetical and the musical standard of German hymnody:—Bartholomäus Ringwaldt, Ludwig Helmbold, Johannes Pappus, Martin Schalling, Rutilius and Sigismund Weingartner. The principal topics of their hymns (as if with some foretaste of the calamities which were soon to follow) were the vanity of earthly things, resignation to the Divine will, and preparation for death and judgment. The well-known English hymn, “Great God, what do I see and hear,” is founded upon one by Ringwaldt. Of a quite different character were two of great beauty and universal popularity, composed by Philip Nicolai, a Westphalian pastor, during a pestilence in 1597, and published by him, with fine chorales, two years afterwards. One of these (the “Sleepers wake! a voice is calling,” of Mendelssohn’s oratorio, St Paul) belongs to the family of Advent or New Jerusalem hymns. The other, a “Song of the believing soul concerning the Heavenly Bridegroom” (“Wie schön leucht’t uns der Morgenstern”—“O morning Star, how fair and bright”), became the favourite marriage hymn of Germany.
The hymns produced during the Thirty Years’ War are characteristic of that unhappy time, which (as Miss Winkworth says) “caused religious men to look away from this world,” and made their songs more and more expressive of Period of Thirty Years’ War. personal feelings. In point of refinement and graces of style, the hymn-writers of this period excelled their predecessors. Their taste was chiefly formed by the influence of Martin Opitz, the founder of what has been called the “first Silesian school” of German poetry, who died comparatively young in 1639, and who, though not of any great original genius, exercised much power as a critic. Some of the best of these works were by men who wrote little. In the famous battle-song of Gustavus Adolphus, published (1631) after the victory of Breitenfeld, for the use of his army, “Verzage nicht du Häuflein klein” (“Fear not, O little flock, the foe”), we have almost certainly a composition of the hero-king himself, the versification corrected by his chaplain Jakob Fabricius (1593-1654) and the music composed by Michael Altenburg, whose name has been given to the hymn. This, with Luther’s paraphrase of the 67th Psalm, was sung by Gustavus and his soldiers before the battle of Lützen in 1632. Two very fine hymns, one of prayer for deliverance and peace, the other of trust in God under calamities, were written about the same time by Matthäus Löwenstern, a saddler’s son, poet, musician and statesman, who was ennobled after the peace by the emperor Ferdinand III. Martin Rinckhart, in 1636, wrote the “Chorus of God’s faithful children” (“Nun danket alle Gott”—“Now thank we all our God”), introduced by Mendelssohn in his “Lobgesang,” which has been called the “Te Deum” of Germany, being usually sung on occasions of public thanksgiving. Weissel, in 1635, composed a beautiful Advent hymn (“Lift up your heads, ye mighty gates”), and J. M. Meyfart, professor of theology at Erfurt, in 1642, a fine adaptation of the ancient “Urbs beata Hierusalem.” The hymn of trust in Providence by George Neumark, librarian to that duke of Weimar (“Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten”—“Leave God to order all thy ways”), is scarcely, if at all, inferior to that of Paul Gerhardt on the same theme. Paul Flemming, a great traveller and lover of nature, who died in 1639, also wrote excellent compositions, coloured by the same tone of feeling; and some, of great merit, were composed, soon after the close of the war, by Louisa Henrietta, electress of Brandenburg, granddaughter of the famous admiral Coligny, and mother of the first king of Prussia. With these may be classed (though of later date) a few striking hymns of faith and prayer under mental anxiety, by Anton Ulrich, duke of Brunswick.
The most copious, and in their day most esteemed, hymn-writers of the first half of the 17th century, were Johann Heermann and Johann Rist. Heermann, a pastor in Silesia, the theatre (in a peculiar degree) of war and persecution, Rist. experienced in his own person a very large share of the miseries of the time, and several times narrowly escaped a violent death. His Devoti musica cordis, published in 1630, reflects the feelings natural under such circumstances. With a correct style and good versification, his tone is subjective, and the burden of his hymns is not praise, but prayer. Among his works (which enter largely into most German hymn-books), two of the best are the “Song of Tears” and the “Song of Comfort,” translated by Miss Winkworth in her Christian Singers of Germany. Rist published about 600 hymns, “pressed out of him,” as he said, “by the cross.” He was a pastor, and son of a pastor, in Holstein, and lived after the peace to enjoy many years of prosperity, being appointed poet-laureate to the emperor and finally ennobled. The bulk of his hymns, like those of other copious writers, are of inferior quality; but some, particularly those for Advent, Epiphany, Easter Eve and on Angels, are very good. They are more objective than those of Heermann, and written, upon the whole, in a more manly spirit. Dach. Next to Heermann and Rist in fertility of production, and above them in poetical genius, was Simon Dach, professor of poetry at Königsberg, who died in 1659. Miss Winkworth ranks him high among German poets, “for the sweetness of form and depth of tender contemplative emotion to be found in his verses.”
The fame of all these writers was eclipsed in the latter part of the same century by three of the greatest hymnographers whom Germany has produced—Paul Gerhardt (1604-1676), Johann Franck (1618-1677) and Johann Scheffler Gerhardt. (1624-1677), the founder of the “second Silesian school,” who assumed the name of “Angelus Silesius.” Gerhardt is by universal consent the prince of Lutheran poets. His compositions, which may be compared, in many respects, to those of the Christian Year, are lyric poems, of considerable length, rather than hymns, though many hymns have been taken from them. They are, with few exceptions, subjective, and speak the language of individual experience. They occupy a middle ground between the masculine simplicity of the old Lutheran style and the highly wrought religious emotion of the later pietists, towards whom they on the whole incline. Being nearly all excellent, it is not easy to distinguish among the 123 those which are entitled to the highest praise. Two, which were written one during the war and the other after the conclusion of peace, “Zeuch ein zu deinen Thoren” (“Come to Thy temple here on earth”), and “Gottlob, nun ist erschollen” (“Thank God, it hath resounded”), are historically interesting. Of the rest, one is well known and highly appreciated in English through Wesley’s translation, “Commit thou all thy ways”; and the evening and spring-tide hymns (“Now all the woods are sleeping” and “Go forth, my heart, and seek delight”) show an exquisite feeling for nature; while nothing can be more tender and pathetic than “Du bist zwar mein und bleibest mein” (“Thou’rt Franck. mine, yes, still thou art mine own”), on the death of his son. Franck, who was burgomaster of Guben in Lusatia, has been considered by some second only to Gerhardt. If so, it is with a great distance between them. His approach to the later pietists is closer than that of Gerhardt. His hymns were published, under the title of Geistliche und weltliche Gedichte, in 1674, some of them being founded on Ambrosian and other Latin originals. Miss Winkworth gives them the praise of a condensed and polished style and fervid and impassioned thought. It was after his conversion to Roman Catholicism that Scheffler. Scheffler adopted the name of “Angelus Silesius,” and published in 1657 his hymns, under a fantastic title, and with a still more fantastic preface. Their keynote is divine love; they are enthusiastic, intense, exuberant in their sweetness, like those of St Bernard among medieval poets. An adaptation of one of them, by Wesley, “Thee will I love, my Strength, my Tower,” is familiar to English readers. Those for the first Sunday after Epiphany, for Sexagesima Sunday and for Trinity Sunday, in Lyra Germanica, are good examples of his excellences, with few of his defects. His hymns are generally so free from the expression, or even the indirect suggestion, of Roman Catholic doctrine, that it has been supposed they were written before his conversion, though published afterwards. The evangelical churches of Germany found no difficulty in admitting them to that prominent place in their services which they have ever since retained.
Towards the end of the 17th century, a new religious school arose, to which the name of “Pietists” was given, and of which Philipp Jakob Spener was esteemed the founder. He and his pupils and successors, August Hermann Pietists. Francke and Anastasius Freylinghausen, all wrote hymns. Spener’s hymns are not remarkable, and Francke’s are not numerous. Freylinghausen was their chief singer; his rhythm is lively, his music florid; but, though his book attained extraordinary popularity, he was surpassed in solid merit by other less fertile writers of the same school. The “Auf hinauf zu deiner Freude” (“Up, yes, upward to thy gladness”) of Schade may recall to an English reader a hymn by Seagrave, and more than one by Lyte; the “Malabarian hymn” (as it was called by Jacobi) of Johann Schütz, “All glory to the Sovereign Good,” has been popular in England as well as Germany; and one of the most exquisite strains of pious resignation ever written is “Whate’er my God ordains is right,” by Samuel Rodigast.
Joachim Neander, a schoolmaster at Düsseldorf, and a friend of Spener and Schütz (who died before the full development of the “Pietistic” school), was the first man of eminence in the “Reformed” or Calvinistic Church who imitated Neander. Lutheran hymnody. This he did, while suffering persecution from the elders of his own church for some other religious practices, which he had also learnt from Spener’s example. As a poet, he is sometimes deficient in art; but there is feeling, warmth and sweetness in many of his “Bundeslieder” or “Songs of the Covenant,” and they obtained general favour, both in the Reformed and in Lutheran congregations. The Summer Hymn (“O Thou true God alone”) and that on the glory of God in creation (“Lo, heaven and earth and sea and air”) are instances of his best style.
With the “Pietists” may be classed Benjamin Schmolke and Dessler, representatives of the “Orthodox” division of Spener’s school; Philipp Friedrich Hiller, their leading poet in South Germany; Gottfried Arnold and Gerhard Schmolke. Tersteegen, who were practically independent of ecclesiastical organization, though connected, one with the “Orthodox” and the other with the “Reformed” churches; and Nikolaus Ludwig, Graf von Zinzendorf. Schmolke, a pastor in Silesia, called the Silesian Rist (1672-1737), was perhaps the most voluminous of all German hymn-writers. He wrote 1188 religious poems and hymns, a large proportion of which do not rise above mediocrity. His style, if less refined, is also less subjective and more simple than that of most of his contemporaries. Among his best and most attractive works, which indeed, it would be difficult to praise too highly, are the “Hosianna David’s Sohn,” for Palm Sunday—much resembling a shorter hymn by Jeremy Taylor; and the Ascension, Whitsuntide and Sabbath hymns—“Heavenward doth our journey tend,” “Come deck our feast to-day,” and “Light of light, Dessler.
Hiller. enlighten me.” Dessler was a greater poet than Schmolke. Few hymns, of the subjective kind, are better than his “I will not let Thee go, Thou Help in time of need,” “O Friend of souls, how well is me,” and “Now, the pearly gates unfold.” Hiller (1699-1769), was a pastor in Württemberg who, falling into ill-health during the latter part of his ministry, published a Geistliche Liederhöstlein in a didactic vein, with more taste than power, but (as Miss Winkworth says) in a tone of “deep, thoughtful, practical piety.” They were so well adapted to the wants of his people that to this day Hiller’s Casket is prized, next to their Bibles, by the peasantry of Württemberg; and the numerous emigrants from that part of Germany to America and other foreign countries generally Arnold. take it with them wherever they go. Arnold, a professor at Giessen, and afterwards a pastor in Brandenburg, was a man of strong will, uncompromising character and austere views of life, intolerant and controversial towards those whose doctrine or practice he disapproved, and more indifferent to separatism and sectarianism than the “orthodox” generally thought right. His hymns, like those of Augustus M. Toplady, whom in these respects he resembled, unite with considerable strength more gentleness and breadth of sympathy than might be expected from a man of such a Tersteegen. character. Tersteegen (1697-1769), who never formally separated himself from the “Reformed” communion, in which he was brought up, but whose sympathies were with the Moravians and with Zinzendorf, was, of all the more copious German hymn-writers after Luther, perhaps the most remarkable man. Pietist, mystic and missionary, he was also a great religious poet. His 111 hymns were published In 1731, in a volume called Geistlicher Blumengärtlein inniger Seelen. They are intensely individual, meditative and subjective. Wesley’s adaptations of two—“Lo! God is here; let us adore,” and “Thou hidden Love of God, whose source”—are well known. Among those translated by Miss Winkworth, “O God, O Spirit, Light of all that live,” and “Come, brethren, let us go,” are specimens which exhibit favourably his manner and power. Miss Cox speaks of him as “a gentle heaven-inspired soul, whose hymns are the reflection of a heavenly, happy life, his mind being full of a child-like simplicity”; and his own poem on the child-character, which Miss Winkworth has appropriately connected with Innocents’ day (“Dear Soul, couldst thou become a child”)—one of his best compositions, exquisitely conceived and expressed—shows that this was in truth the ideal which he sought to realize. The hymns of Zinzendorf Zinzendorf. are often disfigured by excess in the application of the language and imagery of human affections to divine objects; and this blemish is also found in many later Moravian hymns. But one hymn, at least, of Zinzendorf may be mentioned with unqualified praise, as uniting the merits of force, simplicity and brevity—“Jesu, geh voran” (“Jesus, lead the way”), which is taught to most children of religious parents in Germany. Wesley’s “Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness” is a translation from Zinzendorf.