(S.)
The regular practice of hymnody in English musical history dates from the beginning of the 16th century. Luther’s verses were adapted sometimes to ancient church melodies, sometimes to tunes of secular songs, and sometimes had music composed for them by himself and others. Many rhyming Latin hymns are of earlier date whose tunes are identified with them, some of which tunes, with the subject of their Latin text, are among the Reformer’s appropriations; but it was he who put the words of praise and prayer into the popular mouth, associated with rhythmical music which aided to imprint the words upon the memory and to enforce their enunciation. In conjunction with his friend Johann Walther, Luther issued a collection of poems for choral singing in 1524, which was followed by many others in North Germany. The English versions of the Psalms by Sternhold and Hopkins and their predecessors, and the French version by Clement Marot and Theodore Beza, were written with the same purpose of fitting sacred minstrelsy to the voice of the multitude. Goudimel in 1566 and Claudin le Jeune in 1607 printed harmonizations of tunes that had then become standard for the Psalms, and in England several such publications appeared, culminating in Thomas Ravenscroft’s famous collection, The Whole Book of Psalms (1621); in all of these the arrangements of the tunes were by various masters. The English practice of hymn-singing was much strengthened on the return of the exiled reformers from Frankfort and Geneva, when it became so general that, according to Bishop Jewell, thousands of the populace who assembled at Paul’s Cross to hear the preaching would join in the singing of psalms before and after the sermon.
The placing of the choral song of the church within the lips of the people had great religious and moral influence; it has had also its great effect upon art, shown in the productions of the North German musicians ever since the first days of the Reformation, which abound in exercises of scholarship and imagination wrought upon the tunes of established acceptance. Some of these are accompaniments to the tunes with interludes between the several strains, and some are compositions for the organ or for orchestral instruments that consist of such elaboration of the themes as is displayed in accompaniments to voices, but of far more complicated and extended character. A special art-form that was developed to a very high degree, but has passed into comparative disuse, was the structure of all varieties of counterpoint extemporaneously upon the known hymn-tunes (chorals), and several masters acquired great fame by success in its practice, of whom J. A. Reinken (1623-1722), Johann Pachelbel (1653-1706), Georg Boehm and the great J. S. Bach are specially memorable. The hymnody of North Germany has for artistic treatment a strong advantage which is unpossessed by that of England, in that for the most part the same verses are associated with the same tunes, so that, whenever the text or the music is heard, either prompts recollection of the other, whereas in England tunes were always and are now often composed to metres and not to poems; any tune in a given metre is available for every poem in the same, and hence there are various tunes to one poem, and various poems to one tune.[4] In England a tune is named generally after some place—as “York,” “Windsor,” “Dundee,”—or by some other unsignifying word; in North Germany a tune is mostly named by the initial words of the verses to which it is allied, and consequently, whenever it is heard, whether with words or without, it necessarily suggests to the hearer the whole subject of that hymn of which it is the musical moiety undivorceable from the literary half. Manifold as they are, knowledge of the choral tunes is included in the earliest schooling of every Lutheran and every Calvinist in Germany, which thus enables all to take part in performance of the tunes, and hence expressly the definition of “choral.” Compositions grounded on the standard tune are then not merely school exercises, but works of art which link the sympathies of the writer and the listener, and aim at expressing the feeling prompted by the hymn under treatment.
Bibliography: I. Ancient.—George Cassander, Hymni ecclesiastici (Cologne, 1556); Georgius Fabricius, Poëtarum veterum ecclesiasticorum (Frankfort, 1578); Cardinal J. M. Thomasius, Hymnarium in Opera, ii. 351 seq. (Rome, 1747); A. J. Rambach, Anthologie christlicher Gesänge (Altona, 1817); H. A. Daniel, Thesaurus hymnologicus (Leipzig, 5 vols., 1841-1856); J. M. Neale, Hymni ecclesiae et sequentiae (London, 1851-1852); and Hymns of the Eastern Church (1863). The dissertation prefixed to the second volume of the Acta sanctorum of the Bollandists; Cardinal J. B. Pitra, Hymnographie de l’église grecque (1867), Analecta sacra (1876); W. Christ and M. Paranikas, Anthologia Graeca carminum Christianorum (Leipzig, 1871); F. A. March, Latin Hymns with English Notes (New York, 1875); R. C. Trench, Sacred Latin Poetry (London, 4th ed., 1874); J. Pauly, Hymni breviarii Romani (Aix-la-Chapelle, 3 vols., 1868-1870); Pimont, Les Hymnes du bréviaire romain (vols. 1-3, 1874-1884, unfinished); A. W. F. Fischer, Kirchenlieder-Lexicon (Gotha, 1878-1879); J. Kayser, Beiträge zur Geschichte der ältesten Kirchenhymnen (1881); M. Manitius, Geschichte der christlichen lateinischen Poesie (Stuttgart, 1891); John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1892, new ed. 1907). For criticisms of metre, see also Huemer, Untersuchungen über die ältesten christlichen Rhythmen (1879); E. Bouvy, Poètes et mélodes (Nîmes, 1886); C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Literatur (Munich, 1897, p. 700 seq.); J. M. Neale, Latin dissertation prefixed to Daniel’s Thesaurus, vol. 5; and D. J. Donahoe, Early Christian Hymns (London, 1909).
II. Medieval.—Walafrid Strabo’s treatise, ch. 25, De hymnis, &c.; Radulph of Tongres, De psaltario observando (14th century); Clichtavaens, Elucidatorium ecclesiasticum (Paris, 1556); Faustinus Arevalus, Hymnodia Hispanica (Rome, 1786); E. du Méril, Poésies populaires latines antérieures au XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1843); J. Stevenson, Latin Hymns of the Anglo-Saxon Church (Surtees Society, Durham, 1851); Norman, Hymnarium Sarisburiense (London, 1851); J. D. Chambers, Psalter, &c., according to the Sarum use (1852); F. J. Mone, Lateinische Hymnen des Mittelalters (Freiburg, 3 vols., 1853-1855); Ph. Wackernagel, Das deutsche Kirchenlied von der ältesten Zeit bis zum Anfang des 17. Jahrhunderts, vol. i. (Leipzig, 1864); E. Dümmler, Poëtae latini aevi Carolini (1881-1890); the Hymnologische Beiträge: Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte der lateinischen Hymnendichtung, edited by C. Blume and G. M. Dreves (Leipzig, 1897); G. C. F. Mohnike, Hymnologische Forschungen; Klemming, Hymni et sequentiae in regno Sueciae (Stockholm, 4 vols., 1885-1887); Das katholische deutsche Kirchenlied (vol. i. by K. Severin Meister, 1862, vol. ii. by W. Baumker, 1883); the “Hymnodia Hiberica,” Spanische Hymnen des Mittelalters, vol. xvi. (1894); the “Hymnodia Gotica,” Mozarabische Hymnen des altspanischen Ritus, vol. xxvii. (1897); J. Dankó, Vetus hymnarium ecclesiasticae Hungariae (Budapest, 1893); J. H. Bernard and R. Atkinson, The Irish Liber Hymnorum (2 vols., London, 1898); C. A. J. Chevalier, Poésie liturgique du moyen âge (Paris, 1893).
III. Modern.—J. C. Jacobi, Psalmodia Germanica (1722-1725 and 1732, with supplement added by J. Haberkorn, 1765); F. A. Cunz, Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenliedes (Leipzig, 1855); Baron von Bunsen, Versuch eines allgemeinen Gesang- und Gebetbuches (1833) and Allgemeines evangelisches Gesang- und Gebetbuch (1846); Catherine Winkworth, Christian Singers of Germany (1869) and Lyra Germanica (1855); Catherine H. Dunn, Hymns from the German (1857); Frances E. Cox, Sacred Hymns from the German (London, 1841); Massie, Lyra domestica (1860); Appendix on Scottish Psalmody in D. Laing’s edition of Baillie’s Letters and Journals (1841-1842); J. and C. Wesley, Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1741); Josiah Miller, Our Hymns, their Authors and Origin (1866); John Gadsby, Memoirs of the Principal Hymn-writers (3rd ed., 1861); L. C. Biggs, Annotations to Hymns Ancient and Modern (1867); Daniel Sedgwick, Comprehensive Index of Names of Original Authors of Hymns (2nd ed., 1863); R. E. Prothero, The Psalms in Human Life (1907); C. J. Brandt and L. Helweg, Den danske Psalmedigtning (Copenhagen, 1846-1847); J. N. Skaar, Norsk Salmehistorie (Bergen, 1879-1880); H. Schück, Svensk Literaturhistoria (Stockholm, 1890); Rudolf Wolkan, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur in Böhmen, 246-256, and Das deutsche Kirchenlied der böhm. Brüder (Prague, 1891); Zahn, Die geistlichen Lieder der Brüder in Böhmen, Mähren u. Polen (Nuremberg, 1875); and J. Müller, “Bohemian Brethren’s Hymnody,” in J. Julian’s Dictionary of Hymnology.
For account of hymn-tunes, &c., see W. Cowan and James Love, Music of the Church Hymnody and the Psalter in Metre (London, 1901); and Dickinson, Music in the History of the Western Church (New York, 1902); S. Kümmerle, Encyklopädie der evangelischen Kirchenmusik (4 vols., 1888-1895); Chr. Palmer, Evangelische Hymnologie (Stuttgart, 1865); and P. Urto Kornmüller, Lexikon der kirchlichen Tonkunst (1891).
[1] The history of the “hymn” naturally begins with Greece, but it may be found in some form much earlier; Assyria and Egypt have left specimens, while India has the Vedic hymns, and Confucius collected “praise songs” in China.
[2] See [Greek Literature].