Luther's Liturgical Music

Principles and Implications

Robin A. Leaver

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781506427157
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506427164
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Musik

Martin Luther's relationship to music has been largely downplayed, yet music played a vital role in Luther's life -- and he in turn had a deep and lasting effect on Christian hymnody. In Luther's Liturgical Music Robin Leaver comprehensively explores these connections. Replete with tables, figures, and musical examples, this volume is the most extensive study on Luther and music ever published. Leaver's work makes a formidable contribution to Reformation studies, but worship leaders, musicians, and others will also find it an invaluable, very readable resource.

I

PART I

Background & Principles

Chapter 1

Introduction

Among sixteenth-century Reformers Luther, together with his Wittenberg colleagues, was positive with regard to the role of music within evangelical worship, whereas many others, such as Calvin and his Genevan followers, were more cautious, limiting music to the simple unaccompanied unison of the gathered congregation, and a few, notably Zwingli and those who emulated the worship patterns of Zurich, were negative toward music, banishing it completely from the Reformed sanctuary.

English-language Luther studies in general have tended to ignore or give scant attention to his role as a liturgical reformer; indeed, he has been frequently characterized as an inept cut-and-paste reviser.^[1] Since music is frequently subsumed under liturgical matters, it too tends to suffer a similar fate. For example, the collection of essays The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther contains no study of Luther’s liturgical reforms, his hymns, or his understanding of music.^[2] The volume is therefore out of step with European Luther studies, as represented, for example, by the collection of essays issued to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformer’s birth that includes studies of Luther’s liturgical reforms in general, his liturgical collects in particular, as well as his role as an editor of hymnals; and the recently-published Luther Handbuch, which has a chapter on Luther and music.^[3] One of the reasons for this neglect in the English-speaking world is the Reformed orientation of a significant number of authors and editors of Luther studies, a tradition that historically has ceded to music only a limited role in worship. This in turn has contributed to the pervasive contemporary view of worship music as an optional extra, useful for creating a desired mood but with no essential theological meaning or significance. But Luther, together with the clergy and musicians who contributed to the distinctive Lutheran tradition of church music that was the outgrowth of his theology and reforms, thought differently.

Luther’s positive approach to music has been described and evaluated in print in virtually every succeeding generation — mostly, naturally enough, by German-speaking Lutherans — though to begin with such discussions occurred within a wider context than simply “Luther and Music.”^[4] For example, Johann Aurifaber’s Tischreden (Eisleben: Gaubisch, 1566), a collection of verbatim reports of the Reformer’s conversations at table and elsewhere, includes a section headed “Von der Musica.” Other examples include Christoph Frick, Music-Büchlein Oder Nützlicher Bericht Von dem Uhrsprung/Gebrauche und Erhaltung Christlicher Music (Lüneberg: Stern, 1631),^[5] and Wolfgang Caspar Printz, Historische Beschreibung der Edelen Singund Kling-Kunst (Dresden: Mieth, 1690), both of which include Luther’s views on music set within a broad historical context. Many of the earlier treatments of Luther’s approach to music are found in studies of his creativity as an author and composer of hymns, such as those by Cyriacus Spangenburg (1569-70), Johann Adolf Liebner (1791), August Jakob Rambach (1813), Justin Heinrich Knecht (1817), Friedrich Adolf Beck (1825), and August Gebauer (1828).^[6]

Throughout the nineteenth century there was a growing tendency to treat Luther’s understanding and use of music in a more independent manner. These were the years when the German Lutheran churches were beginning to recover their distinctive liturgical traditions that had been all but erased by the combined influences of rationalism and Pietism in the previous century. But this interest in Luther was not confined to Germany. In England in the later eighteenth century interest in Lutheran hymnody and music was fostered by the succession of Hanoverian kings and the music of Handel, and in the nineteenth century Anglo-German connections were reinforced by the marriage of Queen Victoria to Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Mendelssohn’s frequent visits to England. In North America the ties with Germany were even stronger because of the successive waves of German immigrants who made the New World their home. Thus articles on Luther and music, and/or quotations of Luther’s views of music, were published in the following representative nineteenth-century journals:

Germany: Berliner allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 2 (1825); Berliner musikalische Zeitung 3 (1846); Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung 1 [new series] (Leipzig, 1866).

France: Revue musicale 3 (Paris, 1830).

USA: The Euterpeiad, or Musical Intelligencer 1 (Boston, 1820), 3 (1822); The Message Bird — Journal of the Fine Arts — The Musical World 1 (New York, 1849); Dwight’s Journal of Music 3 (Boston, 1853), 5 (1854), 15 (1859), 18 (1861), 33 (1873).

England: The Musical World 7 (London, 1837), 13 (1839), 32 (1854), 34/43 (1856), 37/43 (1859); The Musical Times 1 (London, 1845).

In the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries various studies appeared, notably those of Johannes Rautenstrauch (1907), Karl Anton (1916), Hermann Abert (1924), Hans Joachim Moser (1925), Friedrich Blume (1931), and Christhard Mahrenholz (1937).^[7] In the restoration period following the Second World War, when a significant number of new church music institutions were created,^[8] new studies of Luther and music were circulated, such as those by Karl Honemeyer (1941), Christoph Wetzel (1954), Walter Blankenburg (1957), Oskar Söhngen (1961), and Winfried Kurzschenkel (1971).^[9]

During the same period a succession of studies on Luther and music was published in America, written by such authors as Ulrich S. Leupold (1940), Walter E. Buszin (1946), Paul Nettl (1948), Robert M. Stevenson (1951), and Theodore Hoelty-Nickel (1960).^[10] Of these, Buszin’s study proved to be the most influential, being frequently cited in later literature.^[11] More recently Carl Schalk has produced a similar study (1988),^[12] which is to some degree dependent on the translations of Buszin, and there have been numerous shorter articles, of which those by Daniel Reuning (1984) and Edward Foley (1987) are representative examples,^[13] as well as accounts in standard reference works, such as my own in the second edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001).^[14]

With all this literature it might be argued that there is hardly the need for yet another study of Luther and music. However, even though there is a general consensus, these previous studies are not uniformly the same. Therefore new interpretations need to be evaluated; older research, especially where it was based on misconceptions, requires correction; and neglected areas of study demand attention.

Recent Research

Among the new developments is the minority view of a few scholars that the general consensus regarding Luther’s knowledge and use of music is misleading. The similar view presented in numerous studies, such as those by Anton, Söhngen, Buszin, and Schalk, among others, is based on numerous statements regarding music that are to be found throughout Luther’s extensive literary output. The statements are topically arranged and discussed, presenting the view that music was fundamentally important to the Reformer, both in terms of its intrinsic nature as well as its theological significance. Some recent writers, however, have argued that such interpretations of Luther are suspect, and perhaps reveal more about the authors’ concerns with contemporary matters rather than with Luther’s views in the sixteenth century. Karl Honemeyer regards Thomas Müntzer as more significant than Luther with regard to liturgical music, a view that was first raised in his 1941 University of Münster dissertation,^[15] and continued in subsequent published writings.^[16] Joyce Irwin’s doctoral dissertation on Müntzer^[17] strongly reflects Honemeyer’s point of view, and provides the background for her dismissive comments with regard to Luther and music in the “Prelude” to her book Neither Voice nor Heart Alone (1993).^[18] Matthias Silesius Viertel has doubted whether Luther actually gave to music a proclamatory function, as many have claimed.^[19] Some have argued that since Luther’s statements on music form but a small propor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Tables, Figures, and Musical Examples
• Background & Principles
• Musical Catechesis
• Liturgico-Musical Hermeneutics & Pedagogy
• Liturgico-Musical Forms
• Implications & Consequences
• Appendices
• Postscript
• Bibliography
• Index