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Why do Lutherans Sing? Lutherans, Music, and the Gospel in the First Century of the Reformation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2013

J. Andreas Loewe
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Abstract

Martin Luther regarded music as a crucial instrument to communicate the Gospel and the Reformation message. From the outset of his Reformation, a distinctive Lutheran musical tradition was fostered in electoral Saxony, its dependent territories and neighboring principalities. A review of contemporary records from the second decade of the sixteenth century to the turn of the seventeenth century enables the assessment of the role music played as an educational and theological tool in the life of Lutheran communities: the School Ordinances of electoral Saxony and neighboring principalities show the incorporation of music as a key curricular requirement in Lutheran education, while the Statutes of Lutheran choirs [Kantoreien] illustrate how theologians, educators and musicians closely worked together to shape Lutheran communities centred on music-making, in order to reform worship, further the Reformation message and to create community cohesion.

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Type
Research Article
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Church History , Volume 82 , Issue 1 , March 2013 , pp. 69 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2013

The establishment of an enduring choral tradition is one of the hallmarks of the Lutheran Reformation. One of the key motivators for the development of such a distinctive devotional tradition that placed music and singing at the center of its worship and teaching was undoubtedly the personal affinity Martin Luther had for music.Footnote 1 He not only was a competent singer, hymn writer, and composer, but also strongly believed that music was an ideal means to come to know and proclaim the mystery of God.Footnote 2 Luther particularly valued the combination of music and message, the “singing preaching and praising of God's grace and mercy” afforded by spiritual songs.Footnote 3 The deliberate promotion of music and music-making became a central part of his Reformation.

A decade into the Reformation, Luther reflected on his belief that communal singing could profoundly affect hearts and minds in a letter to composer Ludwig Senfl.Footnote 4 The psalmists had been the first to grasp the importance of music as a means to communicate an understanding of God, he wrote: “they attached their theology not to geometry, nor to arithmetic, nor to astronomy, but to music, speaking the truth through psalms and hymns.”Footnote 5 This capacity of music to communicate something essential about the nature, being, and work of God was not restricted to ancient Israel at the time of the psalm writers, but was universal, Luther believed. Music was able to communicate theological truth in every age and nation: “music and theology have been most closely yoked together, and so the truth is told through psalms and songs.”Footnote 6 Luther had first formulated this insight in the glosses of his 1512 lecture series on the Psalms. Throughout his life he reiterated his conviction that music, in particular the music of the psalms, served “to preach the mystery of the kingdom of heaven and to exhort people to a good spiritual life.”Footnote 7 Towards the end of his life, in his treatise Of the Last Words of David (1543), Luther again emphasized how effectively music “speaks of and preaches the promise and grace of God”: the combination of sacred words and music not only “attracts others and makes them partakers [of God's grace],” but serves as an important instrument to “incite people to do good, and to teach them.”Footnote 8

Notwithstanding its importance in promoting and teaching the Gospel, for Luther music had at least equal value as a “beautiful and priceless gift of God.”Footnote 9 Among its “many and great uses” were its emotional and aesthetic qualities, including the capacity “to move human hearts through words and song and sound.”Footnote 10 Like no other art or academic discipline, music was able to sway human emotions and “rule over the feelings of the human heart.”Footnote 11 Indeed, it was so “powerful and mighty that it could overcome and rule human beings in the same way that their masters do.”Footnote 12 Reflecting on David soothing Saul's anger by playing the harp (1 Sam. 16.23), Luther concluded that music was also able to shield the human heart from evil and even “drive away . . . Satan.”Footnote 13 Certainly, its emotional impact was such that it was able to “make the sad joyful, the joyful sad, the timid brave and the proud humble.”Footnote 14

Luther's 1538 extended preface for a collection of motets, Symphoniae Iucundae, by the Wittenberg publisher and later cantor of St. Thomas’ Church Leipzig, Georg Rhau, provides a more extensive reflection on the nature and purpose of music.Footnote 15 Music was ideally suited to tell of God's being and works, Luther explained, and therefore ought to be “accorded the greatest honour and a place next to theology.”Footnote 16 Since for Luther music was central to theology, it put composers and poets under the same obligation as theologians to make use of their artistic gifts to make known God's mercy and grace.Footnote 17 He therefore charged his contemporaries to combine words, melody, and harmony and so foster the understanding of the nature and works of God:

human beings alone, apart from all other creatures, are given voice and reason, so that they may be able to and know to praise God by combining songs and words: with clear, resounding preaching and praising of God's mercy and grace, whenever beautiful words and delightful music are combined and heard together.Footnote 18

While the primary function of music for Luther was undoubtedly the “preaching” or proclaiming of doctrine “through sound,” it was his profound love of music as an art form that inspired successive generations of artists to use their craft in the service of God and Luther's Reformation. He encouraged composers to use their skill not merely to create “sermons in sound,” but to enable others to obtain a glimpse of the beauty of God's kingdom: “by embellishing and ornamenting their tunes in wonderful ways and sounds, and so to lead others (as it were) into a heavenly dance.”Footnote 19

Just as Lutheran compositions were able to convey insights into the being and nature of God, the performance of these works enabled communities to share in “singing and preaching” the good news.Footnote 20 Communal music-making played an important part in bringing communities together and helped create the specifically “Lutheran” identity associated with singing and music that prevails to date. Footnote 21 Luther's insight into the essential beauty of the combination of scripture and music was so attractive, and his appreciation of music as a means of promoting his message so compelling, that it motivated composers, hymn writers, cantors, teachers and, above all, singers, to promote scripture and the message of the Reformation by encouraging people to sing together in harmony, “adorned by polyphony.”Footnote 22

I. Singing, Preaching and Praising God through Music

Spurned on by his insight that music was an ideal means to communicate theological truth, from an early point of his Reformation onwards Luther intentionally began to use popular song as a means to broadcast his message effectively to a large cross-section of society. His popular vernacular hymns were able to reach people swiftly, regardless of their ability to read, their social standing or their actual location, and effortlessly crossed national, cultural, and socio-economic boundaries. They skillfully bridged the divide between the secular and sacred, the domestic and the public, the here-and-now and the eternal. While all his hymns served to underline the importance of the Reformation not all of them primarily spoke of the mystery of God. His first published hymn was, in fact, a Zeitungslied [newspaper song] in which he commented on current affairs as effectively as any contemporary editorial or opinion piece: a ballad based on a popular Volkslied or Meistersinger tune, his “Eyn newes lyed wyr heben an” [“A new song here shall be begun”] strongly condemned the burning of two young Augustinian canons turned Protestant “at Brussels in the Netherlands” in July 1523.Footnote 23 Luther commended their conversion to the Reformation, censured their condemnation by the Catholic authorities, and celebrated their gospel witness: “for [God's] Word they died, and have become his martyrs.”Footnote 24 Using their witness as an example, he encouraged the singers and listeners of his hymn to use their own voices to “go gladly singing” about their deeds and doctrine, “in every land/ in tongues of every people.”Footnote 25

In an age of significant illiteracy, singing the Reformation message to popular tunes was a powerful and effective means of disseminating Luther's views.Footnote 26 His combination of pithy, vernacular words with popular tunes not only provided a “meeting point between the illiterate, the semi-literate and the literate,” but enabled the rapid spread of Lutheran thought across national boundaries.Footnote 27 Communicated by word of mouth, letter, and broadsheet, Luther's hymns soon were sung throughout Germany, even in Catholic regions where his writings were banned. At the turn of the seventeenth century, the Leipzig theologian Cornelius Becker reflected on how freely Luther's hymns had been able to spread to Catholic principalities that otherwise routinely intercepted Reformation writings at the border:Footnote 28

Since his sacred songs were carried to people in far-away places by letter, as well as in the souls and minds of pious Christians, it was not as easy to block their progress as [it was to intercept Luther's] books and writings.Footnote 29

For most of his early hymns, Luther provided new vernacular words for existing popular sacred and secular tunes. He explained that he had derived this ingeniously simple method of word-setting from Virgil's Menaclas: “If you sing the music, I will sing the text.”Footnote 30 In his word-setting as well as in his translation of scripture, he closely imitated the way people spoke: “both text and notes, accent, tune and manner of rendering ought to grow out of the true mother tongue and its inflection.”Footnote 31 At the same time, he took great care in setting words to melodies that people knew well. For Luther a popular plainchant melody was as useful as a Volkslied or Meistersinger tune; he was convinced that “the notes make the text come to life.”Footnote 32 His vernacular hymns were therefore carefully attuned to his audience. It was not sufficient to set his German translations of Latin hymns to existing plainchant tunes, since in the end “neither sounded nice nor sounded right.”Footnote 33 Well crafted, sung to well-known tunes and with a familiar turn of phrase, these hymns were popular, topical, and quickly and widely disseminated.Footnote 34 At a time when vernacular hymns were rarely sung in church (although they were frequently used in Passion or Corpus Christi plays), their widespread use in Protestant worship was “a mark of religious change as notable as the marriage of clergy or the distribution of the cup to the laity,” and proved to be just as transformational.Footnote 35

Luther's first published sacred hymns, a paraphrase of Psalm 130, “Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir” [“From Depths of Woe I Cry to You”], and a paraphrase of Psalm 51, “Es woll uns Gott genädig sein” [“May God Have Mercy on Us All”], were both published in the first half of 1524.Footnote 36 Both are documented to have been important vehicles in furthering the Reformation. Travellers who had learned them by heart took them beyond Wittenberg into areas where Luther's writings were banned.Footnote 37 The town chronicle of then Catholic Magdeburg records that in May 1524 Aus tiefer Not and Es woll uns Gott were taught to locals, and that the hymns proved to be ready agents of conversion:

Husband and wife, young women and men, so many people learnt [Luther's hymns] that his German hymns and psalms became so well known that they were sung by the people daily in all churches before the sermons commenced, publicly, over and over again.Footnote 38

The recurrent massed singing of Lutheran hymns in Magdeburg before the beginning of Catholic services caused such a public disturbance that it led to the imprisonment of the distributor of the hymns, “an itinerant peddler.”Footnote 39 The city chronicle records how in turn this arrest led to an “uproar” in St. John's Parish on May 6, 1524 that brought “six to eight hundred people together to liberate the prisoner by force.”Footnote 40 When Luther came to Magdeburg to preach at St. John's Church on June 26, 1524, therefore, his visit merely formalized the introduction of the Reformation in the city: his hymns had, in fact, already won over the majority of residents.Footnote 41

When the first printed collection of Lutheran hymns was published in the second half of 1524, Luther commented in his introduction on why he wrote hymns: “I have . . . brought together a number of spiritual songs, in order to spread and disseminate the holy Gospel, which by the grace of God has once again arisen.”Footnote 42 So popular was this collection of hymns that they were sold in the streets: printers worked feverishly to meet demand; they were sold on the streets and printers made effective use of advertising to keep up sales.Footnote 43 Indeed, Luther remarked that printers used “all sorts of adornments to make [the hymns] agreeable to the people,” to sell more of them, and commended them for their contribution to spreading his doctrine:Footnote 44 “The printers do very well indeed when they busily print hymns . . . enticing people to such joy in believing, and enjoyment in singing.”Footnote 45 Once printed, just as in Magdeburg, vendors would teach Luther's hymns to the illiterate or semi-literate. Cornelius Becker's reflection on the progress of the Reformation message through Luther's hymns is not exaggerated:

By God's blessing, Luther's hymns and other sacred songs swiftly furthered the progress of the Word of God from Saxony to other places throughout the German Nation, unfettered by the dreaded darkness and terrible tyranny of the papacy, and they have done well.Footnote 46

Luther's contemporaries shared his success; indeed, the reformer's fear that there might be a dearth of suitable poets to promote Reformation doctrine through songs and hymns, first articulated in 1523, proved to be entirely unfounded.Footnote 47 In 1528, Luther reflected in his introduction to a second collection of hymns how the number of Reformation hymns and hymn writers had significantly increased: “many have now proved themselves, and the number of hymns has increased in such a way that they have surpassed me by far.”Footnote 48 Toward the end of his life, in 1545, Luther reflected once again on the success of his hymns: his spiritual songs had communicated the message of the liberty of the Gospel with joy, and had proved to be infectious. Luther explained: “those who genuinely believe this [Gospel] simply cannot stop singing and talking about it with joy and delight, so that others hear it as well, and join in.”Footnote 49

II. Lutherans, Music and the Reformation

In the formative years of the Lutheran Reformation, Luther's understanding of music as an instrument to disseminate the Biblical and Reformation message was promoted at all levels of society. The illiterate and semi-literate, reluctant and competent readers alike, clergy and laypeople, working people, clerks, teachers, and children, all shared a common hymnody. Singing and music were central to proclaiming the teachings of the Reformation and helped to create a specifically Lutheran identity. Hymns served “not only as a means of public instruction and of corporate worship, but also as the basis for the private pedagogy and devotions of individuals and households.”Footnote 50 From the outset of the Reformation, music was used as an instrument to improve literacy, unlock scripture, and to promote evangelical learning, in particular among the young.Footnote 51 In Lutheran schools students were “taught to sing psalms and spiritual songs,” a dual process that enabled them both to recall Reformation teachings and fostered their reading skills.Footnote 52 Even if children could not be taught to write, then they should at least be taught to read, the 1543 Brunswick School Ordinances [Schulordnungen] stipulated, “which they ought to be able to learn in a year or two.”Footnote 53 It is uncertain whether in Lutheran Schools the alphabet was taught by singing or, as suggested by Richard Gawthrop and Gerald Strauss, that “children learned to sound out words by intoning Luther's Shorter Catechism.”Footnote 54 However, there is no doubt that pupils learned their psalms by first singing and then reciting psalm hymns as was the case in the Wittenberg Girls' School [Junckfrawen Schuele].Footnote 55 Psalm hymns used for teaching in Wittenberg Schools included Luther's paraphrases of Psalm 12, “Ach Gott im Himmel sieh darein” [“Oh God, Look Down from Heaven Above”] or Psalm 14, “Es spricht der Unweisen Mund” [“The Mouth of Fools Does God Confess”].Footnote 56 Similarly, Brunswick students first learned the Catechism by singing Luther's Catechism hymns [Katechismuslieder], including “Wir glauben all an einen Gott” [“We all Believe in One True God] and “Vater unser im Himmelreich” [“Our Father in Heaven Above”].Footnote 57

As a result, in Lutheran schools students sang a lot, preferably in four-part harmony. In his preface to the 1524 Wittenberg Hymnal, Luther had explained that the hymns had been “set in four parts, for no other reason than that I should like the young to be educated in music and other proper arts, as indeed they should.”Footnote 58 The ordinances of the Wittenberg Girls' School translated Luther's wishes into curriculum requirements, stipulating that the girls “shall all learn to sing psalms and other spiritual songs together” in four-part harmony.Footnote 59 Twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, they would spend a morning learning “to pray the Catechism and learn other useful [Bible] verses and short psalms” by heart.Footnote 60 The Wittenberg School Ordinances stipulated that girls who had mastered literacy learned to sing in parts and to read music: “they shall be shown musical notation, so that they can learn to read music.”Footnote 61 The same held true in Brunswick: in order to promote both literacy and music, the Brunswick school ordinances provided for cantors to teach music notation: “parts and clefs and whatever else is required for such music, so that they may learn to sing confidently and in tune. . . . In this way all children and youths shall be taught to sing at school.Footnote 62

In the second half of the sixteenth century, the pastor of St. Thomas', superintendent of Leipzig and prolific hymn writer Nikolaus Selnecker commended the method of learning-by-singing to all people—characteristically by writing a hymn, “Maintenance of Christian Teaching through the Holy Catechism for Children” [“Vmb erhaltung bey der Christlichen Lehre des heiligen Kinder-Catechismi”].Footnote 63 At a time when Lutherans needed to be kept “from false teachers,” he commended the singing of the Catechism in his hymn as a way of learning and remembering orthodox teachings:

By the learning of our youth keep us,
By the Catechism, dear Lord, keep us!
By your truth, sanctify us,
By your Word, master our own.Footnote 64

III. Lutheran Music in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century

The time between Luther's death in 1546 and the turn of the seventeenth century saw a significant growth in music education in Lutheran schools. By the second half of the sixteenth century, music education for children from all social backgrounds was firmly established in Reformation Germany. The 1559 Württemberg School Ordinances reflect the policies of other Protestant principalities in stipulating that all children, “even working children” were to learn: “to read and write for their own benefit and the benefit of others, so that they may be better educated and brought up as Christians, and be taught the singing of psalms at the same time.”Footnote 65

Because music had become so central in communicating the Reformation message, the 1530s and 1540s had seen the deliberate fostering of music education and music-making in Lutheran schools and parishes. Not only were students themselves taught through the medium of music, they also were encouraged to promote the Reformation message by what they sang and how they worshipped. As the first Lutheran generation of students was educated, both teachers and students modeled Lutheran music, doctrine, and forms of worship to the wider community. In his 1539 rejection of Catholic councils, On the Councils and the Church, Luther explained how a new generation of students had the potential to convert the nation by their “living example”:

everybody learns from students, without any trouble or effort. Therefore the masses will also learn from the students what, when and how to sing in church. They will learn what to sing at the bier and the grave. When the students kneel and fold their hands in prayer, or when the school master beats time with his baton during the singing of “And was made man”—everybody will imitate them . . . if they are so moved by living examples.Footnote 66

Protestant school ordinances stipulated that musically able schoolmasters or cantors were to be appointed in schools to promote the Reformation message through music. School children, in turn, were to teach their parents. In this way, Luther had foreseen entire cities would be converted to the Reformation cause.Footnote 67 Music was “essential to schools,” the reformer believed, not only as a way of learning about scripture and doctrine, but more so as a way of promoting reforms in Church and community.Footnote 68 Indeed, as early as 1528, the Zahna visitation orders made clear that the schoolmaster was to educate not only the children in reading, understanding, and performing music and the basic teachings of Luther's doctrine, but also to encourage them actively to re-educate their parents:

The schoolmaster . . . ought to teach the children the regular hymns at communion and the hymns before and after the sermon, assiduously teach the children their Catechism, and to instruct them to teach their parents the usual grace at table, and a verse from Scripture, or another good authority, in Latin or German.Footnote 69

In the second half of the sixteenth century, educators therefore were often musicians who had been recruited according to Luther's own stated preference for musically able candidates: “A schoolmaster has to be able to sing: otherwise I shall not look at him.”Footnote 70 School cantors frequently fulfilled the dual role of church organists and choirmasters. This was the case not only in large cities with established Choir Schools such as Leipzig, where the cantor of St. Thomas' had a significant teaching load at St. Thomas' School,Footnote 71 or in Wittenberg where the cantor taught at the Latin School,Footnote 72 but also in smaller towns and villages such as Düben near Coswig, where the school's director and cantor shared in “leading the school choir on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays at church.”Footnote 73

The arrangements at Düben reflect the teaching practice in smaller Lutheran schools in late-sixteenth-century Saxony as a whole: numerous other schools also employed schoolmasters who taught music, or cantors who acted as teachers.Footnote 74 The Zerbst School Ordinances of 1557, for instance, stipulated that the “choir be led by the director of the school, just as everywhere else”; the Schmiedeburg Ordinances of 1575 show that the cantor taught Latin as well as music, while the Hornburg Ordinances of 1589 specify that the task of teaching music was to be shared by the school's director and his deputy, the “baccalaureus.”Footnote 75 By the last decade of the sixteenth century most schoolmasters in Lutheran schools taught music theory and singing (and therefore were able to sing themselves or at least delegated the task of musical education to a cantor).Footnote 76 Their teaching of reading and understanding music went hand-in-hand with teaching students how to sing in harmony.Footnote 77 Schoolmasters who acted in this dual capacity had their work cut out: in addition to their teaching commitments of educating the young in the classics, philosophy, theology, and “the Catechism in Latin and German,” teachers in the Wittenberg Latin elementary school also taught music theory and singing, and were responsible for leading “singing in church on four days per week.”Footnote 78 On Saturdays, they rehearsed the Sunday readings with their classes, interpreting the Gospel text and declining its verbs before singing the Gospel reading.Footnote 79 No wonder that in 1555 the schoolmasters in the birthplace of Luther's Reformation formally complained that they worked too hard for too little pay:

In the Wittenberg Latin primary school the schoolmasters have to shoulder a lot of work—teaching singing, polyphony as well as reading to a large number of children, both locals and outsiders. For the amount of work they are paid very little.Footnote 80

Like their Wittenberg colleagues, in 1575 the Schmiedeburg rector and cantor also complained that they were overworked:

The two of them, on their own, had to teach so many students—80 of them, in three separate classes—to read, to learn lessons by heart etc., while the schoolmaster also has to play the organ and the cantor has to serve as verger.Footnote 81

While the visitation approved the employment of a “tertius” at Schmiedeburg to assist the two masters in their multiple tasks, the pay of the Wittenberg schoolmaster-cantors was not increased. After unsuccessfully petitioning the parish authorities for a pay raise, the visitation recommended that the cantors should play at more weddings and funerals to top up their meager pay with additional fees.Footnote 82

IV. Lutheran Kantoreien as Instruments of Reform

Luther's vision of singers as agents of liturgical and doctrinal reform was enthusiastically implemented in electoral Saxony. While work among school children was clearly a priority, Luther's doctrine was also disseminated through church and secular choirs, and in chamber music groups meeting in private homes.Footnote 83 Luther himself regularly assembled singers and instrumentalists at his home in order to make music and to discuss theology. In his autobiography the reformer and pastor of Joachimsthal, Johannes Mathesius, reflected on the meetings of the “honourable Musica and Kantorei” that met at Luther's house:Footnote 84

In this Kantorei folks sing and play with Christian folk, praise God, sing good psalms just as David did on the harp, or sing a good Swiss Chorale or a Psalm by Josquin [de Prez], gently, quietly and harmoniously: both words [and music]. Even the instruments sing.Footnote 85

In the certain expectation that Lutheran music would help reform the life of the wider community, private musical ensembles like the musicians meeting at Luther's home were complemented with larger, civic foundations.Footnote 86 Significant church funds were expended to establish civic choirs with the specific intention of reforming church worship and music. The 1555 visitation report of the parish of Döbeln, for instance, suggests that the parish spent a fourth of its income on the establishment and maintenance of a town choir [Kantorei]:

In order to foster Christian worship and singing in church, and to teach the youth music and give them opportunity for practice, ten guilders of the forty guilders income shall be given to the civic choir for the edification of the burghers as a whole.Footnote 87

Kantoreien intentionally provided for a mix of singers, pairing students at Lutheran Schools with locals from a wide cross-section of society: burghers as well as crafts- or tradesmen.Footnote 88 The 1570 statutes of the Großenhain Kantorei made provision for students [iuniores or Junioren] as well as local citizens [seniores or Senioren], stressing that the Kantorei was established “for the edification and building up of society as a whole.”Footnote 89 Since the Großenhain statutes provided the basis for many similar choral foundations in the region, and served as a model for the statutes of the Kantoreien in Lützen (1570), Leisnig (1581), Grimma (1602), and Finsterwalde (1605), they give a representative insight into the make-up and membership of Lutheran Kantoreien in Saxony.Footnote 90 Other statutes, such as the 1607 Leges Generales of the Döbeln Kantorei also admit both “apprentices of craftsmen and the children of burghers” and make provision for the democratic election of choir representatives to take care of the affairs of the Kantorei; a remarkable arrangement in an age where any form of social interaction was still strictly regulated.Footnote 91

Not only were Kantoreien reasonably democratic institutions where craftsmen and councillors, students and apprentices shared in music-making on an equal footing, they also served as centers of learning where adult singers were taught to read music, and encouraged to reflect more deeply on the Lutheran message of their singing. The statutes of the Lützen Kantorei (1570) closely echo Luther's vision that choirboys might set an example to their elders and so convert them by their practice: school teachers and students, church leaders and townspeople learn and sing together, a practice that was emulated in many other Kantoreien.Footnote 92 Not only was the Lützen choir made up of schoolboys and seniores, explicit provision was also made for the local schoolmaster to meet all members of the choir for special classes before “Christmas, Easter and Pentecost” in order to:Footnote 93 “foster the service of Almighty God in Church, to encourage the members of the choir to greater fervour, and to refresh them for their impending duties . . . by singing, at school, in the presence of the pastor and deacon.Footnote 94

This arrangement not only enabled the parish clergy to “be aware of what will be sung in church,” but also provided important opportunities for schoolboys and senior members of the Kantorei to sing and learn together under the leadership of a schoolmaster.Footnote 95 Certainly by the time the Großenhain Kantorei statutes were drawn up in 1570, much of the leadership of the town's Kantorei lay in the hands of the schoolmaster. Business meetings of the Kantorei took place in school, although regular rehearsals still took place in church and formal provision was made for the members of the Kantorei to meet and socialize with the town's superintendent and other clergy.Footnote 96

The 1595 statutes of the Strehla Kantorei sum up well how Luther's vision of ordered worship in German, led by a choir that brought together town, school, and church, had been developed forty years after the reformer's death. Both members of the Kantorei and congregation shared in the singing at worship in such a way that enabled choir members to show off their art while enabling ordinary worshippers to join in their singing as well, thereby “not only praising God and adorning our worship, but also gladdening the hearts and building up the entire Christian congregation.”Footnote 97 Following Luther's insight that music “ought to grow out of the true mother tongue and its inflection” to the letter, the schoolteachers leading the Kantorei were enjoined to use the vernacular whenever possible:Footnote 98 “[Singing and music] is much better in our own common German mother tongue, rather than in a foreign, unknown language. Therefore, schoolteachers should use German motets as often as possible.Footnote 99

Finally, there was to be a clear musical relationship between the new and the familiar, the artistic and the devotional. In worship, both congregation and Kantorei were to share in the singing, and the choir's performance was to be carefully balanced by opportunities for congregational singing: “when the choir sings polyphony, a German sacred hymn by Luther” should be sung as well, “but only the first verse of the same to be sung by the choir in polyphony, the remaining verses to be sung by the people in plain unison.”Footnote 100 Members of the Kantorei and the congregation were to form one worshipping community, the choir making an offering of their skills and musical gifts to the wider community, as the 1588 statutes of the Colditz Kantorei explained. After all, the Colditz choir sang in order to “edify this society and add to its welfare.”Footnote 101

At the same time, a Kantorei was an instrument of order, reflecting in their ordered singing the order of church and magisterium. The Colditz statutes specifically state that the choir existed “to please the servants of Church and state.”Footnote 102 While the maintenance of the church's discipline and earthly magisterium were good Lutheran reasons for establishing a Kantorei, the statutes cited three further theological reasons for their existence. Musical order and disciplined practice reflected the earthly magisterium; the beauty of their singing foreshadowed the heavenly realm, while their communal act of thanksgiving and their acknowledgment of graces and gifts already received affirmed the singers' hope of enjoying the bliss of heaven hereafter:

Above all, [the Kantorei] exists to honour and serve God and to give thanks for his gifts of grace and skill, and out of a hearty desire for the heavenly Kantorei and in confident expectation of Christ, that we may join the angels there and sing Te Deum laudamus properly: it certainly will sound better there.Footnote 103

A Kantorei, then, served as a model of Luther's two realms as much as an instrument to praise God through music and to enthuse others to join their praises.Footnote 104 Indeed, the Colditz statutes specify that those members of the community who did not make use of their musical gifts and chose not to join the choir, or who had joined but did not take their practices seriously, rejected not only the town's order and the church's discipline, but the Giver of grace himself. By their actions or inactions, the Colditz statutes affirm those citizens publicly “profess that they have no interest in order, obedience, peace and unity, yea even that God's Word means little to them.”Footnote 105

The statutes of Lutheran Kantoreien document well the progress of Luther's expectation that electoral Saxony would be converted through a ministry of music. As the sixteenth century came to its close, Lutheran Kantoreien had become institutions that fulfilled important educative, theological, and social functions in ways similar to those of pre-Reformation religious confraternities.Footnote 106 They had become institutions in which Lutheran learning was fostered, where people gathered to sing and so created a sense of community through their art. Their regular involvement in public worship enabled the introduction of important liturgical reforms, such as the adoption of a fully vernacular liturgy, while their participation in important rites of passage, including weddings and funerals, enabled the shaping of a Lutheran society based on friendship and family ties. Finally, their secular foundation coupled with their distinctively Lutheran viewpoint made them important instruments of change in the decades immediately following the death of Martin Luther.

V. Conclusion

Toward the end of the first decade of the Reformation, Luther had made clear that music and other forms of artistic expression were useful and necessary instruments to further the Reformation message. In his 1526 Deutsche Messe, he linked the need to communicate the Word of God to “simple folk and the young” with the work of education and the arts:Footnote 107

For the sake of simple folk and the young, Scripture and the Word of God ought to be taught and practised daily, that people may get used to Scripture; may know, understand and inhabit it, so that they may defend their beliefs and, over time, may teach others and thus further the reign of Christ.Footnote 108

In order to educate new generations to enthuse others for the Word of God, all forms of artistic endeavor, even bell ringing, were “helpful and beneficial.”Footnote 109 Singing God's Word for Luther was as important as reading it, or preaching and writing it, he explained:

The Word should be read, sung, preached, written and set in poetry. Wherever it may be helpful and beneficial, I should gladly have it rung out by all bells and played on all organ pipes and proclaimed by everything that makes a sound.Footnote 110

By the turn of the seventeenth century, schools and civic Kantoreien had enthusiastically responded to Luther's challenge: the young were educated to teach their families and friends in the new doctrine; teachers, cantors, and poets found ways of making the Word of God known through their skills; organists and town pipers found ways of accompanying singers in praising God and the success of the Reformation. By the end of the first century of the Reformation, the Word of God in the vernacular and Luther's doctrine were, indeed, “played on all organ pipes and proclaimed by everything that makes a sound.”Footnote 111

The establishment of a distinctive Lutheran musical tradition has been one of the most enduring features of Luther's Reformation. Almost 500 years after his Reformation, it still remains central to worship in the Protestant denominations that trace their cultural and doctrinal heritage back to Luther. Martin Luther's love of music, and his vision of music as an ideal means to convey a sense of the nature and being of God, continues to inspire composers and singers to use their art in the service of God and their communities. Why do Lutherans sing? Because Luther's conviction that music would inspire and bring together many to sing God's praises still holds true:

For God our loving Lord did music make
to be a proper singer, the master of composers:
Day and night she sings and sounds his praise.
Since nothing will tire her in praising him,
my own song, too, shall honour him
and give him thanks eternally.Footnote 112

References

1 In a letter dated 1520 a fellow-student and later rector of Erfurt University, Johannes Jäger [Crotus Rubeanus] addressed Luther: “You were among our group of students the musician and erudite philosopher” [Eras in nostro quondam contubernio musicus et philosophus eruditus] (Luther, Martin, D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe [WA], eds. Knaake, Joachim Karl Friedrich, et al. [Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1883–1985]Google Scholar, Briefwechsel [Br], WA Br 2:91, 141–2). All translations are the author's.

2 Luther, Praefatio zu den Symphoniae Iucundae, 1538, WA 50:371, 38–39.

3 WA 50:372, 19: “Klingendem predigen vnd rhümen von Gottes güte vnd gnade.”

4 For the sixteenth-century Munich composer Ludwig Senfl, see Gasch, Stefan, Lodes, Birgit, Tröster, Sonja et al. , eds., Senfl Studien I, Wiener Forum für ältere Musikgeschichte 4 (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 2012)Google Scholar; Lodes, B.Miller, M., “‘Hic jacet Ludevicus Fenfflius’: Neues zur Biographie von Ludwig Senfl,” Die Musikforschung 58 (2005), 260–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for his collaboration with Luther, see Kongsted, O., “Ludwig Senfl's Luther-Motetter: en forskningsberetning,” Fund og Forskning, 39 (2000), 7–41Google Scholar.

5 Luther to Ludwig Senfl, October 1, 1530, WA Br 5:639, 17–20, no. 1727: “Hinc factum est, ut prophetae [Luther consistently referred to psalm writers as prophets], nulla sic arte sint usi ut musica, dum suam theologiam non in geometriam, non in arithmeticam, non in astronomiam, sed in musicam digesserunt.”

6 WA Br 5:639, 20–1: “Ut theologiam et musicam haberent coniunctissimas, veritatem psalmis et canticis dicentes.”

7 Luther, Dictata Super Psalterium, 1513–16, WA 4: 123, 13–4: “Est predicare mysterium regni coelorum et ad bona spiritualia exhortari.”

8 Luther, Von den letzten Worten Davids, 1543, WA 54:33, 18–19: “Redet und prediget von solcher verheissung und gnade Gottes, das ander Leute auch dazu komen, und der teilhaftig werden”; 33, 21–22: “Auch die menschen nützlich zu reitzen und zu leren.”

9 Luther, Praefatio zu den Symphoniae Iucundae, 1538, WA 50:368, 17–8: “Diese schöne vnd köstliche Gabe Gottes, die freie Kunst der Musica.”

10 WA 50:368, 19: “Viel vnd grosse nutze”; 371, 38–9: “Mit worten vnd auch mit dem gesang vnd klag die hertzen der Menschen bewegen.”

11 WA 50:370, 38–371, 16: “Aller bewegung des Menschlichen hertzen.”

12 WA 50:371, 16–8: “Ein Regiererin, jr mechtig vnd gewaltig ist, durch welche doch oftmals die Menschen, gleich als von jrem Herren, regiert vnd vberwunden werden.”

13 WA 50:371, 31–33: “Durch die Musica der Sathan . . . vertrieben werde.”

14 WA 50:371, 19–21: “Die Trawrigen fröhlich, die Fröhlichen trawrig, die Verzagten hertzenhafftig zu machen, die Hoffertigen zur demut reitzen.”

15 Luther regarded music entirely in quadrivial terms as set out in the Boethian music theory developed by German renaissance music theorists such as the Wittenberg scholar Adam of Fulda. For Adam of Fulda, see Slemon, Peter, Adam von Fulda on musica plana and compositio: De musica, Book II, a translation and commentary (Ph.D. Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1994), 6–19Google Scholar; for his influential manuscript De Musica (1490), see Gerbert, Martin, ed., Scriptores ecclesiastici de musica sacra potissimum ex variis Italiae, Galliae et Germaniae codicibus manuscriptis collecti et nunc primum publica luce donati, 3 vols. (St. Blasien, 1784; repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1963), 329–81Google Scholar.

16 Tischreden [Tr], WA Tr 6:348, 22–4, no. 7034: “Ich gebe nach der Theologie der Musica den nähesten Locum und höchste Ehre,” WA 50:372, 31–32.

17 For Luther's music theory, see Loewe, J. A., “‘Musica est optimum’: Martin Luther's Theory of Music,” Music & Letters (forthcoming, 2013)Google Scholar.

18 Luther, Praefatio zu den Symphoniae Iucundae, 1538, WA 50:372, 16–20: “Dem Menschen aber ist allein vor den anderen Creaturen die stimme mit der rede gegeben, das er solt künnen vnd wissen, Gott mit Gesengen vnd worten zugleich zu loben, Nemlich mit dem hellen, klingendem predigen vnd rhümen von Gottes güte vnd gnade, darinnen schöne wort vnd lieblicher klang zugleich würde gehöret.”

19 WA 50:371, 37–8: “Mit mancherley art vnd klang dieselbe weise wunderbarlich zieren vnd schmücken vnd gleich wie einen Himlischen Tantzreigen füren.”

20 WA 50:372, 4: “Sonora praedicatione.”

21 WA 50:372, 19: “Klingendem predigen.”

22 WA 50:372, 13–4: “Mit viel stimmen geschmückt.”

23 Luther, Lieder, WA 35:411, 8: “Zu Brüssel in dem niederlandt”; for a detailed development history of the song, see WA 35:91–97; for a consideration of the song, and the genre of Zeitungslieder [newspaper songs], see Casey, Paul F., “‘Start spreading the News’: Martin Luther's first published song,” in In laudem Caroli: Renaissance and Reformation Studies for Charles Garfield Nauert, eds. Mehl, James V., et al. (Kirksville, Mo.: Thomas Jefferson University Press, 1998), 75–94Google Scholar.

24 WA 35:412, 8–9: “Fur sein [God's] wordt sind gestorbenn, Sein martrer sind sie worden.”

25 WA 35:415, 9: “Gar frolich lassen singen,” 7–8: “An allem ort/ mit aller stym und zungen.”

26 For Luther's early hymns, see Jenny, Markus, Luthers geistliche Lieder und Kirchengesänge, Archiv zur Weimarer Ausgabe der Werke Martin Luthers [AWA] 4 (Weimar/Köln: Hermann Boehlaus Nachfolger, 1985), 12–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Scribner, Robert W., For the Sake of Simple Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a critique of Scribner's methodology, see Brown, Christopher, Singing the Gospel: Lutheran Hymns and the Success of the Reformation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 4–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 For Becker and his Psalter, Lutheran, Der Psalter Davids gesangsweis (Leipzig: Apel Lantzenberger, 1602)Google Scholar, see Bautz, Friedrich Wilhelm, “Cornelius Becker,” in Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon [BBKL] (Hamm: Verlag Traugott Bautz, 1990), 1:449–50Google Scholar.

29 Cornelius Becker, Vorrede der Psalter Davids Gesangweis, reproduced in Bibliographie zur Geschichte des deutschen Kirchenliedes im XVI. Jahrhundert, Wackernagel, Philipp (Frankfurt am Main: Heyder & Zimmer, 1855), No. 100, 679–89, 680Google Scholar: “Sinetmal diesen nicht so leicht, wie andern seinen Büchern vn Schrifften, der Weg hat verhawen warden, wenn die geistlichen Geseng in Brieffen, auch im sinn vnd gedechtnis frommer Christen fortgebvracht, vnd den Leuten frembder örten mitgetheilet worden.”

30 WA Tr 1:490, 20–21: “Wie der [Menaclas] sagt beym Virgilio: Tu calamos inflare leves, ego dicere versus; Singe du die Noten, so will ich den Text singen”; WA Tr 4:32, 21–22: “Sing du die noten, so will ich den text singen”; see Virgil, Bucolica: Eclogue 5, Daphnis, 3–4.

31 Luther, Wider die himmlischen Propheten, 1525, WA 18:123, 22–23: “Es mus beyde text und notten, accent, weise vnd geperde aus rechter mutter sprach und stymme kommen.”

32 WA Tr 2:518, 6–7, no. 2545b: “Die nothen machen den text lebendig.”

33 Luther, Wider die himmlischen Propheten 1525, WA 18:123, 22: “Es laut nicht ertig noch rechtschaffen”; see also, Formula Missae et Communionis 1523, WA 12:218, 17–20: “Possent vero ista cantica . . . ut vel simul post latinas cantiones, vel per vices dierum nuc latine, nunc vernacular cantarentur.”

34 For a discussion on the debate whether Luther intentionally used popular tunes, see Leaver, Robin, Luther's Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications, Lutheran Quarterly Books (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 12–18Google Scholar.

35 Brown (2005), 9. For the use of hymns and secular songs in late-medieval Passion and Easter drama, and Lutheran teaching dramas, see Loewe, J. A., “Proclaiming the Passion: Popular Drama and the Passion tradition in Luther's Germany,” Renaissance and Reformation Review 12.2/3 (2010), 245–46, 258, 262Google Scholar.

36 For the hymn “Aus tieffer not schrey ich zu dyr,” see WA 35:419, 11; for a detailed development history of the hymn, see WA 35:97–109; for the hymn “Es woll uns Gott genedig seyn,” see WA 35:418, 4–5; for its development history, see WA 35:123–124; AWA, 4:55–61, which suggests a slightly different development history.

37 AWA, 4:19–23; see also, Scribner, Robert, “Flugblatt und Analphabetentum,” in Flugschriften als Massenmedium der Reformationszeit, eds. Köhler, Hans-Joachim et al. , Beiträge zum Tübinger Symposion 1980, Spätmittelalter und frühe Neuzeit 13 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981), 65–76, 69–70Google Scholar, and Brown, Christopher, “Devotional Life in Hymns, Liturgy, Music and Prayer,” in Lutheran Ecclesiastical Culture 1550–1675, eds. Kolb, Robert et al. , Brill Companion to the Christian Tradition 11 (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2008), 205–58, 209–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Hertel, Gustav et al. , eds., Die Chroniken der niedersächsischen Städte: Magdeburg, Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte vom 14. bis 16. Jahrhundert 27, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Verlag von S. Hirtzel, 1869–99), 2:143, 8–10Google Scholar: “Leret Mann und Weib, auch Jungfrawen und Gesellen, so viele, das die deutschen Lieder und Psalmen so gemeine worden, daß die von gemeinem Volcke dieselbigen dornach teglich in allen Kirchen, ehe man die Predigten angefangen, offentlich gesungen und noch singet.”

39 Hertel (1899), 2:143, 5: “Ein loser Bettler.”

40 Hertel (1899), 2:143, 20: “Aufruhr,” 14–16: “Kamen im nw uber sechß- oder acht hundert Menschen zusamen und brachten den gefangenen mit gewalt darauß.”

41 For Luther's influential Magdeburg sermon on true and false righteousness, see Olson, Oliver K., “Theology of Revolution: Magdeburg, 1550–1551,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 3, no. 1 (1972), 56–79, 63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Luther, Vorrede des Wittenberger Gesangbuches, 1524, WA 35:474, 11–4: “Hab ich auch . . . ettliche geystliche lieder zusamen bracht, das heylige Euangelion, so itzt von Gottes gnaden wider auff gangen ist, zu treyben und ynn schwanck zu bringen.”

43 Hertel (1899), 2:143, 5–6; for the impact of the mass-distribution Luther's hymns, see Brown (2005), 5–7, especially 2, Figure 1.1.

44 Luther, Die Vorrede zum Babstschen Gesangbuch, 1545, WA 35:477, 14: “Mit allerley zierde den leuten angeneme machen.”

45 WA 35:477, 13–5: “Darumb thun die drucker sehr wol daran, das sie gute lieder vleissig drucken . . . damit sie [the people] zu solcher freude des glaubens gereitzt werden, und gerne singen.”

46 Wackernagel (1855), 680: “Das auch Gottes Wort, durch die grausame finsternis vnt schreckliche tyranny des Bapstthumbs vngehindert, schnelles lauffe, aus Sachsen an andere örter Deutscher Nation fort gerückt, vnd so wol gerathen, darzu haben für andern Lutheri Psalmen vnd andere Christliche Gesenge, durch Gottes segen treffliche beförderung gethan.”

47 Luther, Formulae Missae et Communionis pro Ecclesiae Vuittembergensis, 1523, WA 12:218, 31–2: “Si qui sunt poetae germanici, extimulentur et nobis poemata pietatis endant” [If there are any German poets, let them come forward and write for us spiritual poems]. For Luther's liturgial reforms, see Leaver (2007), 227–73, and Herl, Joseph, Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism: Choir, Congregation and Three Centuries of Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 23–36Google Scholar.

48 Luther, Ein newe Vorrede Martini Lutheris, 1528, WA 35:475, 13–4: “Nu haben sich etliche wol beweiset und die lieder gemehrdt, also das sie mich weit ubertreffen und ynn dem wol meine meister sind.”

49 Luther, Die Vorrede zum Babstschen Gesangbuch, 1545, WA 35:477, 8–9: “Wer solchs mit ernst gleubet, der kans nicht lassen, er mus fröhlich und mit lust dauon singen und sagen, das es andere auch hören und herzu kommen.”

50 Brown (2005), 8.

51 Luther, An die Ratsherren aller Städte deutschen Landes, 1524, WA 15:44, 25–33: “So were doch alleyn dise ursach gnugsam, die aller besten schulen beyde fur knaben und meydlin an allen ortten auff zu richten, das die wellt, auch yhren welltlichen stand eusserlich zu halten, doch bedarf seiner geschickter menner und frawen. . . . Darumb ists zu thun, das man kneblin und meydlin dazu recht lere und auff zihe” [The maintenance of the magisterium is sufficient reason to establish the very best of schools everywhere, both for boys and for girls: for the magisterium requires skilful men and women. . . . That is why boys and girls need to be educated and taught well for their future roles].

52 Vormbaum, Reinhold, ed., Evangelische Schulordnungen, I: Die evangelischen Schulordnungen des Sechzehnten Jahrhunderts [ES] (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1860), 50Google Scholar: “Men schal en dar Psalme vnd Geistliche Gesänge singen leren.”

53 ES, 50: “Welk se in einem edder twen Jahren lehren könen.”

54 Gawthrop, Richard and Strauss, Gerald, “Protestantism and Literacy in Early Modern Germany,” Past and Present 104 (1984): 31–55, 48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see Richter, Karl, ed., August Hermann Francke: Schriften über Erziehung und Unterricht, Pädaogische Bibliothek: eine Sammlung der wichtigsten pädagogischen Schriften älterer und neuerer Zeit 5 (Leipzig: Siegismund und Volkening, 1872), 400Google Scholar: “Daß die Kinder die alten Gesänge D. Lutheri und anderer Geist-reichen Männer singen lernen, auch sie mit der Zeit auswendig hersagen können” [In order that children may learn to sing and, over time, recite by heart the old hymns by Dr. Luther and other spiritual writers]. “Recitieren” suggests that children repeated rather than intoned the Shorter Catechism.

55 ES, 27.

56 For “Ach Gott im Himmel,” see WA 35, 109–120; for “Es spricht der Unweisen Mund,” see: WA 35, 121–22.

57 For a thorough reflection on Luther's Kathechismuslieder, see Leaver (2007), 107–72; for an analysis of “Wir glauben all,” see WA 35, 172–77, for an analysis of “Vater unser,” see WA 35, 270–81.

58 Luther, Vorrede des Wittenberger Gesangbuches, 1524, WA 35:474, 18–20: “Und sind dazu auch ynn vier stymme bracht, nicht aus anderer ursach, denn das ich gerne wollte, die iugent, die doch sonst soll und mus ynn der Musica und andern rechten künsten erzogen werden.”

59 ES, 27: “Sollen sie all emit einander lernen singen psalmen vnd andere geistliche gesenge.”

60 ES, 27: “Beten zu lernen Catechismum vnd andere nutzliche spruche oder kurtz psalmen.” The same was true in Brunswick, 50: “Vnnd den kleinen Catechismum Doctoris Lutheri, ersten die hilligen Wörde des Catechismi, darna die korte Bedüdinge der Wörder, alse in dem Catechismo steyt” [And in the Small Catechism of Doctor Luther, learn first the blessed words of the Catechism, and then the then the meaning of the words in the same Catechism].

61 ES, 27: “Es soll auch den jhenigen, so lesen konnen, die scola musicalus furgemalt werden, daß sie etlicher maß lernen solemnisiren.”

62 ES, 16: “Voces, Claues, vnde wat mehr höret to sulker Musica, dat se leren vaste singen vnde renlick . . . Su scholen in der Schole alle kyndere vnde ungen singen lernen.”

63 For Selnecker, author of the History of the Augsburg Confession (1584) and one of the editors of the Formula of Concord (1580), see Klän, Werner, “Der “vierte Mann.” Auf den Spuren von Nikolaus Selneckers (1530–1592), Beitrag zu Entstehung und Verbreitung der Konkordienformel,” Lutherische Theologie und Kirche 17 (1993), 145–74Google Scholar, and Wolfdietrich von Kloeden, “Selnecker, Nikolaus,” BBKL 9:1376–79. Wackernagel, Philipp, Das deutsche Kirchenlied von der ältesten Zeit bis zum Anfang des XVII. Jahrhunderts, 4 (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1874), No. 382Google Scholar, “Vmb erhaltung bey der Christlichen Lehre des heiligen Kinder-Catechismi,” 282: “Es thut jetzt not, durch deine güt/ für falschen Lehrern vns behüt” [At this time, by your grace/ keep us from false teachers, Lord].

64 Wackernagel (1874), No. 383, 281: “Erhalt uns bei der kinderlehr,/ beim Katechismo, lieber Herr!/ Heilig uns in der wahrheit dein,/ dein wort laß unsern meister sein.”

65 ES, 71: “Derselben arbeitenden Kinder”; “Schreibens und lesens jren selbs vnd gemeines Nutzes wegen, deßgleichen mit Psalmen singen dester baß vnderricht, vnd Christenlich aufferzogen.”

66 Luther, Von den Konziliis und Kirchen, 1539, WA 50:619, 8–16: “Denn von den Schülern lernen es die anderen alle, on alle auffsetze und mühe. Also was, wenn und wie die schüler in den Kirchen singen oder beten, so lernts der hauffe hinach. Und was sie uber der leiche oder beim grabe singen, so lernen es die anderen auch. Wenn sie niderknien und die hende falten, so der Schulmeister mit dem stecken klopfft unter dem gesang: ‘Et homo factus est,’ so thuts der hauffe hinach . . . als durch lebendige exempel bewegt.” The Latin words “and was made man” were sung to double note values, in order to reflect on the mystery of the Incarnation (and, in Catholic liturgies, to allow clergy and people to genuflect), hence the need to direct the singers.

67 WA 50:619, 8–10.

68 WA Tr 5:557, 19–20, no. 6248: “Man muß musicam necessario in der schulen behalten.”

69 Pallas (1906), 367: “Der schulmeister . . . soll . . . die geordneten gesenge der kirchen bei der messen, auch vor und nach ietzlicher predigt singen, und in sunderheit soll er vorflissen sein, die schuler im Catechism zu unterrichten, und das die den eltern die gewonliche segen zu ietzlicher malzeit fur dem tische, abends aber einen seuberlichen sententz oder spruch aus der heiligen schrift oder sunst einem guten lehrer lateinisch under deutsch aufsagen.”

70 WA Tr 5:557, 19–20, no. 6248: “Ein schulmeister muß singen können, sonst sehe ich ihn nicht an.”

71 See for instance, Neumann, Werner and Schulze, Hans-Joachim, eds., Bach-Dokumente (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1963–79), 2, no. 129Google Scholar.

72 Pallas (1906), 42n1.

73 Landeshauptarchiv Sachsen-Anhalt Abteilung Merseburg, Visitationsakten der Superintendatur Eilenburg 1574, Rep. 47, Kap. II, Nr. 43, BL 99: “Mittwoch, Freitag und Sonntage in der Kirche den Chor zu regieren”; Pallas, Karl, ed., Die Registraturen der Kirchenvisitationen im ehemals sächsischen Kurkreise, 1: Die Ephorien Wittenberg, Kemberg und Zahna (Halle: Otto Hendel, 1906), 45Google Scholar: “Zugleich cantor.”

74 Müller, Georg Gottfried, Das kursächsische Schulwesen beim Erlaß der Schulordnung von 1580 (Dresden: Jahresbericht des Wettiner Gymnasiums zu Dresden, 1888), xivGoogle Scholar.

75 Sintenis, Friedrich, Zur Geschichte des Zerbster Schulwesens: Einladungsschrift zur Feier des fünfzigjährigen Bestehens des Herzoglichen Francisceums zu Zerbst 18. und 19. Mai 1853 (Zerbst: Friedrich Römer, 1853), 15Google Scholar: “Der Rector scholae regiere wie überall den Chor”; Pallas (1906), 325–26.

76 At Annaberg, for instance, the task of music teaching was delegated to a cantor, as the 1579 School Ordinances make clear: Stadtbibliothek Leipzig, Annaberger Schulordnung, 179: “Cantoris specialia: suprema inspectio et gubernatio chori musici incumbat” [The inspection and overall leadership of the choir of musicians lies particularly with the cantor].

77 Contemporary textbooks on music theory, such as the Compendium Musices by the Lüneburg Cantor and later pastor of Halberstadt, Auctor Lampadius (Bern: Samuel Apiarius, 1554), B i r, shed more light on the dual functions of music as a theoretical method and performance art: “QUid [sic] est Musica? Est quae rectas cantandi formulas demonstrat teuto: ein singe kunst” (What is music [theory]? It demonstrates the proper form of singing, in German: the art of singing). Luther himself carefully distinguished between the two, see Loewe (2012), 38–42.

78 Pallas (1906), 14: “Singen in der kirchen an diesen vier tagen in der wochen”; “Catechismus . . . latine und deutsch.”

79 Pallas (1906), 14: “Des suntags evangelium exponirn . . . grammatice declariren, darnach soll man ubersingen.”

80 Pallas (1906), 42n1: “Die schuldiener in der lateinischen kinderschul zu Wittenberg haben grosse arbeit mit singen, figurieren und lessen und eine grosse menig von burgerskindern und frembden zu versorgen und ihrer arbeit nach sehr geringe besoldung.”

81 Pallas (1906), 316: “Das sie beide allein ein solche menge schuler, der sich in die 80 und in drei classes unterschieden weren, mit lesen, repetieren und andern versorgen, und doneben der schulmeister die orgel, der cantor die custerei vorsehen musten.”

82 Pallas (1906), 316: “Einen tertium zu trachten, welchs sie gewilliget”; see also 42n1: “Doraus eine neue zulag zu machen.”

83 Rautenstrauch, Johannes, Luther und die Pflege der kirchlichen Musik in Sachsen: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der katholischen Brüderschaften, der vor- und nachreformatorischen Kurrenden, Schulchöre und Kantoreien Sachsens [KS] (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1907), 61Google Scholar.

84 Mathesius, Johann Balthasar, ed., Herrn Magister Johannes Mathesii weyland berühmten und frommen Pfarrers im Joachimsthal Lebens-Beschreibung (Dresden: Zimmermann, 1705), 32Google Scholar: “Ehrliche Musica und Cantorey”; for Reformation music making in Joachimsthal under Mathesius, see Brown (2005), 26–42.

85 Mathesius (1705), 32–33: “Eine ehrliche Musica und Cantorey, darinnen man von [mit] christlichen Leuten singet und klinget, Gott preiset, gute Psalmen singet, wie David in der Harffen, einen guten Schweitzerischen Choral oder Josquinischen Psalm singet, fein leise und gelinde, sammt den Text, auch in die Instrumenta singet.”

86 For Lutheran music-making in Joachimsthal homes, see Brown (2005), 105–119.

87 Hauptstaatsarchiv Dresden, Loc. 1987, Visitationsbericht des Meißnischen Kreises: Visitationsabschied für die Stadt Döbeln, XVI, 656ff: “Domit auch in der Kirchen mit den christlichen ampten vnd gesengen dest mehr fleißes angewendet und die jugent in der musica dest besser gelehret vnd geubet werde, so sollen von den vierzig gulden, wen sie erhalten, gemeiner cantorei zu geburlicher ergetzlichkeit zehn gulden gegeben werden.”

88 Livingston, Ernest, “The Place of Music in German Education around 1600,” Journal of Research in Music Education 19, no. 2 (1971): 144–67, 164CrossRefGoogle Scholar: “Kantorei members represented all trades and professions”; see also, Weber, Arno, Geschichte der Kantorei-Gesellschaften im Gebiete des ehemaligen Kurfürstentums Sachsen, Publikationen der Internationalen Musikgesellschaft: Beihefte IX [KG] (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1902), 27Google Scholar.

89 Satzungen der Großenhainer Kantorei 1570, KS, 450: “Zur Erbauung vnd Zuerhaltung der gantzen gesellschaft.”

90 KS, 139 notes that subsequent statutes cited the Großenhain statutes “verbatim in a number of instances” [wörtliche Übereinstimmung einzelner Punkte]; see also KG, 20.

91 Leges Generales de Constitutione Corporis Musici, KG, 27: “Handwerks-Gesellen, Bürgers Söhne.” The concept of social interaction through common music-making modelled by Lutheran Kantoreien is refelcted in the establishment of work-place choirs, see Purcell, Christina and Kagan, Carolyn, “Joy at work: The Impact of Non-Professional Singing Workshops on Employee Well-Being,” Report of the Joy at Work Singing Workshops included as part of the RIHSC Annual Conference, Manchester 2007 (Manchester: Research Institute for Health and Social Change Manchester Metropolitan University, 2008), 2–15Google Scholar.

92 Livingston (1971), 165–66.

93 Satzungen der Kantorei-Gesellschaft zu Lützen vom Jahre 1570, KG, 79, IV: “Uff Weihnachten, Ostern und Pfingsten.”

94 Satzungen der Kantorei-Gesellschaft zu Lützen, KG, 79, IV: “Damit Gott dem Allmechtigen Inn der Kirchen desto vleissiger sein dinst geleistet, und die Jhenigen, so der Cantorei teglich beiwohnen Zu grössren vleiß gereitzt werden, und vor Ihren geleisten dinst eine erquickung haben kondten. . . . Inn der Schulen . . . Zuübersingen . . . Inn gegenwart des Herrn Pfarrherrn und Diacony.”

95 Satzungen der Kantorei-Gesellschaft zu Lützen, KG, 79, IV: “Domit denen [the parish clergy], waß in der Kirchen gesungen werden soll, bewust sein möge.” The statutes specified the presence of the schoolboys [knaben] for this “tentamen” [rehearsal].

96 Satzungen der Großenhainer Kantorei, KS, 449: “Schulregenten ampt”; KS, 451: “Die samlung der Cantorum sol auf der Schulenn geschehenn” [the meetings of the singers are to be held in school], while the choir met in the “kirchen . . . zum Tentiren” [in church . . . for rehearsals]; see also KS, 452: “Johannis Baptistae Jerliche Zeche belangend.”

97 Satzungen der Strehlaer Kantorei 1595, KS, 181: “Nicht allein zum Lobe Gottes vndt zur Zierde der Gottesdiensten, Sondern auch zur auffmunterung der Hertzen vnd zur Erbauung der gantzen christlichen gemein.”

98 Luther, Wider die himmlischen Propheten, 1525, WA 18:123, 22–23: “Aus rechter mutter sprach und stymme kommen.”

99 Strehlaer Satzungen, KS, 181: “Viel besser durch vnnsere bekannte Deutzsche Muttersprache, als durch eine fremde vnbekannte Sprache geschehen kann, so sollen sich die Schuldiener so viel möglich auff deutzsche Muteten befleißigen.”

100 Strehlaer Satzungen, KS, 181: “Darann man figurieret . . . einen Deutzschen Kirchengesang Lutheri . . . vnd zwar nur den ersten Vers aus demselben zu Chore figuraliter, die anderen Versus aber mit dem Volcke choraliter vollendts hinaussingen.” The evidence from Strehla suggests that Herl (2004), 129, is certainly right in his assertion that “an increase in polyphonic music competed with congregational singing,” although the increase in polyphonic singing there certainly did not constitute a “worship war.”

101 Colditzer Kantoreiordnung, KS, 188: “Ergetzung in dieser gesellschaft oder wohlstandes wehen.”

102 Colditzer Kantoreiordnung, KS, 188: “Zu willen vnnd gefallen . . . den Kirchendienern vnd der Obrigkeitt.”

103 Colditzer Kantoreiordnung, KS, 188: “Ergetzung in dieser gesellschaft oder wohlstandes wehen, . . . zu willen vnnd gefallen . . . den Kirchendienern vnd der Obrigkeitt, . . . sondern darumb am allermeistenn, daß Gott dadurch geehret vndt gedienet wirdt vndt zur Dancksagung, daß Ihnen Gott solche gnadt vnnd geschicklichkeit vorliehen hatt, auch aus einem herzlichen Verlangen nach der himmlischen Cantorey vnd gewissen zuvorsicht in Christo, daß wir dort mit den Engeln einstimmen vnnd das Te Deum laudamus recht singen, do es denn besser klingen wird.”

104 For an introduction to Luther's understanding of the two realms, see Wright, William J., Martin Luther's Understanding of God's Two Kingdoms: A Response to the Challenge of Skepticism, Texts and Studies in Reformation and pre-Reformation Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010)Google Scholar.

105 Colditzer Kantoreiordnung, KS, 188: “Der bezueget, das er zu ordnung, zu gehorsam, zu Friedt vnd zu einigkeit keine lust noch lieb hatt, ja daß ihn [sic] Gottes Wordt ein geringer Ernst ist.”

106 For pre-Reformation confraternities in Germany, see Moeller, Bernd, Religious Life in Germany on the Eve of the Reformation, in Pre-Reformation Germany, ed. Strauss, Gerald (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 14–20, 24–30Google Scholar.

107 Luther, Deutsche Messe und ordnung Gottis diensts, 1526, WA 19:73, 18: “Eynfeltigen und des jungen volcks.”

108 WA 19:73, 18–21: “Umb der eynfeltigen und des jungen volcks willen, wilchs sol und mus teglich ynn der schrifft und Gottis wort geubt und erzogen warden, das sie der schrifft gewonet, geschickt, leufftig und kündig drynnen warden, yren glauben zuvertretten und anderer mit der zeyt zu leren und das reych Christi helffen mehren.”

109 WA 19:73, 23: “Hulfflich und fodderlich.”

110 WA 19:73, 22–25: “Umb solcher willen mus man lessen, singen, predigen, schreyben und tichten, und wo es hulfflich und fodderlich dazu were, wolt ich lassen mit allen glocken dazu leutten und mit allen orgeln pfeyffen und alles klingen lassen, was klingen kunde.”

111 WA 19:73, 25: “Mit allen orgeln pfeyffen und alles klingen lassen, was klingen kunde.”

112 Luther, Fraw Musica, 1538, WA 35:484, 33–40: “Gott/ Der sie [die Musica] also geschaffen hat,/ Zu sein die rechte Sengerin,/ Der Musicen ein Meisterin./ Dem singt und springt sie tag und nacht,/ Seines lobs sie nichts müde macht,/ Den ehrt und lobt auch mein gesang/ Und sagt jm ein ewigen danck,” see also the discussion of the poem in WA 48:293–97, and Leaver (2007), 73–76.