# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1850 11 26_S53
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

53

or could use for anything else, and compare them with one another, one will soon see which is more beautiful, the old or the new, and who understood church-building better, the old builders or the young. The case is similar with the old and the new melodies. The old melodies spring from a time, and from men, who were filled, borne, and driven by a religious and churchly spirit; the newfangled, botched ones are manufactured by people who had no churchly life at all, or only a feeble, sickly one, who were more at home and more at ease in worldly than in churchly music: which melodies, then, will and must be the better, the old or the new? But I will now also show the reader, so far as is possible here, how the good old melodies have been ruined.

First, by this, that all sorts of flourishes have been worked into them which really do not belong in them. One now often sings two notes to one syllable, where the author (or composer) of the melody wrote down only one. For example, to the words, "Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier," seven notes are to come, one note to each syllable; but now one commonly sings eleven instead of seven to it. Again, in "Wie schön leucht't uns der Morgenstern," eight notes are to be sung to the eight syllables; now one mostly sings ten or eleven to it. To what purpose? Is that beautiful? This singing sounds exactly as if, instead of reading it as it stands, one wished to read: "Lie — ib — ster Je — su — u wi — ir si — ind hier," or: "Wie schö — ön leu — eucht't uns der Mor — ge — en — stern." Who would not hold that, in reading, to be an intolerable folly? But in singing, what in reading sounds enough to make one run away is suddenly to be beautiful and good.

Further, one now commonly sings one note as long as another. Originally that was by no means the case in all melodies. Rather, as in speaking one does not pronounce all syllables equally long, but one longer, another shorter: so it is also in many melodies; they often have longer and shorter notes alternating with one another. But little by little they have made all the notes equally long. I will try to show the reader how wretched that sounds, how by it all freshness, all life, and all movement have been taken from the melodies, and they have been made lame and tedious. When I read, for example, the hymn: "Allein Gott in der Höh' sey Ehr," I soon perceive that I do not pronounce one syllable with as much emphasis as the other, nor linger as long on one as on another, but one reads thus: "Allein Gott in der Höh' sey Ehr," etc. The stroke over the syllables always marks the syllable on which more emphasis falls, and on which one dwells longer than on the others. So people used to sing also, and so they now wish to sing again, that is, to hold the notes on the syllables "— lein, — in, — Höh, — Ehr" longer than those on the others. (This is roughly what the reader is to have in mind when he hears of rhythmical singing.) Instead of this, however, people have hitherto sung all the notes on all the syllables equally long.

You can form an idea how abominable that is, if, instead of reading this line as every sensible person who can read properly reads it of himself, you read it as a child reads who cannot yet read fluently, that is, a syllable every half hour; or if you read these words by the swing of the pendulum of a great wall clock, or by the strokes of the bells of the tower clock, a syllable to each stroke. It is not to be endured; and just so does this singing sound when the notes that should be short are sung as long as the long ones. They have said that this was solemn and dignified; yes, if solemnity and lameness and tediousness were all one. But since that is not so, there is nothing to this newfangled lame and tedious singing either. Think only of the worldly songs which you often sang in your young years with your comrades. Did you sing so lamely and tediously then? Certainly not! No worldly song is sung so; but only in church is that suddenly to be beautiful and dignified which all the world otherwise holds to be wretched. If anything is to be spoken solemnly, it is the words of institution and the Lord's Prayer, the benediction, or the text which the pastor reads before his sermon. But I should like to know what you would say to it, if your pastor were to read all that as people have hitherto sung, thus: "Our Fa — ther who art in Hea — ven," etc., one syllable as slow as another. You would think your pastor was not quite right in his wits, or that a stroke had paralyzed his tongue. It is not a hair's breadth different in singing.

Further, in singing they now make no distinction between joyful and sorrowful melodies, between a hymn of thanksgiving and a hymn of penitence, between an Easter hymn and a Good Friday hymn; they sing everything one after another in the same slow and tedious manner. How senseless! What is joyful wants to be sung faster, what is solemn and sorrowful wants to be sung more slowly; the melody "Lobet den HErren, den mächtigen König der Ehren" must go faster than that of "O Traurigkeit, o Herzeleid." In general one now sings rather too slowly than too fast; in the great majority of places the singing is extraordinarily dragging, enough to put one to sleep, and goes like a hearse or like a (begging your pardon!) dung-cart. Too fast, of course, is no good either. Here the right feeling must teach us to hit upon what is proper.

Finally, they have patched in between the individual stanzas of the melody something that does not belong there at all, and which they have called an interlude. That is, when the congregation has sung: "Allein Gott in der Höh' sey Ehr," the fellow on the organ bench plays something in between, whatever happens to come into his head and his fingers, which as a rule nobody in the church understands; only then does it go on again: "und Dank für seine Gnade," and so throughout the whole hymn. When that fellow on the little organ bench begins his so-called interlude, I always wish that the organ might run out of wind, and that no pipe might give forth a sound. Tell me only, what is the thing good for? Does it edify you? Certainly not, rather the contrary; does it help you to sing the next stanza better? No, not that either! If you know the melody, you need no interlude; you see that when one sings without the organ, and so also without interlude, where, if the hymn has a known melody, it goes just as well as with organ and interlude. If you do not know the melody, the interlude does not help you at all either; you can notice that when a hymn is sung to an unknown melody. There the man at the organ may interlude as much and as long as he likes, it all helps you nothing, you still do not know how to begin, and, what is the main thing, to go on singing, the next stanza of the melody unknown to you; you wait quietly until they begin on the organ to play and sing the following stanza, then you sing it after them quite modestly, at first timidly and uncertainly, then the oftener the better and more surely, until you can do it quite surely and without organ and interlude. But you would have learned that without the interlude also, and still more easily than with the interlude; that after frequent singing you at last know the melody, you owe truly not to the interlude, but to practice, that excellent teacher. Therefore away with these strange interludes; they only tear apart and disfigure the chorale. At best they look as if one were to pray in this fashion, all mixed up: "Our Father" — "God would thereby entice us" — "who art in heaven" — "that we should believe he is our true Father" — "Hallowed" — "God's name is indeed holy in itself" — "be thy name" — "but we pray in this prayer, etc." But commonly they are so unchurchly and worldly, so empty of meaning and void, that they look somewhat like this: "Our Father" — "we twine for thee the maiden's garland" — "who art in heaven" — "Heisa, heisa, hopsasa," etc. All sensible, Christian and churchly-minded organists and cantors understand that, and gladly leave these strange insertions out of the chorale. But as for the simple, vain persons among the cantors and organists, who in the interludes only wish to show their great art, and will not give them up because it is the fashion, and because they have ground out their interludes so and so long already: the pastors ought to put their thumb in their eye, and command them to stop disgracing the church with their stupid stuff, mutilating the chorale, and vexing the congregation instead of edifying it. In general one ought (to say this in passing) to clip the wings a little of many of these gentlemen, so that with their preludes and postludes, as with their church music, they may not make a dance hall, a playhouse, a concert hall, or a parade ground.

I think you will now understand that our chorale singing must not remain as it is, if the people are not altogether to lose all desire and love for it, which they seem to have lost already almost entirely, because for the most part they do not come to singing, but only under the