# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 07 05_S178
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

178

nes in Edessa and the Arians. Their doctrines they put into hymns, set to these the secular Greek melodies, and also invented new ones themselves besides, and rendered these at their services, particularly also at processions which they held by night through the streets of the cities. It was natural that the orthodox congregations sought to do likewise at once; hence, for example, Ephraem the Syrian composed many beautiful church hymns over against Bardesanes, and Chrysostom, the bishop of Constantinople, also had such processions arranged, in which splendid songs of praise (hymns) were rendered in lively, ravishing melodies. This rivalry led, however, to disputes, these to a prohibition by the authorities against all processions of the kind, and in order now also to avoid the external appearance of Arianism, the orthodox congregations of the East banished all such melodies from their churches. From that time on, in the Eastern church, now called the Greek, only the old-established psalm-singing was valid, which however is never without rhythm.

In the West, that part of Christendom in which the Latin language was chiefly spoken, they meanwhile continued what was given up in the East. Soon after the year 350 Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo, Sedulius from Ireland, Ennodius from Pavia, and other pious Christians presented to the church a multitude of precious hymns, Ambrose for example: Nun komm der Heiden Heiland (No. 36), Sedulius: Was fürchtst du Feind Herodes sehr (No. 60), an unknown author: O Lamm Gottes unschuldig (No. 86). They abandoned the earlier psalm and hymn form, which had demanded neither a fixed number of syllables to a line of verse, nor a fixed number of lines to a stanza; a fixed measure of syllables made the line for them, a fixed measure of lines the stanza, and with this there remained the hitherto regular alternation of long and short syllables, or the meter, the rhythm of the words. It was natural that for such strictly closed verses a fixed melody also was necessary, that the hymns became known to the congregation only together with the melody, but that these melodies also could be as little without rhythm as the verses themselves. Ambrose composed such melodies. He had only 4 modes for them, namely from D, E, F, G, and could therefore not command a wide compass of tones; his rhythm too was probably limited to the alternation of long and short tones; but these slight musical means were enough for him, since for church songs he desired precisely the highest simplicity; thus the melody to Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, which if not invented by Ambrose, yet was set by him, may seem to us almost too simple. Soon these hymns and tunes resounded in the Western churches, which the congregation (not perhaps a choir) sang with delight and to great edification. Augustine first heard them in the church at Milan and afterward confessed: How I wept over thy songs of praise and hymns, O God, when I was powerfully moved by the voice of thy sweetly singing congregation; these voices flowed into my ears and thy truth was poured into my heart; then the feeling of devotion kindled within me and the tears ran down, and it was well with me therein.

Mark well, the singing of the congregation was rhythmic, and as long as the congregation sang, it could not be otherwise. But about 150 years after Ambrose the Roman Catholic system broke through, and that does not like congregational singing in the church. In the Roman church the priesthood is, after all, taken for the real congregation, and with it perhaps the host of monks and nuns; what need have the poor laity, the people, to sing much; also the Romanists teach that in the Mass the priest offers up the Lord Christ for the benefit of all who are present, yes, even of the absent and even of the departed; why then should one demand more of the people than to be present and look on? Pope Gregory, called the Great, a stern monk, filled with those Roman Catholic thoughts and also accustomed to the monastic singing of the East, put an end to the singing of the congregation by taking all rhythm from church singing, letting it proceed thus in tones of equal length and moreover in unison, slowly onward, quite similar to the way the church melodies were prepared in the more recent rationalistic age and are still for the most part sung. The priests and the singing choirs, who were also reckoned as belonging to the priesthood and were trained accordingly, performed these songs in separate places in the church (called choirs); the congregation, separated from them, mostly standing lower than the choir, had to listen and in all humility rejoice that it was still allowed to be present. To every song, psalm, etc., Gregory and his imitators set unchangeably fixed melodies, marked these over the words of the song with all sorts of strokes or hooks (called neumes), and thereby made it altogether impossible for the congregation even to think of singing along, since in that way ten years of practice scarcely brought the choir pupils to proficiency in singing. Choral singing they called this Gregorian manner, which kept dominion in the church throughout the whole Middle Ages until the Reformation.

You can well imagine that the Christian congregation, especially among the Germans, who in any case like to sing, was not at all content to be thus excluded from church singing, indeed not even to be able to understand the same, which was delivered continually only in the Latin language. Now the priests permitted them to sing "Kyrie Eleison" (Lord, have mercy!) at divine service, no more, yet at least so much. So often, therefore, as it was at all possible, the congregation raised its voice and sang Kyrie Eleison, not seldom as many as 300 times at one service, until at last one heard only Kyrieles or Kyrieleis, or even only an unintelligible shout of jubilation. That these beautiful words became unintelligible in this way displeased many a worthy Christian, and so they gradually made German hymns to go with them, which then closed with Kyrie Eleison; on account of the Eleison they called them Leisen, and soon designated by this word all German spiritual songs. At the chief services, Masses, etc., the people indeed might not strike up such Leisen, but they sang them all the more on feast days, in processions of petition, and on pilgrimages. About 1150, for example, the first verse of the Easter hymn No. 98 arose; about 1250 the people at Pentecost sang the first verse of No. 136. Great and heavy tribulations, plague and years of famine about 1350 filled hearts with anguish and trembling before the wrath of God and the Last Judgment, so that great multitudes of penitents roamed about in Germany, called Flagellants or scourgers, because they publicly scourged and lacerated themselves. All this drove to song, and so in this time they sang, for example, the song of a knight:

O starker Gott, all unsere Noth
Befehl'n wir, Herr, in die Gebot,
Laz uns den Tag mit Gnaden überscheinen.

Yes, that the priesthood in this time already often had to permit the congregation German singing in the churches is attested by a stanza from the Easter hymn much sung at that time:

Du lange guot, des jares tiurste quarte
in fröuden groz lat ir iuch hiute hören,
lat klingen hellen süezen klan,
ir lein (Laien) in kirchen, ir pfaffen in den koeren,
zum widergelt si iur gesam'.
nu singet: christus ist erstanden
wohl hiute von des todes banden.

It was the consciousness of the priesthood of all Christians which gave vent to itself in this striving to sing along at divine service. When therefore John Huss in Bohemia about 1410 again ascribed this priestly dignity to Christendom in general, it could not fail that, where his doctrine prevailed, the whole congregations also sang their hymns in the churches, and hymn upon hymn arose. The Council of Constance (Konstanz on Lake Constance), which burned Huss, did issue a prohibition against the singing of the congregation; church and emperor marched against the Hussites and burned the churches in Bohemia, but the Hussites sang their hymns in their camps and in their battles, and when this dreadful war was ended they had more spiritual songs than before. The Taborites who were left of them, together with some Waldenses, gathered into congregations under the name of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren, sang from then on at their regular services those hymns together and added many besides, so that in the year 1504 their bishop Lucas could have 400 of them printed, the first hymnal of a Western people. Nos. 314, 100, 205 in our hymnal derive, for example, from the Bohemian Brethren, and the melody "Vater unser im Himmelreich" is probably