# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 07 05_S180
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

180

tion. Paul calls to the Christian congregation: All things are yours; so the noble art of music also had at that time to enter right into the service of the Christian congregation, and was truly well off in it.

Hardly any work was ever so capably carried on as the work of Dr. Luther and his good fellow-laborers on the spiritual song, particularly on spiritual music. It would lead too far were I to relate here how in the 16th and 17th centuries the great and precious treasury of hymns arose, among which Dr. Luther's hymns shine like pearls, surrounded by the others as by little wreaths of gold and silver; also there is lack of room to set forth how hymn after hymn found its melody, however lovely it is to follow the work of these old glorious masters of tone, who placed themselves with such heartfelt joy in the service of God and of His holy congregation. Johann Eccart, who died in 1611 as Kapellmeister in Berlin, and who among others composed the melody "Von Gott will ich nicht lassen," developed Luther's and Walther's principles of making church singing a true congregational singing, more than all other masters of tone; it was he in particular who placed the melody firmly in the upper voice, whereas until then it had been carried by the middle voice, the so-called tenor, and therefore was often wholly lost to the congregation in the confusion of the different voices; but it was he also who then set to the melody the beautiful harmonies which are still noted down in good chorale books, and which, even if not often sung with voices, are yet played by the organ. Of Johann Krüger, who sang so many beautiful hymns to the laud and praise of God, you have read earlier in the Lutheraner; of other masters it may be told at a convenient time. For our present purpose it suffices to know that until 1648 rhythm was altogether something essential in the church melodies. The manner of composing melodies and of their setting might change, particularly under the influence of the oratorio music coming over from Italy, and therefore, for example, be already quite different in Johann Krüger from what it was in Johann Eccart; but so long as the congregation really sang as a Christian congregation, in particular knew most of the hymns by heart, and held it to be perverse to sing out of the books, like sextons and schoolmasters, so long the rhythmic movement of the singing was a matter of course. But when after 1648 the believing fathers and mothers, who in the Thirty Years' War amid murder and fire had kept the faith and not ceased with entreaty and singing, gradually died away, and now the generation which during that war had grown up amid the ruins of the schools, churches and houses came to rule in the congregation as in the state; when the German princes and lords, after the abominable example of Louis the Fourteenth of France, began to seek their honor in shameful excesses, and for the gratification of these to treat their subjects like serfs and slaves; when the Germans began to despise their own noble language, and to esteem French or a wretched mixed language a sign of good breeding, and more and more a class of the so-called cultured arose, which despised the burgher and the peasant, then the people's courage for joyful church singing also died away. The hymns which continued to be composed by believers — such is the power of faith — still remained free from the hateful mixed language and from the tasteless pompous manner of the time, yet gradually ceased to be real congregational hymns; they became rather pious outpourings of the heart of individual believers, sung for the edification of individual believers in the closet. So not only the hymns of the Pietists and Moravians, but often already those of the churchly singers; how few church songs are to be found, for example, among the spiritual songs of the pious Benjamin Schmolke. Now, therefore, since the congregation as a whole congregation sang so little any more from the heart and with delight, and soon also forgot the hymns to such a degree that, to the great vexation of the old fathers and mothers, number-tables had to be introduced into the churches, the foreign Italian art-form of music, which had long since exercised influence in any case, could come more and more to dominion also in the German church. Not only did the performance of church music in the manner of the Italian oratorios become ever more frequent, so that the choir in consequence received again more and more a place in the service separated from the congregation, and the congregation came into the position of hearers, but the melodies for the congregational hymns themselves were also formed after this art-form. Thus arose the tunes which are called spiritual arias, introduced especially by Johann Rudolph Ahle of Mühlhausen, who died there in 1673 as burgomaster. If you consider the melody invented by him for Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier, you will find at once that there is hardly any rhythm in it any more: however beautiful and lovely many of his melodies are, he, and above all his son Johann Georg Ahle, no longer sing out of the congregation, but toward the congregation. So suitable did this aria-style prove to the then condition of the Christian congregations that soon the old melodies also were set according to it, and Carl Briegel, the editor of the church hymnal for Darmstadt of the year 1687, remodeled the melodies given in it entirely after his aria manner, and himself already added tunes without any rhythm. To be sure, the Pietists and Moravians still preserve a skipping beat, but that was no longer the old churchly rhythm, but an expression of the feeling stirring in the hymns, not of the churchly consciousness. A quite extraordinary multitude of sweet melodies, among them: Macht hoch die Thor, die Thür macht weit, Lobe den Herrn o meine Seele, came out of the Pietistic school, certainly; but only compare once such a melody as "Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld" with that to: Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ, and you will notice at once the difference, that the first indeed penetrates the feeling touchingly and lovelily, shakingly and mightily, the other, on the contrary, is a confession of the faith of the congregation and carries one along to one's own confession. Even the greatest musician of the Lutheran church, Johann Sebastian Bach, the most eminent organist there ever was, composed his melodies no longer out of the congregation, but toward it, so that only one of his melodies has remained in churchly use: O Gott, du frommer Gott, while his "Great Passion Music" is one of the most glorious spiritual concertos. Harmony received its highest development through him and his pupils; but that everywhere already about 1700 the interludes between the lines of verse could be performed by the organists proves that the singing in the church was in those days no longer real congregational singing; then also soon the last remnant of rhythm ceased.

You have seen that since 1648 the Christian congregation, which by its nature should not merely let itself be instructed but itself confess, had become a community which one might call a big-children's school, in which confessing ceased and only this remained, that it was instructed. So long as the pure doctrine was still in vogue, and preachers as well as many members of the congregation instructed therein, this one-sided position of the congregation, which had arisen through the ignorance of the people stemming from the Thirty Years' War, could not be exactly ruinous, even if it did hinder really living congregational singing and so many another expression of life of the congregation. But about 1750 more and more came into the ministry who, through Pietism on the one hand, had learned to lay more importance on works than on faith, and on the other hand, guided by the then prevailing so-called philosophy or worldly wisdom, to esteem only what the short-sighted human understanding holds useful; Rationalism, which knows nothing either of Christ or of a Christian congregation, made of the churches big-children's school-rooms, where the preachers, besides admonitions and instructions to all sorts of virtues, also delivered useful lessons about housekeeping, agriculture, stall-feeding. For this even the thin hymns of the Gottsched school of poets were not suitable; the congregation was supposed, after the preacher had instructed it, to instruct itself by singing. Therefore descriptions of all kinds of virtues were put into rhyme and the congregation was made to sing, for example: Zur Arbeit, nicht zum Müßiggang bin ich bestimmt auf Erden. Slow speaking belongs naturally to instruction; since one wanted to instruct also with the hymns in all sorts of useful things, they had to go quite slowly, and it was then explained (the musician