Philosophy of Music in Reformed Worship

Although the Reformed tradition has been more restrictive about the use of music in worship than the Lutheran tradition, it nevertheless highly values the role of music in worship. This article describes emphases importance in the Reformed tradition, largely in terms of the writings of Reformer John Calvin.

The comparison is unavoidable: two great reformers of the sixteenth century with two vastly different approaches to reforming public worship. For Luther, it was the reform of the Mass. For Calvin, whatever his debt to the Mass, it was a new service. For Luther, it was the retention of the full musical resources of the church. For Calvin, it was only the voice of the congregation. For Luther, it was whatever texts were theologically correct. For Calvin, it was only the words of Scripture.

Both Luther’s Formula of Mass (1523) and his German Mass (1526), Latin and German Reformation forms of the Roman Catholic Mass, were the stimuli for the writing of numerous musical works for the congregation, solo voices, choir, organ, and instruments, not only achieving a culmination in the great works of Johann Sebastian Bach but also continuing to provide inspiration for composers into the present.

In contrast, Calvin’s The Form of Church Prayers inspired an elegant collection of metrical Psalm texts and melodies, a few canticles, and some sixteenth- and seventeenth-century polyphonic vocal settings of these texts and melodies for use outside the church service. These range from simple, familiar-style settings to monumental multi-movement Psalm motets. In spite of this early flowering of polyphonic Psalm settings, the development of a significant body of art music that was distinctively Reformed was frozen in the sixteenth century.

This comparison of the musical results of these two Reformation branches is not intended to diminish the value of the numerous Genevan and non-Genevan metrical settings of the Psalms and other passages of Scripture for congregational singing that has come out of the Reformed tradition of worship. Nor is it intended to diminish the significance of the organ and choral works based on Genevan and other Psalm melodies and metrical texts. Nevertheless, a Psalter is a closed volume once the 150 Psalms and a few canticles are prepared. In contrast, the Lutheran hymnal was an open-ended book, inviting continuing contributions from poets and musicians and providing composers with new texts and melodies as the basis for new compositions.

And the limitation of musical resources for public worship in the Reformed tradition to the voice of the congregation discouraged the writing of works for the full musical resources available to Lutheran composers. In the Reformed churches, there was no need to write a cantata for the third Sunday after Pentecost or an anthem for the second Sunday in Epiphany.

The result of this relatively small body of distinctively Reformed music is that not much attention is given to John Calvin or the Reformed tradition when discussing church music. The Psalms and the Reformed services attracted but a few significant composers in the history of music, and most of those were concentrated in a short span of time.

From a musician’s point of view, Calvin’s reform is, therefore, usually judged negatively. It was he, it is said, who silenced choirs and tore out organs as being unnecessary and even detrimental to the newly reformed way of worship. And his limitation of worship music to the unaccompanied singing of metrical Psalms and some canticles by the congregation produced rather few polyphonic vocal settings of the Psalms (though by composers of note) and (when organs were restored) some organ settings of those same Psalm melodies.

As a result of the differences in approach to reforming the abuses of the medieval church, the Lutheran churches received the fruits of a long line of distinguished composers from Walter to Distler. Though the Calvinist tradition in its four-hundred-year history has produced significant music for voices and for organ based on the melodies of the metrical Psalter of 1562, the shadow cast by the vast and distinguished repertory of Lutheran church music places the Calvinist contribution to church music in a near-total eclipse for many music historians. And that eclipse of the music inspired by the Genevan Psalter by Lutheran art music has also, unfortunately, placed Calvin’s careful and logical thought for the music of the church in eclipse.

The error is that music historians leave their evaluations of Calvin with complimentary words for the Psalter melodies and for the sixteenth-century polyphonic settings of them. However, as musically valuable as the Genevan Psalter melodies and their polyphonic settings are, Calvin’s contribution to the music of public worship is not primarily the 150 Psalms and a few canticles in metrical versions and their settings for voices and for an organ that follows, but rather a well-thought-out theology of church music.

While Calvin’s theological foundations were born out of sixteenth-century thought, their applicability is not limited to a single time. His principles are timeless, clearly based on Holy Scripture and the thought of the early church. They balance sixteenth-century humanism, with its concern for human interests, and Renaissance rebirth of interest in ancient learning: a balance of the tension between the present and the past, between tradition and experience. The keeping of these two foci in creative tension is significant for finding direction for the music of the church at all times and places.

Calvin understood worship to be the most important of all relationships: the relationship between the all-holy God and sinful humans. It is, therefore, not a casual relationship. Neither the texts of worship nor the music that carries them can be casual. Theologically, it is a spiritual relationship between a covenant-making and a covenant-keeping God with his chosen people. At its best, Calvinist worship aims at restoring the ideal of communion with God enjoyed by Adam and Eve before their disobedience, a restoration not to be perfected until the coming of the kingdom.

Given the significance of this relationship of communion with God, worship and its music are approached with care, done only according to God’s commands and carried out under the laws of order and decorum of the church, laws based on the Holy Scriptures. Calvin recognizes, however, that worship needs also to be done with concern for human frailty. He understands the reality of sin in human life and its role as an impediment to fellowship with God. Therefore there is in Calvin a pastoral concern for the worshiper. External aids, rites, and ceremonies with valid purpose and not for spectacle, are necessary. Their purpose is to inspire reverence for the holy mysteries of sacrament and service, arouse piety in the exercise of worship, encourage modesty so the worshiper comes into the presence of God without presumption, foster gravity in order to worship only with the seriousness of purpose, and above all lead the worshiper directly to Christ. In Calvin’s thought, music is an important aid for the worshiper.

Given the accumulated quantity and the questionable quality of such aids in the church before the Reformation, Calvin insisted that these aids are to be simple, few in number, of clear value in assisting weakness, and understood by the worshiper. Displays of praying hands, the use of choirs, bands, and banners were not part of Calvin’s plan. The question always is “what is necessary and what obscures Christ?” What encourages communion with our actually present Lord in the Holy Supper and what impedes it? For Calvin, it was less music rather than more; simpler music rather than more complex.

Calvin’s liturgy, then, is a reformed service rather than a reformed Mass with its tradition of music. Worship needed to be returned to the people in language, in ritual, in clarity of thought, in accuracy of biblical meaning, and in the simplicity of music so there could be meaningful physical, intellectual, and spiritual participation. The result is a liturgy reduced to its essentials with that which was judged extraneous and distracting removed. All aspects of the liturgy, including the music, are to serve the central functions of the word read and preached and the sacrament appropriately administered. Visual and aural effects were diminished, so magnificent altar and reredos were replaced by a simple table; elaborate priestly vestments were replaced by the academic gown; images, candles, incense, and bells were replaced by a simple sanctuary and service. Organs and choirs were replaced by an unaccompanied singing congregation.

Evaluation of Calvin’s liturgical and musical reform is, therefore, usually concerned with what Calvin “got rid of”; what needs to be considered is what he brought to the service. Priority is given to the Word read and preached over the sacrament (though Calvin preferred weekly Communion). Attention is no longer directed primarily to the altar but to the pulpit from which God speaks through his Scripture. Music is used to enhance Scripture. The Psalms, extolled for their value in the Christian life by all who take time and effort to know them, are put in a form that ensures their assimilation into the thought and life of the singer.

That the Psalms, all 150 of them, should have been given to the people in an easily singable and easily remembered form was an enormously significant contribution to church worship and the Christian life. Testimony to their value in the Christian life can be found in writings from St. Basil and St. Augustine to C. S. Lewis and W. Stewart McCullough in The Interpreter’s Bible. But perhaps Calvin says it best in his introduction to his Commentary on the Psalms.

There is no other book in which there is to be found more express and magnificent commendations, both of the unparalleled liberality of God towards his Church, and of all his works; there is no other book in which there is recorded so many deliverances, nor one in which the evidences and experiences of the fatherly providence and solicitude which God exercises toward us are celebrated with such splendor of diction, and yet with the strictest adherence to truth; in short, there is no other book in which we are more perfectly taught the right manner of praising God, or in which we are more powerfully stirred up to the performance of this religious exercise.

In one word, not only will we here find general commendations of the goodness of God, which may teach men to repose themselves in him alone, and to seek all their happiness solely in him; and which are intended to teach true believers with their whole hearts confidently to look to him for help in all their necessities; but we will also find that the free remission of sins, which alone reconciles God towards us, and procures for us settled peace with him, is so set forth and magnified, as that here there is nothing wanting which relates to the knowledge of eternal salvation.

Can there be any question as to why Calvin gave the Psalms to the people in song?

Calvin finds his foundation and nourishment for reforming the worship of the church in the tradition of the church, of which the Bible is the most significant part, over present experience. Therefore, two principles undergird Calvin’s reform: the absolute sovereignty of God over against his human creatures, and the absolute authority of God’s Word found in the Bible over human thoughts and experience. Yet, sixteenth-century humanism influences Calvin to make worship the people’s offering to God. His respect for Scripture and his knowledge of God keep God and his revelation central in Calvin’s reform. But the reform is to make public worship the people’s worship.

The result was a service that focused the people’s attention on the exalted, enthroned, ruling Christ seated at the right hand of God. The worshiper’s heart is to be lifted up “on high where Jesus Christ is in the glory of His Father.” Public worship puts one in the presence of God and his angels, raises the worshiper to heavenly places. How logical that in the awe-inspiring presence of God the worshiper sings only words received from God himself in his Scriptures.

In keeping with Calvin’s high regard for what worship is, the relationship of sinful humans to their all-holy God, the service expresses clearly the posture of adoration for the absolutely sovereign God and the need for purification when entering into the very presence of God. This adoration is possible only when the worshiper is restored to holiness and is acting in obedience to God. The opening invocation from Psalm 124, “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth” immediately identifies who the worshiper is in relation to God. That realization prompts the worshiper immediately to confess sin as a beginning of the return to the holiness of life as essential preparation for fellowship with God. The worshiping sinner confesses before God’s holy majesty “that we are poor sinners … incapable of any good,” but also ask God to “magnify and increase in us day by day the grace of thy Holy Spirit … producing in us the fruits of righteousness and innocence which are pleasing unto thee.… ” Then follows the absolution in which God, through the minister, says “To all those that repent … and look to Jesus … for their salvation, I declare that the absolution of sins is effected.… ” Those who have thus been restored to sanctity are fit to commune with God in the Holy Supper, to be raised to heavenly places, to sing his praises.

This lofty understanding of what public worship is leads Calvin to great care in crafting the service and choosing the words to be used. The liturgy is a fixed liturgy. Freedom and spontaneity are restricted, for after learning from Scripture, there is little room for improvisation and certainly none for caprice. Free prayer, so cherished in later Reformed churches, is given little room in Calvin’s liturgy, and those prayers that are left for the minister to the phrase are prescribed as to content. And when prayer is sung (Calvin regarded church song as a form of prayer), only the words of God, those from the Bible, are permitted.

It is this liturgy that is the context for the music of public worship and which prescribes its role. The essential ingredients of that liturgical context for music are preaching, communion, and prayer. It is important to note here that these are not items merely to be listed. The very nature of worship for Calvin requires that these three essential ingredients be present and that they demonstrate the authority of God’s Word, be done corporately by the holy people of God (and not be done for them), and that in each the Holy Spirit is present and active. Without that presence, worship is a purely human and earthbound activity.

Of particular interest in regard to the music of public worship is prayer. Prayer is done according to the rules for right prayer from Scripture, and, whether sung or spoken, prayer in public is a corporate act made effective by the Holy Spirit, who intercedes for us. It is impossible to understand Calvin’s seemingly limited church music without the theological foundation and liturgical context for it. The music appointed for the liturgy follows logically from them.

Calvin first insists that music for worship has a clear purpose. He does not begin with the assumption that music must be present in public worship. He begins with a theological justification for it. It is essential for Calvin that there be a well-thought-out reason for its presence in the public worship of God. That reason must be based on Holy Scripture and the thought and practice of the early church, as well as contemporary experience based on a thorough knowledge of the faith. That is, the question must be asked, “What can and should music do to assist the worshiper?” Without a clear definition of purpose, there is no demonstrated need for its existence in the public worship of God, and there is very little possibility of its doing what it can do and best ought to do for the worshiper.

For Calvin, music in public worship ought to aid concentration by exercising “the mind in thinking of God and keeping it attentive.” It should also inspire reverence, lending “dignity, and grace to sacred actions.” Further, it should create unity by joining “the faithful in one common act of prayer.” It should also rouse zeal, kindling “our hearts to a true zeal and eagerness to pray.” And it should provide edification “as each from the other receives the confession of faith” in song. Well, might the contemporary churchgoer and the modern church’s leadership ask whether prayer and concentration on the thing prayed, reverence in speaking with God, unity in prayer, zeal and eagerness in prayer, and spiritual growth are being served by our church song?

So that the purpose for the music of the church may be realized, Calvin recognized that it is necessary for music to be regulated. This is necessary because music has the power “to turn or bend … the morals of men.… We find by experience that it has … incredible power to move our hearts in one way or another.” And music is a gift of God “we must be the more careful not to abuse it … converting it to our condemnation when it has been dedicated to our profit and welfare.” This power of music, particularly with text, has been recognized by all who have reflected on the role of music in human life. Plato, Basil, Luther, and Confucius all knew the power of music. And so does the contemporary church. But Plato and Calvin and others knew that for salutary results in the use of music careful regulation was essential.

This regulation is accomplished, first of all, by the rules for right prayer, since song in the service is a form of prayer. One must sing with reverence, sincerity, penitence, humility, and faith. But congregational song is also regulated by the scriptural rules for decorum. It is to be simple, it is to be understood, and it is to be adapted to the age in which it is used.

The purposes and the proper use of music require appropriateness of text and music to the human response of worship, for only then will its purposes be realized and proper use be respected. As sung prayer, music is not decoration, entertainment, or filler, but it is one of the three essential ingredients of public worship. Calvin, therefore, understands that it must have weight or significance, and majesty, that is dignity. And the texts associated with the music are to be preeminent and are to represent true doctrine.

In Calvin’s own words appropriateness is expressed this way: When we have looked thoroughly, and searched here and there, we shall not find better songs nor more fitting for the purpose, than the Psalms of David, which the Holy Spirit spoke and made through him. And moreover, when we sing them, we are certain that God puts in our mouths these, as if he himself were singing in us to exalt his glory.… Touching the melody, it has seemed best that it be moderated in the manner we have adopted to carry the weight and majesty appropriate to the subject, and even to be proper for singing in the Church, according to that which has been said.

As is so often true in the realm of the spiritual, the truth of a matter is represented by an ellipse, having two foci. Purposes, proper use, and appropriateness are to be balanced with pastoral concern. It is a matter of respecting the divine while recognizing the human. That is, the music that results from respect for these three (purpose, proper use, and appropriateness) must be useful to the worshiper. It must serve the worshiper in serving God. It must be usable. Though addressed to God, it is a congregational prayer which, while offering to God, also edifies the worshiper and gives witness to the faith.

In bringing purpose, regulation, and appropriateness to the people, the church’s song must be useful and useable so as to be of benefit to them. This results in the music of a particular character. This music is first of all biblical. Only if it is true to Scripture can it be the right worship of God and of true benefit to the worshiper. For in praying in accord with Scripture one comes to know and do God’s will in prayer. For Calvin, this means sung prayer is by means of the very words God gives us. To be appropriate, the church’s song must be biblical. “We shall not find better songs … than the Psalms of David, which the Holy Spirit spoke and made through him.”

This music must also be decorous, that is, it must have dignity and aptness. It serves an elevated purpose as prayer to God and is, therefore, to be noble in character as one addresses the song to God. It is to be proper to the subject, the text, so as to be suited to singing in the church “before God and his angels” and in so doing to bring attention to the texts, the thing prayed, and not merely delight the ears. “There is a great difference between music which one makes to entertain men at the table and in their houses, and the Psalms, which are sung in the church in the presence of God and his angels.” And “such songs as having been composed only for sweetness and delight of the ear are unbecoming to the majesty of the church and cannot but displease God in the highest degree.”

In addition, this music is to be sacred for it needs to be distinctive music if it is intended for distinctive people engaged in a distinctive activity. It is for the holy people of God engaged in intimate fellowship with their all-holy Creator. It is not music for aesthetic enjoyment nor for entertainment. It is music for the dialogue of worship. In the text of the song, the Psalms, God speaks to the worshiper and the worshiper speaks to God in prayer.

This being music for the people, it must also be popular. That is, it must be easy to sing, it must be understandable, and it must be attractive. Without those qualities, it would not likely be used. Note that this popularity is not in the contemporary sense of music purveyed in enormous quantity so that it becomes popular by hype. It is music that is simply useful and usable.

That Calvin succeeded in a useful and useable body of church music is attested to by the over 60 known editions of the Psalter that were published within three years of its first publication in 1562. The rhymed texts in two simple classic poetic meters, with an entirely original melody type as to rhythm (with its longer notes at the beginning and end and in only two note values), gave them durability and wide dissemination.

These four characteristics properly understood are not merely descriptions of Calvin’s music in the sixteenth century but represent a significant contribution to thinking on the music of the church for all ages. These characteristics, biblical, sacred, decorous, and popular, all at the same time, are principles that are also useful in our own age. Music, then, is to be of assistance in the true and spiritual worship of God. This makes Calvin’s concerns for a defined purpose, regulation, appropriateness, and usefulness the concerns for worshipers of all ages. Only then will music aid concentration, increase reverence, provide unity, rouse zeal, provide edification, and in the offering of our worship refresh us in God’s grace.

The results of Calvin’s careful scriptural thought regarding the worship and worship music of the church resulted in a closed “hymnal.” The texts of Calvin’s completed “hymnal” of 1562 are limited to the 150 biblical Psalms plus the Decalogue and the Song of Simeon. The completed version of the Psalter consisted of 152 texts and 125 melodies. The authors of the texts were Clement Marot, court poet to Francis I of France. His death in 1544 left the versification of the remaining Psalms to Theodore de Beza, a Reformed theologian. The texts are metrical, rhymed, strophic, in classic poetic meter (mostly iambic), and set syllabically to the music. They are, therefore, accessible to a singing congregation. They are popular in the most elevated meaning of that word.

The first of the composers is presumed to be Guillaume Franck, a musician at St. Peter’s church in Geneva, Calvin’s church. Louis Bourgeois followed Franck at St. Peters and is the musician of the Psalter. His style is stamped on the Psalter since he not only added melodies but edited those already in the collection. His work dates from the 1551 edition. Pierre Dague, Bourgeois’s successor at St. Peter’s, is thought to have finished the music of the Psalter. As Beza had Marot’s work to emulate, so Dague had the work of Bourgeois to emulate. It is generally conceded that the original texts and the Genevan melodies are of superior literary and musical quality.

The melodies are often assumed to be edited from secular sources. However, Bourgeois, in the preface to the Pseaumes Octant Trois of 1551 says the source of his work is pre-Reformation melodies, which some commentators take to be Gregorian chant. Whether the source is secular or sacred for any given melody, the style is radically changed, particularly by the schematized rhythm.

The melodies are characterized by structural simplicity. The settings of the texts are syllabic, the music is strophic, the phrases are arche-shape, melodic movement is mostly stepwise, and the range of a melody rarely exceeds an octave. And while the melodies are modal, they are, for the most part rather major- or minor-like. Only two basic note values are used and these in a schematic design with phrases normally beginning and ending with longer notes with the shorter notes clustered in one or two groupings in the middle of a phrase of the melody. The aesthetic character of the melodies develops from the combination of stepwise movement and the schematic rhythm along with the lack of a regularly recurring strong accent. The melodies possess a graceful, rhythmic flow.

By every standard, these melodies are accessible to a singing congregation. However, Enlightenment regularity and symmetry have accustomed us to a consistency of meter and design not possessed by the original Genevan Psalter melodies. The considerable variety of metrical schemes for the music and the absence of classic regularity make these melodies less easy for us to sing than for their sixteenth-century users, though the rewards of learning and using them are enormous.

It should be noted that the melodies of the Genevan Psalter are in a style that was familiar to the sixteenth-century worshiper in France. They are not, however, in the style of folk music or music of the pub, but in the style of cultivated music of the day. The schematized rhythm sets them apart from even that music, making this truly distinctive music for a distinctive people engaged in a distinctive activity, the public worship of God.

In summary, Calvin’s contribution to the music of the Christian church lies in his carefully reasoned thought regarding the church at worship and the use of music in that worship. In preparing suitable music for the church’s worship, he expresses four concerns: for the purposes that music can and should serve in the worship of God, for its regulation so as to ensure the realization of those purposes, for its appropriateness to the subject of the text and the object of our worship, and for its usefulness in serving the worshiper in serving God. These concerns resulted in music that was biblical, decorous, sacred, and popular.

When thinking about church music, admiration is most likely to appear in the presence of a significant repertory of art music for choir, instruments, and organ—artistic value offered to God in the presence of his people. One stands in much less awe in the presence of music intended for common worship. Even less consideration is given to music that is not even intended for the enjoyment of community singing but only as a corporate offering of words by means of music in response to God’s words to the worshiper.

However, this seeming tension between art music and congregational music need not be settled on the side either of music beyond the average congregation or music beneath a suitable level of artistic integrity. And Calvin would not settle the matter of music for use by the congregation on the side of distinctly secular music. He writes in the Psalter preface that “care must always be taken that the song is neither light nor frivolous: but that it has weight and majesty, as St. Augustine says, and also, there is a great difference between music which one makes to entertain men at the table and in their houses and the Psalms which are sung in the Church in the presence of God and his angels.” Calvin achieved this ideal.

Churches in the Reformed tradition were affected by the same cultural influences as every other Christian tradition, but particularly by pietism, the Enlightenment, and post-Enlightenment thought. The results have been principally in two directions. On the one hand, there has been an increasing openness to new ideas, growing confidence in human gifts, and the desire for a pleasing human experience in public worship. By and large, such openness has meant the abandoning of Calvin’s principles for worship reform and for worship music. On the other hand, some Reformed communions have resisted cultural influences and retained Psalm singing to the exclusion of hymns, some even without accompaniment. While the former abandoned Calvin’s principles, the latter failed to apply those principles to the present, overlooking Calvin’s injunction that “rites and ceremonies,” including music, need to be adapted to the age.

Calvin recognized that his application of principles to the practice of the church was conditioned by his time. His practice was adapted to his age. His, however, was a time of a fortuitous combination of humanistic interest in the person and Renaissance interest in the tradition. It put the reformers in a posture of relying on the truth of the past, particularly the Holy Scriptures, and bringing it to the benefit of the people. It is at this point that our own time needs again to examine Calvin, the other sixteenth-century reformers, and the church fathers for balance between the human and the divine, between personal experience and the tradition, between theocratic and democratic forces in church music.