Bach

The History of the Organ in the Christian Church

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The honor accorded the pipe organ in Christian worship represents a curious paradox. On the one hand, the Christian church through most of its history has had an abiding antipathy toward instruments; on the other, the organ (together with bells) has, since the late Middle Ages, become so identified with the church that it embodies the very essence of “churchliness.” How could this have happened?

The early church’s rejection of instruments in worship and its mistrust of instrumental music of any kind is well known. In particular, the Roman hydraulis or water organ, a predecessor of the medieval church organ, was linked with pagan rites, games, and the theater. The early church writers had no more use for the organ than for any other pagan instrument. St. Jerome (fourth century) spoke out sharply against the organ, warning that Christian virgins should be deaf to its music (Johannes Quasten, Music and Worship in Pagan and Christian Antiquity, trans. Boniface Ramsey [Washington, D.C.: The Pastoral Press, 1983], 125; 112, n. 128). The Eastern Orthodox churches have never included instruments in their liturgies. In the West, the use of instruments in worship did not become commonplace until the Renaissance, and Roman Catholic ecclesiastical authorities remained somewhat averse to them until well into the twentieth century.

A Gift to Pepin

Yet in spite of its general hostility toward instruments, the Western church accepted the organ into its worship at a relatively early date—perhaps at some point during the tenth century, far in advance of any other instrument except bells. The normal explanation for this paradox begins with the gift of an organ from the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Copronymus to Pepin, king of the Franks, in 757. The gift evoked great curiosity—a fact mentioned in many contemporary chronicles—not only because all knowledge of the organ had died in the West but also because of the organ’s imperial connotations. The instrument played a central role in ceremonial occasions at the Byzantine court; indeed, the organ had become the unmistakable symbol of the emperor’s imperial majesty.

Pepin’s organ was later destroyed, but in 826 there arrived at the court of Louis the Pious (Pepin’s grandson) a Venetian priest, Georgius, who was trained in the art of organ building. At Louis’s behest, Georgius constructed an organ to replace the earlier instrument. A contemporary poem indicates just how significant the organ was to the self-esteem of the Frankish monarchs:

Thus, Louis, do you bring your conquests to Almighty God
And spread your aegis over noble kingdoms.
The realms your forbears could not gain by force of arms
Beg you of their own accord to seize them today.
What neither mighty Rome nor Frankish power could crush,
All this is yours, O Father, in Christ’s name.
Even the organ, never yet seen in France,
Which was the overweening pride of Greece
And which, in Constantinople, was the sole reason
For them to feel superior to Thee—even that is now
In the palace of Aix [the Frankish capital].
This may well be a warning to them, that they
Must submit to the Frankish yoke,
Now that their chief claim to glory is no more.
France, applaud him, and do homage to Louis.

Whose valor affords you so many benefits. (E. Faral, Ermold le Noir (Paris, 1932), 2515–2527, in Jean Perrot, The Organ from Its Invention in the Hellenistic Period to the End of the Thirteenth Century, trans. Norma Deane [London: Oxford University Press, 1971], 213)

It is generally assumed that the adulation accorded a distinguished Eastern court instrument by the more primitive Western court and church led to its eventual admission into the liturgy of the Western church. There may be some truth in this statement, for church and state were much intertwined during the Middle Ages. But the assumption does not suffice to explain why the Western church should so summarily dismiss its centuries-old prejudice against all instruments and so wholeheartedly embrace an instrument with hitherto unmistakably secular connotations—an about-face reflected in the fact that the most recognized early medieval experts in organ building were monks, e.g., Gerbert of Aurillac (later Pope Silvester II, reigned 999-1003) and Constantius of Fleury. Nor does it explain why early medieval accounts place organs in churches but do not link them with liturgical functions.

An Embodiment of Cosmic Harmony

These curious inconsistencies are perhaps best explained by understanding the organ of that time as an embodiment of cosmic harmony and a means of manifesting and teaching basic Neoplatonic doctrines associated with the classical educational curriculum, the quadrivium, and the medieval cosmic worldview.

The traditional Christian worldview, inherited from ancient Greek philosophy—especially from Plato—understood the cosmos as pervaded by harmonia, a quality that caused all things to be related and interconnected, and manifested to humans particularly through music. In his Timaeus, Plato, following Pythagoras, asserted that God constructed the universe according to specific proportions or ratios that were none other than those of the perfect musical intervals: the octave (2:1), the fifth (3:2), and the fourth (4:3). For Plato and for medieval Neoplatonic thinkers following Augustine, music was of divine origin. It was the means by which humans could contact and absorb into their souls the balance and perfection of cosmic harmony.

Platonic teachings on music won Christian support not only because they were embedded in the quadrivium but also because they were sympathetic to the suspicious attitude toward the sensuous enjoyment of music voiced by most of the church writers. That attitude insisted on strict regulation and restraint in musical expression and eventually fostered a “Christian” music with specific characteristics: ascetic severity, subtlety, rhythmic reserve, serene balance, and repose. The Christian cosmic worldview persisted throughout the Middle Ages (indeed, here and there until the eighteenth century), governing and energizing all facets of musical activity.

The evidence for understanding the organ as a symbol of cosmic harmony is scanty and inconclusive, as is much source material from the early Middle Ages; yet we can trace a slender thread of support for this view. The evidence begins with a statement by the early Christian writer Tertullian (third century), proto-Puritan who, it seems, would be least likely to approve a pagan instrument such as the organ.

Look at that very wonderful piece of organic mechanism by Archimedes—I mean his hydraulic organ, with its many limbs, parts, bands, passages for the notes, outlets for their sounds, combinations for their harmony, and the array of its pipes; but yet the whole of these details constitutes only one instrument. In like manner the wind, which breathes throughout this organ, at the impulse of the hydraulic engine, is not divided into separate portions from the fact of its dispersion through the instrument to make it play: it is whole and entire in its substance, although divided in its operation. (Tertullian, De Anima 14; translation and commentary in Robert Skeris, Musicae Sacrae Melethmata 1 [Altötting, W. Ger.: Coppenrath, 1976], 43)

Tertullian goes on to say that precisely like the windblown in the pipes throughout the organ, the soul displays its energies in various ways by means of the senses, being not indeed divided but distributed in the natural order. Behind Tertullian’s words, one can detect not only an assumed Christian monism but also the Greek, Neoplatonic presupposition of a harmonically ordered cosmos.

Some early medieval writers merely hint at this interpretation, as if they take it for granted. Thus St. Aldhelm (ca. 639–709), English poet, scholar, and teacher, wrote:

If a man longs to sate his soul with ardent music,
And spurns the solace of a thin cantilena,
Let him listen to the mighty organs with their thousand breaths,
And lull his hearing with the air-filled bellows,
However much the rest [of it] dazzles with its golden casings
Who can truly fathom the mysteries of such things,
Or unravel the secrets of the all-knowing God? (De Virginitate; trans. in Perrot, 224)

And in 873 Pope John VIII charged Anno, Bishop of Freising in Bavaria, “to send us, for the purpose of teaching the science of music, an excellent organ together with an organist capable of playing upon it and drawing the maximum amount of music from it” (Monumenta Germania Historica, Epist. Merov. et Karol Aevi. V, anno 873, p. 287; trans. in Perrot, 222).

Baldric, Bishop of Dol, is much less ambiguous in his estimation of the organ. In a letter written to the people of Fécamp sometime between 1114 and 1130, he says:

For myself, I take no great pleasure in the sound of the organ (ego siquidem in modulationibus organicis non multum delector); but it encourages me to reflect that, just as divers pipes, of differing weight and size, sound together in a single melody as a result of the air in them, so men should think the same thoughts, and inspired by the Holy Spirit, unite in a single purpose.… All this I have learned from the organs installed in this church. Are we not organs of the Holy Spirit? And let any man who banishes them from the church likewise banish all-vocal sound, and let him pray, with Moses, through motionless lips.… For ourselves, we speak categorically—because organs are a good thing, we regard them as mysteries and derive from them a spiritual harmony; it is this harmony that the Moderator of all things has instilled in us, by putting together elements entirely discordant in themselves and binding them together by a harmonious rhythm.… As we listen to the organ, let us be drawn together by a two-fold charity. (Patrologiae latinae clxvi, 1177–1178; trans. in Perrot, 220–221)

Even in such a late source as the Syntagma Musicum of 1619, Michael Praetorius implies a similar attitude toward the organ: a respect for the instrument’s paradigmatic perfection, evident above all in its complex and ingenious mechanism:

Almighty God alone can never be given sufficient thanks for having granted to man in His mercy and great goodness such gifts as have enabled him to achieve such a perfect, one might almost say the most perfect, creation and instrument of music as is the organ … in its arrangement and construction; and to play upon it with hands and with feet in such a manner that God in Heaven may be praised, His worship adorned, and man moved and inspired to Christian devotion. (Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum II: De Organographia, trans. W. L. Sumner (Wolfenbüttel: Elias Holwein, 1619), 117–118)

The early appearance of organs in churches, then, may well not have been so much for practical music-making as for symbolic and didactic ends: symbolic in that the instrument was the material embodiment of cosmic harmony, and didactic in that it provided a visible, tangible “sermon” on that harmony. Together with the complex astronomical clocks still extant in some of the medieval cathedrals, organs may have witnessed the divine basis for the quadrivium and its underlying worldview. The clock represented divine order evident in the heavens, while the organ represented it in music; mathematics and geometry, the other disciplines of the quadrivium, were represented by the architecture of the cathedral church itself. (See Otto von Simson, The Gothic Cathedral [New York: Harper & Row, 1962], 43.)

The Later Middle Ages

Organs in the earlier Middle Ages normally consisted of a single rank of pipes. At some point during the later Middle Ages, however, the organ underwent a new development in which each key began to control a number of pipes sounding intervals of fifths and octaves above a fundamental pitch. Thus the instrument became, in effect, a single large mixture—a Blockwerk, to use the proper German term. This development was most likely brought about by the perception of the overtone series on the part of an organ theoretician or builder. Given the medieval preference for theory over practical observation, however, such an advance was probably grounded in a desire to make the organ embody even more perfectly the Pythagorean proof of cosmic harmony.

Had the medieval organ possessed a sensuous, affective tonal quality, no amount of praise for its perfect structure would have won it the church’s approval. Like Bishop Baldric, who was quoted above, the church hierarchy prized the organ not for its sound but for its symbolism. Indeed, the very quality of sound produced by the medieval organ had an affinity to the Christian ideal of cosmic harmony and to the objective, nonaffective music produced by that ideal. The sound had practically no expressive qualities, only the slightest capacity for nuance, little variety in tone, very limited rhythmic capabilities, and no potential for crescendo and diminuendo. The medieval organ was remote in its playing mechanism, remote from its listeners (organs were often set in a balcony or “swallows nest” high up on the church wall), and was situated in a remote, mystic, and awe-inspiring acoustical environment. Its most unique musical characteristic, the ability to hold a tone at a static dynamic level for a theoretically endless period of time, was distinctly superhuman. If one assumes, as the Middle Ages did, that variation and fluctuation belong to the human sphere, while awe, remoteness, and constancy are characteristic of the divine, the mysterious, the holy, then the qualities enumerated above would seem to render the organ a peculiarly hieratic musical instrument.

Whether or not the organ gained entry into the church because it was the embodiment of cosmic harmony, it seems fairly certain that the organ was not brought in at first to aid in the conduct of the liturgy. Again the sources are few and inconclusive, but the gradual incorporation of organ music into liturgical celebrations seems to parallel the rise to prominence of polyphony (see Peter Williams, A New History of the Organ ([Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1980], 47ff.)—a development that may also have gained impetus from Neoplatonic musical speculation. Since the organ’s mechanical advances succeeded in keeping pace with the demands placed on it by musical developments, the instrument became capable of performing intellectual, contrapuntal music as that music evolved in the church. Thus with the support of both speculation and practice, the organ gained a firm foothold. By the thirteenth century, most major churches in Europe—abbeys and secular cathedrals—possessed an organ, and by the fifteenth century, many of them had two: one for solo performance and a smaller one to accompany and support choral singing.

Papal and Conciliar Decrees

By the same conservative process that granted approval to other previously foreign elements after long-established use, the Roman Catholic church hierarchy gradually sanctioned the organ’s official use in the church’s liturgy. This process is best traced through papal and conciliar decrees that include statements on the organ. The only instrument mentioned in the decrees of the Council of Trent is the organ; its playing had to be free from any element that might be considered “lascivious or impure.” Other sixteenth-century ecclesiastical ordinances likewise mention no instrument other than the organ (St. Charles Borromeo, Council of Milan in 1565; Ceremoniale Episcoporum, 1600). By the eighteenth century, the use of the organ in churches was almost universal, yet Pope Benedict XIV was less than enthusiastic about it, a view shared by his successors up through the early twentieth century. As Benedict wrote in the eighteenth century:

Thus the use of the organ and other musical instruments is not yet admitted by all the Christian world. In fact (without speaking of the Ruthenians of the Greek rite, who according to the testimony of Father Le Brun have neither an organ nor any other musical instruments in their churches), all know that Our Pontifical Chapel [the Sistine Chapel], although allowing musical chant on condition that it be serious, decent and devout, has never allowed the organ.… In our days we find in France renowned churches that use neither the organ nor figurative chant [i.e., polyphony] in sacred functions.… (Pope Benedict XIV, Encyclical Annus Qui, February 19, 1749; trans. in Robert F. Hayburn, Papal Legislation on Sacred Music, 95 A.D. to 1977 A.D. [Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1979, 96])

Benedict’s successors wrote in the nineteenth century: Figured organ music ought generally to be in accord with the grave, harmonious and sustained character of that instrument. The instrumental accompaniment ought decorously to support and not drown the chant. In the preludes and interludes, the organ as well as the other instruments ought always to preserve the sacred character corresponding to the sentiment of the function. (Congregation of Sacred Rites, Encyclical Letter, July 21, 1884; in Hayburn, 141)

And so wrote the three popes who bore the name Pius in the twentieth century:

  • Although the proper music of the Church is only vocal, nevertheless the accompaniment of an organ is allowed. In any special case, within proper limits and with due care, other instruments may be allowed, too, but never without special leave from the Bishop of the Diocese, according to the rule of the Ceremoniale Episcoporum.
  • Since the singing must always be the chief thing, the organ and the instruments may only sustain and never crush it.
  • It is not lawful to introduce the singing with long preludes or to interrupt it with intermezzi.
  • The music of the organ in the accompaniment, preludes, interludes, and so on must be played not only according to the proper character of the instrument but also according to all the rules of real sacred music. (Pope Pius X,Motu proprio tra le sollecitudini, November 22, 1903; in Hayburn, 228–229)

There is one musical instrument, however, which properly and by tradition belongs to the Church, and that is the organ. On account of its grandeur and majesty, it has always been considered worthy to mingle with liturgical rites, whether for accompanying the chant, or, when the choir is silent, for eliciting soft harmonies at fitting times. In this matter also, however, it is necessary to avoid that mixture of sacred and profane which through the initiative of organ builders on one hand, and the fault of certain organists who favor ultramodern music on the other threatens the purity of the holy purpose for which the church organ is intended. While safeguarding the rules of liturgy, We Ourselves declare that whatever pertains to the organ should always make fresh development. But We cannot refrain from lamenting that, just as formerly, in the case of styles of music rightly prohibited by the Church so today again there is a danger lest a profane spirit should invade the House of God through new-fangled musical styles which, should they get a real foothold, the Church would be bound to condemn. Let that organ music alone resound in our churches which expresses the majesty of the place and breathes the sanctity of the rites; for in this way both the art of organ builders and that of the musicians who play the organ will be revived and render good service to the sacred liturgy. (Pope Pius XI, apostolic constitution Divini cultus, December 20, 1928; in Hayburn, 331)

These norms [against exaggerated, bombastic music] must be applied to the use of the organ or other musical instruments. Among the musical instruments that have a place in the church, the organ rightly holds the principal position, since it is especially fitted for the sacred chants and sacred rites. It adds a wonderful splendor and a special magnificence to the ceremonies of the Church. It moves the souls of the faithful by the grandeur and sweetness of its tones. It gives minds an almost heavenly joy and it lifts them powerfully to God and to higher things. (Pope Pius XII, encyclical Musicae sacrae disciplina, December 25, 1955, #58; in Hayburn, 353)

In the Latin Church, the pipe organ is to be held in high esteem, for it is the traditional musical instrument and one that adds a wonderful splendor to the Church’s ceremonies and powerfully lifts up man’s mind to God and to heavenly things. (Pope Pius XII, encyclical Musicae sacrae disciplina, December 25, 1955, #58; in Hayburn, 353)

Changing Tastes

The organ experienced its golden age during the Renaissance. By that time, its mechanism was much refined and improved, and sixteenth-century writings attest to the high proficiency level attained in organ performance. Most of the art from this period is unfortunately lost to us since it was largely improvised—the extant compositions represent only a minute fraction of its glory. There was enormous activity in organ building at this time; ordinary parish churches, as well as prominent ones, acquired organs. By the time of the Reformation, the organ’s place in worship was so well established that its use continued undisturbed among Lutherans and Anglicans, even though Luther and others were in fact less than enthusiastic about it.

Luther rarely mentioned organ playing, but occasionally he did express an opinion against it, reckoning it among the externals of the Roman service; on the other hand, he was also musician enough in this area to appreciate and praise the art of a Protestant organist like Wolff Heintz.… Most Lutheran church regulations, at least in the Reformation period, paid no attention to the organ, a few left it as “adiaphorous” (neither forbidden nor approved) as long as “psalms and sacred songs” rather than “love songs” were played upon it, and as long as the organ playing did not, through its length or autocracy, encroach upon the principal parts of the service. (Friedrich Blume, Protestant Church Music [New York: W. W. Norton, 1974], 107)

The growth of alternatim praxis (chants divided into versets for choir and organ in alternation; the term is also applied to the Lutheran chorale) continued to insure an important role for the organ in worship. By this means the organ was raised to a prominence equal to the pastor or priest, congregation, and choir, since it could “sing” an entire segment of chant or stanza of a chorale, leaving the people to meditate on the text (which they usually knew by heart).

The baroque era witnessed a decline in enthusiasm for the organ in southern Europe. Its mechanical development was arrested, less and less music was written for it (and what was written was of lesser quality), and there were fewer well-known organists. Calvinism stifled organ music in Switzerland, and Puritanism inflicted mortal wounds on it in Great Britain. The Ordinance of 1644 mandated the speedy demolishing of all organs, images, and all matters of superstitious monuments in all Cathedrals, and Collegiate or Parish-churches and Chapels, throughout the Kingdom of England and the Dominion of Wales, the better to accomplish the blessed reformation so happily begun and to remove offenses and things illegal in the worship of God. (1644 Ordinance of Lords and Commons; quoted in William Leslie Sumner, The Organ, Its Evolution, Principles of Construction and Use [London: Macdonald, 1962], 135)

The use of organs in the public worship of God is contrary to the law of the land and to the law and constitution of our Established church [of Scotland]. (Presbytery of Glasgow, Proceedings [1807]; see Ian Crofton and Donald Fraser, A Dictionary of Musical Quotations [New York: Schirmer, 1985], 107:15)

In the early seventeenth century, however, Protestant north Germany found a new purpose for the organ: to accompany congregational singing. Thus the organ continued to be assured a secure place in the church, not only for philosophical or theological reasons but also for practical ones. The instrument reached another mechanical and artistic high point in middle and northern Germany during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, as Michael Praetorius’s enthusiastic affirmation quoted above indicates. More than coincidence explains the fact that the authors who furthered ideas about world harmony during this period are the same ones who showed the greatest interest in the organ: Praetorius, Kircher, Werkmeister. Indeed the organ has flourished wherever the Neoplatonic worldview has been cultivated. The seventeenth-century English poets who eulogize the Neoplatonic concept of world harmony praise the instrument:

Ring out, ye crystal spheres,
Once bless our human ears,
(If ye have power to touch our senses so)
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time;
And let the Bass of Heav’ns deep Organ blow,
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort to th’ Angelick symphony. (John Milton, “Hymn on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” [1645])

But oh! what art can teach,
What human voice can reach
The sacred organ’s praise?
Notes inspiring holy love,
Notes that wing their heav’nly ways
To mend the choirs above. (John Dryden, “A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day” [1687])

When the full organ joins the tuneful choir, Th’immortal Pow’rs incline their ear. (Alexander Pope, “Ode for Musick on St. Cecilia’s Day” [c. 1708])

J. S. Bach’s music represents the final glorious flourish, both for the concept of cosmic harmony in music (see Timothy Smith, “J. S. Bach the Symbolist,” Journal of Church Music 27:7 [September 1985]: 8-13, 46) and for the organ as a vitally important factor in the music world; even during Bach’s lifetime, the organ was being relegated to the fringe, where it has remained. Yet by that composer’s time, the interplay of sacred and secular ideas made paradox the order of the day: it is a measure of Bach’s profound synthesizing genius that he made the organ “dance”; a less likely instrument for dancing can hardly be imagined!

The pressure of the radically new Enlightenment ideas about music, such as the idea that its primary function consisted of expressing human emotion or providing entertainment and relaxation, had an enormous impact on the status of the organ and its music. The latter half of the eighteenth century witnessed a rapid decline and trivialization of the organ and its music, a trend that prevailed through the first half of the nineteenth century. The instrument could not compete with the new intimate, affective gestures, the rapid shifts of mood and emotional range of preclassical and classical symphonies and secular keyboard music (e.g., the works of the Mannheim School, or of C. P. E. Bach and Haydn). Compared with them, “the organ quite naturally was thought of as a clumsy, screeching, dynamically monotonous instrumental monster” (Arnfried Edler, “The Organist in Lutheran Germany,” in Walter Salmen, ed., The Social Status of the Professional Musician from the Middle Ages to the 19th Century [New York: Pendragon, 1983], 89).

If it were to be asked what instrument is capable of affording the greatest effects? I should answer, the Organ.… It is, however, very remote from perfection, as it wants expression, and a more perfect intonation. (Charles Burney, A General History of Music [London, 1776-89], quoted in Dictionary of Musical Quotations, 107–113)

[Organ playing] in France was generally irreverent, although once in a while a significant talent came to my attention within this irreverence. Not rarely is a gay pastorale heard during a church service which turns into a thunderstorm before closing with a sort of operatic grand finale in freestyle. Given that this is untenable from the German religious point of view, it must be admitted that such things are often done quite talentedly. A requiem mass for Lafitte in the church of Saint Roch gave me the opportunity to hear one M. Lefébure-Wély play in a solemn, appropriate manner, whereas he worked up a tremendous gay mood during the mass on Sunday. In response to my astonishment over this, I was told that the clergy, as well as the congregation, expect light-hearted music. (Adolph Hesse, “On organs, their appointment and treatment in Austria, Italy, France and England” [observations on a trip made in 1844], Neue Zeitschrift fr Musik [1853]: 53; trans. in Rollin Smith, “Saint-Saëns and the Organ,” The American Organist 20:4 [April 1986]: 190-191)

In spite of this decline, however, the organ continued to solidify its position as the musical instrument of the church. By the nineteenth century its sound had come to be regarded as the epitome of churchliness; even those church bodies whose Puritan heritage had hitherto rejected the organ now began to embrace it. Yet significant composers of the period between 1750 and 1850 wrote little or nothing of note for the organ, and no organist of this period was accorded the degree of international recognition granted to the premier violinists, pianists, and singers of the time. This held true even until the present day.

The Modern Revival

The mid-nineteenth century marked the beginning of attempts to rescue the organ from neglect and trivialization; for example, the outstanding work of Mendelssohn in Germany; S. S. Wesley in England; Cavaillé Coll, Hesse, and Franck in France. These attempts were essentially within the framework of the church; the corresponding groundswell to restore the organ to a position of prominence in the world of secular music never attained the same degree of intensity. The revival of the organ within the church was bound up almost entirely with efforts toward church renewal after its first disastrous encounter with Enlightenment ideas. Revival was largely fueled by Romantic sentiments, especially those of historicism (e.g., the revival of gothic architecture and the music of Palestrina and Bach) and aestheticism (the devotion to and cultivation of beauty). As neither of these movements had a firm theological basis, the organ’s continued existence in the church came to rest on its practical usefulness as a means of supporting large-group singing and on the increasingly unshakable conviction among the majority of Christian worshipers that the organ is the church’s instrument. (The latter notion has at times created problems for the organ, as well as discomfort for organists, especially those who do not wish to be associated with the church.)

Nineteenth-century attempts to make the organ conform to the new taste and the new “enlightened” worldview included enclosed divisions with swell shades and devices for rapid change of registration. These were quite clumsy, especially when compared with the flexible expressivity of the orchestra or piano, and they were only partially successful. Thus there arose in the early twentieth century a countermovement (the Orgelbewegung or Organ Reform Movement) that did away with the questionable “improvements” and once again built organs that were in greater conformity with older musical ideals—and inevitably with the old worldview. The revival of older organ-building techniques and concepts has only exacerbated the antipathy of those increasingly prevalent forces in the twentieth-century church that promote the ideal of a popular, intimate, and human-scaled church and worship.

The demise of the antique and medieval worldviews has relegated the organ to the fringe of the post-Enlightenment musical scene: to the degree that the modern instrument participates in the characteristics of the medieval organ, it evokes and espouses by the very character of its sound the medieval worldview. The notion that the organ is the church’s proper instrument is still strong in many quarters, but the idea has powerful detractors. The rise of styles of worship that deemphasize or exclude the organ while featuring the use of other instruments underlines the gradual dethronement of the organ as the special instrument of the church.

The Anthem in Worship

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Anthems sung by choirs and soloists have a long history in Christian worship. Many of the world’s finest composers have written anthems for use in worship. Yet the best anthems are those which unite such musical genius with concern for the text that is sung and the function of the anthem in the context of the entire worship service.

Choral music is used in worship by choirs of all sizes and in almost all denominations. Many churches have a long-standing tradition of thoughtfully prepared anthems contributing to the worship service, while others approach choral music as an afterthought. The goal of all worship leaders should be the former; with planning, this is a goal that can be achieved in churches with even limited resources.

Before discussing the role of choral anthems in worship, it might be helpful to understand the long history of choirs contributing to worship.

History of the Anthem in Worship

Church musicians and publishers today use the term anthem in a general way to mean choral music of many different voicings and accompaniments, but the term anthem does have a specific historical meaning. The anthem had its origin as English choral music used in the Anglican church nearly from its inception. These anthems, in turn, were based on the Latin motet used in the Roman rites. The Latin motets were one of the earliest forms of polyphonic music (c. 12th cent.), and they originated as a polyphonic interpretation of the chants which they were used with. In the 1400s, the Latin motet became more a choral composition on a scripturally based text and was often written with four, six, or more voice parts.

In the Reformation brought about by Henry VIII, the language of worship was brought into vernacular English. This necessitated a change from the Latin both in Scripture and song, and thus the anthem was born. Actually, there are a few examples of English choral music before the Reformation, but liturgical change was the prime impetus for the outpouring of compositions known as anthems. Tye and Tallis were two of the first composers to write what we are referring to as an English anthem. Their compositions are typically rather rhythmically square and conceived more by their harmony than their melody. Some of this can be attributed to the style of the time, but much of it is also due to the spaces in which these anthems were sung: cathedrals with a very live acoustic and long reverberation. The earliest writers began by giving a great deal of consideration to the sound of sung text and its pronunciation, and this emphasis is one we would do well to consider in the performance of choral music today.

The choral tradition was pushed forward by the Reformation, especially in the Lutheran tradition. Luther loved the historic church’s music, and choirs in the early Lutheran churches began to sing the main parts of the service, the Mass, though once again in the vernacular. This provided an opportunity for composers of the day to provide new music for the church.

J. S. Bach became one of the greatest forces in church music through his compositions, and even his church compositions were all composed out of need (without denying his inspiration). Church music is a practical matter of facilitating worship, and the history of the church in the last several centuries is full of compositions and choirs meeting the needs of the people and serving the focus of worship. The gospel hymns of Sankey and the evangelistic focus of the Wesleys and their hymns fit the needs of a particular style of worship. The same is also true for spirituals, whose spontaneity and simplicity was required by the style of worship of the slaves: they often worshiped in the fields with their singing and improvising.

Eighteenth-century America saw the publication of many collections for use in worship beyond the metrical psalters that had long been in use. Tunebooks such as Kentucky Harmony (1816) and Sacred Harp (1844) provided for all the musical needs of a congregation, both congregational and choral. It must be understood that singing was a primary form of entertainment among people of all social situations during this time, and the interest in singing was not limited to the church, as it often is today. Even the secular collections from the New England singing schools contained many anthems with a scriptural basis. In the United States before the turn of the twentieth century, there were many publishers producing traditional anthems and others publishing gospel music for use in churches, and everything in-between.

The publishing of anthems as we know them and refer to them today basically began with Novello and Company in London in the 1940s. They began the publishing of octavo choral music to allow choirs to purchase individual titles. This had the effect of making the music sometimes more disposable in nature, and pieces were more able to exist on their own merits. Oxford University Press is another example of a notable publisher involved for well over a century in the publishing of choral music used for worship.

The twentieth century has seen the flourishing and demise of many publishers of choral music for the church. Much of this is due to changes in society and worship, yet diminishing musical literacy has also played a part. And still, there are denominational publishers such as Augsburg/Fortress, Concordia, and GIA; long-lived, independent publishers such as Hope Publishing Co., Lorenz, Oxford University Press, and Sacred Music Press; the praise-and-worship publishers typified by Word, Inc.; and the newer independent publishers such as Randall Egan, Hinshaw, MorningStar Music Publishers, and Selah Publishing Co.

The Role of the Anthem in Worship

This article is not the place to define what the act of worship should or could be, but it must be clear that choral music can contribute to the experience of worship. Unfortunately, it can just as easily distract the worshiper.

Church choirs offer singers an opportunity to make an offering of their gifts. What choir members need to understand beyond that offering is the role that they can play in worship. They have the opportunity to add a great deal of meaning to worship through their presentation of choral music.

If anthems are to contribute to worship, they must not distract from worship. And if worship is communal, then the choral music must not be seen as entertainment, with the congregation given a passive role. A congregation worships to experience God’s presence in their lives, and choral music can give them an opportunity to view the beauty of God. It can help them in giving glory to God. And it can provide a sensory experience of God’s grace. The anthem does not need to be the climactic portion of the service, and in fact, rarely should be.

When choosing music for a church choir, a director may face some obvious limitations in resources. The skill of the accompanist or the number in the choir might diminish the choices somewhat. There is quality music that will fit nearly every situation, but a director should choose substantive music that he or she would feel comfortable performing over and over. There is not much sense in putting work into a disposable piece of music. Catchy music has its place in advertising, but there must be more to anthems used in worship than a fancy rhythm or memorable tune. Consider the pastoral role you play when looking at music for your choir: the anthems can illumine and interpret Scripture, a sermon, the church season, or an important current event or change in the life of the church. You have the opportunity to expose the congregation to a variety of music, music sung throughout the centuries in the church, and music that could only be sung in our present latter-day twentieth-century situation.

Choose anthems that aid the flow of worship. For liturgical churches, this might mean finding an anthem that is based on one of the lectionary readings or highlights one of the themes of the scripture passages. For others, it might mean an anthem that illumines that worship’s theme or focus. It is not necessary to repeat what is being read in Scripture or taught in a sermon, but the anthem can give insight by approaching the subject from a different angle or by infusing the emotional power that the music carries.

It is not harmful to look for innovative ways of using the choir to facilitate worship. Churches in the liturgical tradition might have the service music or setting of the Mass sung solely by the choir. Anthems might take the place of a hymn or be used as a gradual between readings. The appointed psalms might be sung by choir or cantor. Responses can be choral, and through singing the Mass and responses, choirs are given the role of leader of congregational song. These ideas might be beyond the role of the traditional anthem, but there is good choral music available for all of these situations.

Those congregations in the free-church tradition do have flexibility in the role a choir might take in the worship service, from the leader of congregational song to the presentation of Scripture in song. But look for new places in worship where an anthem might be effective, not necessarily where it always has been done.

The practical considerations to keep in mind when choosing anthems include the range of your singers, the balance of parts throughout a piece, and the difficulty of a piece. It is good planning to stretch the limits of a choir, but it is not always appropriate for every occasion. Choose music that is within the singers’ grasp. Choirs with limited resources can often use hymns, old or new, as simpler anthems, and yet these can be as effective as an eight-part motet.

There is an art and a craft to singing choral music. Choral music done well requires much attention to vocal production, pronunciation, dynamics, breathing, phrasing, attacks, balance, and so on. One must study and live with the music to find those areas where particular attention must be paid. It is in the interpretation where the art of choral music lies and where we can give glory to God. Those involved in leadership should take every opportunity to improve their understanding of the subtleties of choral music and its performance. Listen critically to recordings or live performance of choral groups. Many publications such as Choral Journal publish articles with practical advice on performance practices. Associations such as the American Choral Directors Association or the American Guild of Organists sponsor workshops and conferences where one can view respected directors rehearsing and directing a choir. The insight gained from such observation cannot often be taught. In all of this, the desire to improve oneself and offer a better gift to the glory of God should be sufficient motivation.

Those who direct church choirs and sing in those choirs are given an opportunity to lift worship to a level where we can experience God more fully, a truly awesome responsibility. And it is through the grace of God that we can do so.

History of the Chorale

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The chorale was Martin Luther’s important contribution to church music. Featuring strong rhythmic tunes and vernacular texts, the early chorales were songs for all worshiping people to sing. Since the Reformation, a long line of hymn writers, especially in Germany and Scandinavia, has contributed to this genre, leaving behind one of the richest bodies of music in the Christian church.

Martin Luther

Although more than five hundred years have passed since the birth of Martin Luther in 1483, the influence of this reformer continues to affect congregational singing today. He was the greatest preacher in all of Germany, a thorough biblical scholar, and an influential theologian. He was also both an author and translator, musician and composer.

In writing thirty-seven song texts in German, Martin Luther intended to provide Christians with the truths of Scripture that he himself had worked so hard to recover. He believed that it was imperative for believers to know the Scriptures, to “hide God’s word in their hearts.” Largely because of his experience in singing in a choir as a boy, he was convinced that this should be accomplished through the singing of hymns.

It was the Bohemian Brethren who had earlier adopted the practice of congregational singing for worship and issued their songbook of 1501 with its eighty-nine hymns. However, it was the writings and publications of Luther which firmly established the practice. His strong desire to have musically literate teachers and preachers is evident in his comment:

I have always loved music; whoso have skill in this art, is of a good temperament, fitted for all things. We must teach music in schools; a schoolmaster ought to have skill in music or I should reject him; neither should we ordain young men as preachers unless they have been well exercised in music. (William Hazlett, ed., The Table-Talk of Martin Luther [Philadelphia: United Lutheran Publishing House, n.d.], 416)

In addition to this, Luther wrote the following in the foreword to the first edition of the 1524 Wittenberg Gesangbuch:

St. Paul orders the Colossians to sing Psalms and spiritual songs to the Lord in their hearts, in order that God’s word and Christ’s teaching may be thus spread abroad and practiced in every way. Accordingly, as a good beginning and to encourage those who can do better, I and several others have brought together certain spiritual songs with a view to spreading abroad and setting in motion the holy Gospel. (Luther’s Works, vol. 53: Liturgy and Hymns [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1955], 316)

Because congregational singing in worship services had been banned by a decree of the Council of Laodicia in a.d. 367 and by the Council of Jerusalem in a.d. 1415, there was a need for hymns in the vernacular to be used in the services that Luther conducted. The songs sung in the vernacular at that time were sacred songs for processions and pilgrimages.

At first Luther struggled in an attempt to fit the newly written German texts to existing chant melodies, and his efforts ended in frustration. Thus he was forced to create his own texts and to restructure existing melodies to fit the new words. Using this method, he finished four songs in 1523. They appeared early in 1524 in the famous little leaflet, Achtliederbuch. Very soon thereafter, another nineteen texts were in print. Amazingly, in the next two decades, until his death in 1546, another one hundred new collections of German chorales were published. Five of these were completed under Luther’s own personal supervision.

He began to understand the language of the people more fully when he went among them asking how they would express certain phrases. This increased his own understanding of the type of syllabic singing which the people enjoyed. Previously, several notes of a chant melody were attached to a single syllable of the text. Luther’s chorale tunes however, were written with one note given to each syllable of the text. His famous battle hymn, Ein feste Burg (“A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”), based on Psalm 46, is a superb example of his style of writing and composing.

Luther’s new songs for worship services were taught to the children in the school. They in turn sang them in the sanctuary for the adults to learn. Thus, the children would lead the congregation in the singing of the hymns. The melody was always sung by all in unison without accompaniment, as the strength of the melodies and the vitality of the original rhythms required no harmony.

Other Chorale and Hymn Writers

Others followed Luther’s lead. Among the important contributors of this first period were Paul Speratus (1484–1551), Nicolaus Hermann (c. 1480–1561) and Nicolaus Decius (c. 1458–1546). The resources which they used for both texts and tunes were chants of the Mass, the office hymns, sacred German folk hymns, Latin spiritual songs, and popular melodies. Decius’ well-known “All Glory Be to God on High” is an example of a translation of a Latin liturgical text (the Gloria) into the vernacular. In other cases, new original texts were attached to pre-existing melodies. Yet other chorales were completely original works, textually and musically.

The next generation of chorale writers/composers continued to compose melodic/rhythmic tunes without harmony. Two outstanding chorales of this form by Philipp Nicolai (1536–1608) are “Wake, Awake for Night is Flying” and “O Morning Star, How Fair and Bright.” The first is often referred to as the “King of Chorales” and the second, the “Queen of Chorales.” These chorales were sung to tunes later used by J. S. Bach, Handel, and Mendelssohn in a variety of works for organ and choir.

A pattern of alternation evolved in which the organist played or the choir sang a harmonized version of the chorale music in between the singing of the stanzas which were sung by the congregation. It was only later that harmony was played and sung simultaneously with the singing of the people. And with the addition of harmony, the music became isorhythmic, each note of the melody having the same time value as the other notes.

It was the work of Lucas Osiander (1534–1604) which brought together the congregational singing of the melody and the harmonized version of the choir. In 1586 he published an unusual hymnal in Nuremberg in which the melody of the chorales was put in the soprano part and simple chordal harmony was added underneath. The title of his book makes his purpose clear: Fifty Sacred Songs and Psalms arranged so, that an entire Christian congregation can sing along. This work inspired expressive works by Hans Leo Hassler (1564–1612) such as “O Sacred Head Now Wounded” and by Melchior Teschner (1584–1635), who composed “All Glory Laud and Honor.”

Other changes became evident during and after the Thirty Years War of 1618–1648. Paul Gerhardt (607-1676) became the leader of a movement to change the emphasis of chorale texts. The former, more objective viewpoint, gave way to a subjective emphasis, leading to the pietistic period of the latter part of the seventeenth century. With the aid of composers Johann Cruger (1598–1662) and Johann Georg Ebeling (1637–1676), Gerhardt’s texts grew in popularity. Two of his followers were Martin Rinkart (1586–1649), author of “Now Thank We All Our God,” and Georg Neumark (1621–1681), author of “If You Will Only Let God Guide You.”

Cruger provided tunes not only for Gerhardt but also for Rinkart and Johann Franck (1618–1677) in his famous hymnal Praxis Pietatis Melica (The Practice of Piety Through Music) which first appeared in 1644. By 1736 it had passed through forty-four editions. Christians everywhere still raise their voices together to sing his tune, Jesus Meine Freunde, for the text, “Jesus, Priceless Treasure.”

The Paul Gerhardt of the Calvinists was Joachim Neander (1650–1680), a close friend of Jakob Spener, founder of the pietistic movement, and of Spener’s associate, Johann Jakob Schutz (1640–1690). Although a Calvinist, Neander supported pietism. His hymns and those of the prolific writer Gerhard Tersteegen (1697–1769) made increasing use of personal pronouns. The mood of the hymns became more subjective, and they were often used not only in church services but also in private devotions.

By the time of J. S. Bach (1685–1750) hymnals were much larger. The resources at hand were staggering. With great skill he reharmonized the simpler harmonic structures and provided singers with full and rich new harmonies.

During the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries a large number of hymns were also written by Anabaptists, later known as Mennonites and Bohemian Brethren (the Moravians). The current hymnals of these groups have a generous supply of translations and music from their own rich heritage.

Scandinavian Hymns

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a large number of chorales by Scandinavians were published. Much of Denmark’s contribution to contemporary hymnology comes from three great hymnists. Denmark’s first great hymnist, Thomas Kingo (1634–1703), known as the “Poet of Eastertide” because of his many hymns on the theme of Christ’s resurrection, contributed the texts, “Print Thine Image, Pure and Holy” and “Praise to Thee and Adoration.” The second great hymn writer was the pietist Hans Adolf Brorson (1694–1764), known as the “Poet of Christmas.” Children everywhere enjoy singing his song, “Thy Little Ones, Dear Lord, Are We,” and adults in the Lutheran faith (as well as other communions) hold dear his inspiring hymn, “Behold a Host Arrayed in White,” along with its Norwegian folk tune. The third member of this celebrated trio of Danish hymn writers was the “Poet of Whitsuntide,” Nikolai F. S. Grundtvig (1783–1872). For Christmas he wrote “The Happy Christmas Comes Once More” and “Bright and Glorious is the Sky.” Moreover, in his struggle to revive the life of the church, he wrote the well known hymn of the church, “Built on a Rock.”

Johan Olof Wallin (1770–1839), considered to be Sweden’s leading hymn writer, made numerous contributions to Swedish hymnals. And now some translations have found their way into American Lutheran hymnals. However, none of his hymns are as familiar as Caroline Vilhelmina Sandell-Borg’s (1832–1905) “Children of the Heavenly Father.” And certainly, no other Swedish song has been so popularized in the United States as Carl Boberg’s (1859–1940) “How Great Thou Art.”

Philosophy of Music in Reformed Worship

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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.

Philosophy of Music in Lutheran Worship

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Among Protestant churches, the Lutheran tradition has the richest heritage of music for worship. It is based on the assumption that music is a profound means by which we enter God’s presence and render our liturgy of thanksgiving to God. Bringing together insights first developed by Martin Luther and practices that have grown out of almost 500 years of Lutheran worship, this article describes why and how music is used in Lutheran worship.

The public worship of God’s people is only rarely what we know it can or should be. A lack of understanding on the part of pastors, church musicians, and laity alike as to what Lutheran worship really is or might be is all too common. Inadequate experience and education in living the liturgy in colleges, seminaries, and in the local congregation has resulted in confusion and misunderstanding about worship, worship forms, and worship practices on the part of the clergy, laity, and church musicians alike. In large part, this confusion is the result of being cut off from the basic understandings that enabled Lutheran worship and church music to achieve such a glorious history.

As more people in our congregations reflect backgrounds, traditions, and practices other than Lutheran, it is increasingly important that basic guidelines be set out that reflect Lutheranism’s understanding of its worship, and particularly the role of music in that worship tradition.

Lutheranism has a distinct point of view in matters of worship and church music. It is hoped that this affirmation will help focus attention on this point of view for pastors, church musicians, and laity alike. In this way may it help in fostering a parish practice that is both faithful to Lutheran traditions and, in returning to Lutheranism’s roots, help to realize a more vital worship practice in our parishes.

Worship and Music

What place does music have in a Lutheran understanding and tradition of worship?

The answer to that question is rooted in how Lutherans have seen themselves throughout their history. While the sixteenth century ultimately saw a separation of Lutherans from the catholic church of its day, Martin Luther and those who followed him did not see themselves primarily as a new church, but rather as a distinctive confessional movement within a larger Christianity. That understanding is a key one as Lutherans approach the matter of worship—how they see themselves in relation to the larger Christian tradition, and how they view music and its role in their corporate praise and prayer.

The Lutheran church is a worshiping church. Lutherans concern themselves seriously with all aspects of the church’s worship life. Particular emphasis, however, is given to corporate, congregational worship, where Christians gather to hear the Word and to share the sacrament. For Lutherans, corporate worship is not simply a pleasant option; it is the indispensable and central work of the gathered Christian community from which all other facets of the church’s life and mission, including one’s individual worship life, derive their strength, purpose, and direction.

The Lutheran church is a liturgical church. With much of Christianity, it shares a concern for ordered worship. Its worship is characterized neither by eccentricity nor faddishness. Lutheran worship underscores the elements of stability and continuity with worship forms and practices that place Lutherans in the long line of worshipers from the New Testament to the Parousia. They worship not in subjective isolation, but “with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven,” in concert with Christian believers of all times and places.

Lutheran worship offers a richness and variety of forms and practices that give fullness to the celebration of corporate worship. As Lutherans worship with the recurring cycles of the church year, as they hear the Word proclaimed through ordered readings and preaching that recount the full council of God, and as they celebrate the sacraments, Lutherans are united with Christians of other times and places and receive strength for their task in the world.

Lutherans receive their heritage of worship forms and practices with thanksgiving and appreciation. Lutherans understand that their heritage is a meaningful source of continuity with their own past as well as with that of the whole church catholic. Yet Lutherans do not deify, ossify, or accept their heritage uncritically. Lutherans also see their heritage as a basis for moving toward the future. Thus Lutheran worship is simultaneously conservative and open to the future.

As the music in Lutheran worship builds on these understandings, as it helps to nourish the faith, as it works to the glory of God and the edification of the neighbor, it has always had a welcome and important role among Lutheran Christians. Where it has fallen short of these understandings, where it has substituted other goals, where it has become man-centered rather than God-centered, to that extent it has ceased to be Lutheran in motivation, realization, and result.

Music in Lutheran worship—whether the music of congregation, choir, pastor, organ, solo voice, or instruments—finds its most natural and comfortable place in the context of the liturgy. It is in the liturgy, in all its fullness and completeness, that music in Lutheran worship finds its highest goal and achieves its greatest fulfillment. At its best, Lutheranism upholds this priority. When Lutheran worship forsakes its roots in the liturgy, as it substitutes other priorities, or as it seeks to imitate sectarian practices, it loses its orientation and perverts the role of both music and worship.

For Luther, music was next in importance to theology, a living voice of the Gospel (viva vox evangelii), a gift of God to be used in all its fullness in Christian praise and prayer. As the implications of these concepts begin to permeate our understanding and our practice, music in Lutheran worship will move ever closer to a fuller realization of its potential in the hearts and lives of worshipers everywhere.

Luther’s View of Music in Worship

Martin Luther, alone among the reformers of the sixteenth century, welcomed music into the worship and praise of God with open arms. For Luther, music was a “noble, wholesome, and joyful creation,” a gift of God. For Luther, music was a part of God’s creation with the power to praise its Creator, and it found its greatest fulfillment in the proclamation of the Word.

Therefore accustom yourself to see in this creation your Creator and to praise him through it.

If any would not sing and talk of what Christ has wrought for us, he shows thereby that he does not really believe.… (quoted in Walter E. Buszin, Luther on Music [n.p.: Lutheran Society for Worship, Music, and the Arts, 1958])

For Luther, to “say and sing” was a single concept resulting from the inevitable eruption of joyful song in the heart of the redeemed. In contrast to some other reformers who saw music as always potentially troublesome and in need of careful control and direction, Luther, in the freedom of the Gospel, could exult in the power of music to proclaim the Word and to touch the heart and mind of man.

In emphasizing music as God’s—not man’s—creation and as God’s gift to man to be used in his praise and proclamation, and in stressing particularly the royal priesthood of all believers, Luther laid the foundation for the involvement of every Christian—congregation, choir, composer, instrumentalist—in corporate praise at the highest level of ability. In seeing all of music as under God’s redemptive hand, Luther underscored the freedom of the Christian to use all of music in the proclamation of the Gospel. The music that developed in this tradition is eloquent testimony to the fact that the church’s musicians and its people found that Luther’s views provided a healthy and wholesome context in which to work, to sing, and to make music in praise of God.

Luther encouraged the most sophisticated forms of the music of his day—Gregorian chant and classical polyphony—to be taught to the young and sung in church together with the simpler congregational chorales. In contrast to both the Latin tradition and that of the Calvinist reformation, it was the Lutheran reformers’ understanding of music as a gift of God that successfully encouraged the reciprocal interaction of simple congregational song and art music of the most sophisticated kind. A flourishing tradition of church music was the happy result.

A Lutheran View of Tradition

Because it views itself as part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church, Lutheranism looks to the experience of the church at worship throughout its history as an important source of its way of worship. Its use of forms and practices with which the church has prayed and praised for centuries—forms that have been tested, tried, and found nourishing through the experience of countless Christians—affirms Lutheranism’s continuity with the whole church. In its life of worship, Lutheranism gives such forms and practices a central place. Luther’s view, which sought to retain from the past all that was useful, rejecting only what could not be retained in good conscience, was no flight into a wistful nostalgia; it was rather a pastorally responsible attempt to demonstrate the continuity and unity of Lutheranism with all of Christendom.

Lutheranism, on the other hand, does not hesitate to critically examine its heritage from the past, subjecting it to sound theological, psychological, and sociological examination for its meaning and usefulness for our own time. In doing so, Lutheranism is reminded that a sentimental return to any earlier age, ignoring later history, is no more adequate an answer than to suggest that each age must start anew to fashion structures of worship and prayer.

For Lutherans, the word tradition—in the sense of the gathered experience of the church at worship throughout its history—is an important working concept. For Lutherans, their worship tradition is always a living tradition, continuously developing and living in vital parish practice. Building on the experience of the past, the church moves confidently into the future.

In some places, tradition is misunderstood to mean merely conventional practices that may have developed in someplace and have no relation to the experience of the whole church. Often it means no more than “what we in this parish are used to” or “how we did it last year.” More often than not such “traditions” merely reflect sectarian fads that have become conventional through repetition.

It is a Lutheran conviction that the needs of people at worship are most effectively met by forms and structures of prayer that draw on the collective experience of the whole church at worship. For some, such structures and practices—when used for the first time—will be new and, perhaps, disconcerting. Once they become a normal part of the life of worship, however, their richness, strength, diversity, the power to nourish faith and life, and their ability to help Christians praise God and enjoy him forever soon become apparent.

The Music of the Congregation

The chief musical reform of the Lutheran church in the sixteenth century was the establishment of congregational singing as a vital ingredient in corporate worship. It was not enough for Luther that people merely be present at worship—their faith should erupt in song: “God has made our hearts and spirits happy through His dear Son.… He who believes this sincerely and earnestly cannot help but be happy; he must cheerfully sing” (Buszin, Luther on Music). Thus what was only tolerated in the medieval church—and then only on infrequent occasion—became a central feature of worship in the church of the Lutheran Reformation.

Congregational singing, then as now, centers on the hymnody of the people, particularly in the Lutheran chorale. This unique body of words and melodies, which took shape in the early years of the Reformation, was drawn from the chants of the medieval church, from the many popular pre-Reformation “Kyrie songs,” from nonliturgical Latin and Latin-German songs of pre-Reformation times, from secular melodies to which sacred words were adapted, and from newly written texts and melodies. The Lutheran chorale texts spoke clearly of sin and salvation, of death and resurrection; they recounted the story of man’s fall into sin and his redemption won through Christ’s victory over death and the devil. Its melodies—sung by the congregation in unison and without accompaniment—were vigorous, rhythmic, and truly popular.

The chorale spread rapidly and achieved remarkable popularity wherever Lutheranism took root. The words and tunes of the chorale have continued to provide strength and comfort to worshipers wherever they have been used, and they have served as the basis for an ever-growing body of church music by composers since that time. There is hardly a Christian hymnbook that has not been enriched through the inclusion of Lutheran chorales, just as Lutheran hymnals have been enriched by the hymnody of others.

This unique wedding of words and melody which is the Lutheran chorale gave rise to the uniquely Lutheran custom of singing hymns in alternation between the congregation, choir, and organ. Alternating stanza for stanza throughout the entire hymn, this manner of singing offered not only variety in the musical presentation of the hymn, but also provided an opportunity for meditation on the words of the stanzas presented by the alternating groups. Each musical entity had a place in the singing of the chorale; at the heart and center, however, was the congregation.

The uniqueness of Lutheran hymnody lies in the fact that from the very beginning it has been an important part of the liturgy, not—as in most other traditions—a general Christian song loosely attached to worship. It was and continues to be the vehicle for congregational song.

Luther himself led the way in encouraging the creation of new texts and melodies through which the congregation could give voice to its faith in corporate song. The result has been the incorporation into Lutheran worship of a large body of hymnody reflecting a wide diversity of origins and musical styles.

For worshiping Lutherans, congregational song centers on the singing of hymns of proclamation and praise, prayer, and adoration. And wherever a Lutheran understanding of worship and congregational song prevails, the chorale—among all the many jewels in the treasury of the church’s song—continues to hold a place of special prominence.

In more recent history, Lutherans have also encouraged congregational singing of such other portions of the liturgy as the great prose songs of the mass (Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus Dei), various canticles (Venite, Magnificat, Nunc dimittis), together with a variety of shorter responses in the liturgy. Most of the early ventures in this development consisted of not too successful adaptations for congregations of music originally intended for choral performance. Only in very recent years has the attempt been made to fashion music for the liturgy that is truly congregational in its conception and realization.

Whatever its characteristics may be, true congregational song operates within the musical limitations of largely amateur singers, yet has musical integrity and character distinctly its own. True congregational song is neither simplistic, undistinguished melody whose only purpose is functional; neither is it essentially choir music simplified for the purposes of group singing. True congregational song is a genre all its own, and its prototype and model—in terms of an accessible unison melody with rhythmic life and variety—is the Lutheran chorale.

The Music of the Choir

In the Lutheran tradition of worship the choir functions liturgically as a helper and servant to the congregation, enlivening and enriching the worship of the entire assembly. It does this in three ways. In order of importance they are

1.     The choir supports and enriches the congregational singing of hymns and of the liturgy.
2.     The choir brings richness and variety to congregational worship by singing the portions of the liturgy entrusted to it.
3.     The choir enriches congregational worship by presenting attendant music as appropriate and possible.

1. The choir supports and enriches the congregational singing of hymns: by regularly devoting time in rehearsals to practicing the hymns to be sung in the various services, thus establishing a nucleus of singers who can confidently lead the singing; by helping to enlarge the congregation’s repertoire through learning new hymns of worth and introducing them appropriately to the congregation; and by participating with the congregation in the regular festive presentation of the Hymn of the Day.

The choir supports and enriches the congregational singing of the liturgy: by devoting time, on a regular basis, to rehearsing the liturgy, so that the choir can lead the congregation most effectively; by teaching and introducing to the congregation the portions of the liturgy that have not yet been learned, or learned only incompletely; by helping the congregation enlarge the dimensions of its participation through learning new musical settings of the liturgy or portions of the liturgy as appropriate. By helping the congregation, of which the choir is a part, sing the services it already knows more effectively, and by introducing—over a period of time—several different musical settings of the service that the congregation can use with the changing moods of the church year, the choir will be assuming more fully its role of a leader in the liturgical worship of the congregation.

The uniquely Lutheran tradition of the “hymn mass,” while not suggested as a norm, might well be used as occasionally appropriate to substitute for the prose texts of the major songs of the service.

2. The choir also adds variety to congregational worship by singing the portions of the liturgy that have been entrusted to it by the congregation. In the singing of the liturgy, certain texts, because of their unique appropriateness to the Sunday, festival, or season of the church year, change from week to week. Thus these texts are more suitable for singing by a group that meets regularly for rehearsal. At different times in the church’s history these texts have been assigned to various groups; their use, however, is crucially important since they provide part of the variety that is important to liturgical worship.

This rich selection of texts provides the basis for the participation of the choir in the varying portions of the liturgy, participation for which the choir is uniquely suited and through which it can make a contribution of major significance. In certain newer liturgies, some of these texts occur in slightly different contexts. They remain, however, the basic texts to which the choir must address itself as it prepares for its participation in the varying portions of the liturgy.

3. The choir also enriches congregational worship by presenting attendant music as appropriate and as possible. The term attendant music refers to that entire spectrum of motets, anthems, passions, cantatas, and other music not covered in the preceding discussion. As attendant music is planned for use in worship, three considerations are crucial:

a.     Attendant music should be liturgically appropriate to the Sunday, festival, or season of the church year.
b.     Attendant music should be appropriately placed in the liturgy. (Here special emphasis should be given the traditional Lutheran practice of music sub-communion—during the distribution of Holy Communion.)
c.     Attendant music should always be within the musical limitations of the choir.

In preparing attendant music, care must always be taken that the time and effort involved does not displace preparation for those other functions of the choir in worship that have a prior claim in liturgical worship.

The choir has a unique and significant place in Lutheran worship. It can fill that role with music ranging from the simplest to the most complex, but complexity is never a criterion of liturgical suitability. What is important and crucial is that choirmaster and singers together—as well as the pastor and congregation—understand what the real function of the choir in liturgical worship is, and that, understanding their priorities, they work toward carrying them out in interesting, effective, and meaningful ways that will contribute to the worship of the whole congregation.

A Note on the Soloist

The use of the solo voice in Christian worship finds its roots in the Jewish cantorial tradition and the continuation of elements of that practice in the use of solo voices in the Christian chant of the medieval church. In Lutheran worship, that practice was continued, and the music of Lutheranism from Luther to Bach, in particular, reflects the continued development of that tradition.

The soloist in Lutheran worship always functions liturgically. Where a solo voice is used in the service, for example at times when a choir is not available, a Lutheran understanding of corporate worship assumes that the soloist—in reality, a “one-person” choir—will provide the liturgical music necessary for the particular service. Then, when possible and desirable, the soloist may present additional attendant music according to his or her ability. The liturgy offers many opportunities for participation by the solo voice in ways—characterized by a spirit of modesty and restraint—that give richness, variety, and greater meaning to liturgical worship.

As a particular matter, soloists drawn from the ranks of choirs where the singing of appropriate liturgical music is the norm will usually see their function as soloists in a liturgical context more readily than will soloists who see their role to be exclusively that of presenting “special” music.

The Music of the Presiding and Assisting Ministers

The corporate worship of Lutheran Christians has traditionally been sung. This is true also of the parts of the liturgy that are the unique province of those leading the service. The singing of the liturgy by those leading in worship and people together adds beauty and solemnity not possible in any other way. It elevates the doing of the liturgy to a place that moves beyond the personalistic and idiosyncratic to that of the truly corporate song.

Certain portions of the liturgy are essentially a liturgical conversation between pastor and people. Such familiar exchanges as “The Lord be with you—And also with you,” “Lift up your hearts—We lift them up to the Lord,” “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God—It is right to give him thanks and praise” naturally call for singing by both participants in the dialogue. In many other places in the various orders of worship, this kind of liturgical conversation is important. When such liturgical conversation occurs, it is the most natural and desirable practice that both portions of the dialogue be sung.

Other parts of the liturgy given to those leading in worship are essentially a kind of monologue. Examples include the Scripture lessons, the collect, and the words of institution. These portions of the liturgy are usually sung in one tone with simple inflections. Luther himself took care to provide such simple recitation formulas for use in these instances. Most musical settings of the liturgy provide such simple recitation formulas, and congregations should encourage their ministers to use them when the rest of the service is sung by the congregation.

Many pastors already sing certain parts of the liturgy. This is a most commendable practice. Pastors and other worship leaders should be encouraged by their congregations—wherever they may be hesitant—to assume their fuller role in the singing of the complete liturgical service whenever the rest of the service is sung by the congregation and choir.

The Music of the Organ

The organ has played a significant role in Lutheran worship since Reformation times, even though various aspects of its role have changed since that time. In its unique way the organ, too, can be the “living voice of the Gospel” and its use in Lutheran worship has demonstrated that possibility.

The Lutheran organist is a liturgical organist. This means that the way the organist functions in the service is determined by the movement and requirements of the liturgical action. It is not the function of the organist to entertain, to provide meaningless meanderings at the keyboard, or to fill every quiet moment with music. It is the function of the liturgical organist to lead the congregation in the singing of the hymns and chorales, to accompany, as appropriate, other portions of the liturgy sung by the congregation or choir, and to present other liturgical and attendant music alone or in ensemble.

The most important role of the organist is that of introducing and leading the congregational singing of the hymns and the liturgy. The practice of using the organ to accompany congregational singing was unknown at Luther’s time when the chorales were sung unaccompanied and in unison. But today the common practice is for the organist to accompany most, if not all, the stanzas of the hymns. Effective leadership here can do much to make worship the exciting adventure it is at its best. Through the use of effective introductions, careful choice of tempos, rhythmic playing, appropriate registration, judicious use of varied accompaniments, the occasional singing of a hymn stanza without the organ, and especially through the use of alternation between the congregation, organ, and choir, the organist sets the spirit and carries the momentum of hymn singing from the introduction through to the final stanza. When the organ accompanies other portions of the liturgy sung by the congregation it should do so with forthrightness and vigor appropriate to the circumstances. In all situations the organ leads the congregational singing; it does not merely provide a bland and lifeless accompaniment.

It is customary in many places that the organ play at the beginning of worship, during the gathering of the gifts, and as the congregation disperses at the close of worship. It is most helpful and meaningful if the organ music at these times is based on the hymns or chorales sung in the service. At the least such music should clearly reflect the spirit of the particular celebration.

In general, the Lutheran organist plays less rather than more. When the organist does play it should be liturgically, functionally, and practically to the point. When the organ has no particular liturgical function it should remain silent. While the liturgical organist seeks to avoid a self-centered flamboyance and pretension in his playing, at the same time he uses all his skills in highlighting the inherent drama of the liturgical celebration. Only in this way will the organ’s role as a liturgical instrument be more readily apparent.

The Music of Instruments

At its best, the Lutheran church has always welcomed the use of a variety of instruments as a particularly festive way of expressing the celebrative aspects of joyful worship. Luther encouraged all Christian musicians to “let their singing and playing to the praise of the Father of all grace sound forth with joy from their organs and whatever other beloved musical instruments there are” (from E. M. Plass, What Luther Says [St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1959], 982).

The organ has always had a place of special prominence in Lutheran worship. Lutherans have also used a great variety of instruments of all kinds in praise of God. Brass instruments, stringed instruments, woodwinds, bells, percussion—all these and more have been used in Lutheran worship, some of these even being preferred over the organ in the early Reformation era.

A rich treasury of music, intended for use in Lutheran worship using instruments, developed in the centuries after the Reformation. This music includes instrumental pieces intended as preludes, postludes, and interludes, both chorale-based and free compositions for organ and one or more solo instruments, and countless large- and small-scale concerted works for voices and instruments together. Special attention has been given in more recent times to providing a variety of solo and concerted music for small numbers of instruments with organ, or in concert with voices, that can be performed by instrumentalists of modest ability.

Instruments can play an important part in corporate worship, helping us to sing and dance our faith, helping us to express more fully and clearly the changing moods of Christian worship, from the leanness and spareness of such seasons as Advent and Lent to the more exuberant character of the Easter and Christmas seasons. Instruments can help foster communion with God and with our fellow worshipers and can serve as an extension of the human voice in sounding the special joy in the heart of the Christian as—through faith in his Lord—he affirms the totality of God’s creation.

The Pastor and the Church Musician

It is only when pastors, church musicians, and people work together toward the accomplishment of these goals that a truly living and vital parish worship practice in the Lutheran tradition can result. Each participant plays his own distinctive role, yet each complements and reinforces the others.

Regular planning sessions are an important part of this mutual preparation for worship. Pastors and church musicians, especially, need to meet often to exchange ideas and to discuss plans for future services and the role each will play. But whatever the vehicle for planning, pastor and church musician need to work carefully together. Only in that way will worship be the best we can offer and God’s people be truly inspired and edified.