Martin Luther's relationship to music has been largely downplayed, yet music played a vital role in Luther's life -- and he in turn had a deep and lasting effect on Christian hymnody. In Luther's Liturgical Music Robin Leaver comprehensively explores these connections. Replete with tables, figures, and musical examples, this volume is the most extensive study on Luther and music ever published. Leaver's work makes a formidable contribution to Reformation studies, but worship leaders, musicians, and others will also find it an invaluable, very readable resource.
The purpose of this volume is to: (1) establish the importance of music--especially in Luther's early life, in his education in the schools, and in his life in the monastery--in shaping his understanding of the role of music in the Christian life; (2) show how Luther's developing understanding of music in Christian life and worship led him to a practical and many-faceted involvement in a variety of music's aspects; (3) bring into sharp relief several distinct paradigms, or patterns of thought, that dominated Luther's theological understanding of the role of music in the church's life and ministry.
How important was music to Martin Luther? Drawing on hundreds of liturgical documents, contemporary accounts of services, books on church music, and other sources, Joseph Herl rewrites the history of music and congregational song in German Lutheran churches. Herl traces the path of music and congregational song in the Lutheran church from the Reformation to 1800, to show how it acquired its reputation as the "singing church." In the centuries after its founding, in a debate that was to have a strong impact on Johann Sebastian Bach and his contemporaries, the Lutheran church was torn over a new style of church music that many found more entertaining than devotional. By the end of the eighteenth century, Lutherans were trying to hold their own against a new secularism, and many members of the clergy favored wholesale revision or even abandonment of the historic liturgy in order to make worship more relevant in contemporary society. Herl paints a vivid picture of these developments, using as a backdrop the gradual transition from a choral to a congregational liturgy. The author eschews the usual analyses of musical repertoire and deals instead with events, people and ideas, drawing readers inside the story and helping them sense what it must have been like to attend a Lutheran church in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Parallel developments in Catholic churches are discussed, as are the rise of organ accompaniment of hymns and questions of musical performance practice. Although written with academic precision, the writing is clear and comprehensible to the nonspecialist, and entertaining anecdotes abound. Appendixes include translations of several important historical documents and a set of tables outlining the Lutheran mass as presented in 172 different liturgical orders. The bibliography includes 400 Lutheran church orders and reports of ecclesiastical visitations read by the author.
The essays in this book, by distinguished musicologists, teachers, and church musicians, reflect the Lutheran musical heritage of the church and contribute new insights into the vibrant and diverse traditions of twenty-first century church music. Thine the Amen is a practical, instructional, and scholarly book. These essays contain something for everyone interested in sacred music, the teacher, the singer, or the listener.
Authoritative study by a renowned musicologist and Reformation scholar Many scholars think that congregational singing was not established in Lutheran worship until well after the start of the Reformation. In this book Robin A. Leaver calls that view into question, presenting new research to confirm the earlier view that congregational singing was both the intention and the practice right from the beginning of the Wittenberg reforms in worship. Leaver's study focuses on the Wittenberg hymnal of 1526, which until now has received little scholarly attention. This hymnal, Leaver argues, shows how the Lutheran Reformation was to a large degree defined, expressed, promoted, and taken to heart through early Lutheran hymns. Examining what has been forgotten or neglected about the origins of congregational hymnody under Martin Luther's leadership, this study of worship, music, and liturgy is a significant contribution to Reformation scholarship.
The study aims to analyse the impact of Luther's theology on his thoughts about music. It limits itself to an analysis of the topic by focusing on the three most important statements of Luther about music in his unfinished treatise Περι της μουσικης [On Music]. The first statement is that music is "a gift of God and not of man" [Dei donum hominum est], second, music "creates joyful soul" [facit letos animos], and third, music "drives away the devil" [fugat diabolum]. The relation between these three statements to each other and to Luther's theology in general can be understood in connection with his personal experiences and commitments to music, which were undergirded by his theology. Luther, as a man of medieval times, took for granted the existence of the devil, and many of his writings contained frequent references to the personal attacks of the devil, where it influenced his thoughts about music.
This volume presents a novel and distinct contribution to previous research on the rich Lutheran heritage of music. It builds upon a current surge of interest in the field, which resonates with a wider interest in connections between music and religion, as well as with cultural and aesthetic dimensions of faith at large. The book situates the topic in relation to recent developments within historical and cultural studies that have developed a more nuanced and positive view of the interplay between theologians and other cultural agents in the evolution of Western modernity during post Reformation processes of ‘confessionalization’. It combines conceptual discussions of key terms relevant to the study of the development and significance of an Early Modern Lutheran Music Culture with theological readings of central texts on music, analytic approaches to historical repertoires and material perspectives on its dissemination.
