Michael Praetorius | Red Brick Parsonage

Martin Luther’s Praise of Music (German)

February 15, 2021 2 Comments

Brief Introduction

First Page of Praetorius’s 1607 Reprint of Luther’s Preface, Entitled Encomion Musices

In 1607, the Lutheran composer and musician, Michael Praetorius (1571–1621), had Installments 1–4 of his Musae Sioniae (Muses of Zion) series published together in Wolfenbüttel. He had his woodcut portrait printed on the back of the special title page, and immediately opposite his portrait, a reprint of a work by Martin Luther under the title Encomion Musices (Praise of Music).

I will trace the origins and subsequent use and translation of this work, and the debates surrounding it, in greater detail in the Afterword below. For now, the reader should be aware that Luther originally composed this work in Latin in 1538, as a preface for a motet collection printed in Wittenberg by Georg Rhau. Praetorius used a 1564 German translation of this preface by the cantor Johann Walther (1496–1570) as his base text; Praetorius’s father had once been Walther’s colleague in Torgau. But Praetorius also consulted a version of the preface printed by Wolfgang Figulus (c. 1525–after 1588) in 1575, and he inserted text from Figulus’s version in four places in Walther’s text—additions which he felt contributed something that was missing in Walther’s version. Thus the Encomion Musices is a hybrid version of Luther’s preface.

I have distinguished Walther’s original translation from the Figulus interpolations by placing the latter in brackets [ ]. (No such distinction appeared in Praetorius’s reprint.) I also bolded the parts that Praetorius put in bold typeface, but the reader should be aware that neither Walther’s nor Figulus’s versions, as originally printed, contained any bold typeface.

I produced this original translation using Praetorius’s hybrid reprint, Walther’s original translation as printed in the Weimar Edition, and Figulus’s version. (The preface preceding the text in the Weimar Edition also lent much assistance to my Afterword.) As far as I am aware, this is the first complete, from-the-ground-up English translation of this particular version of Luther’s preface, though if any readers are aware of another, I invite you to inform me thereof, so that I can give proper credit. You can find my English translation of Luther’s original Latin preface in this separate post. I present these fresh translations today, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Praetorius’s death, to the glory of the triune God, with the prayer that they will renew and increase the reader’s appreciation for God’s gift of music.

Martin Luther’s Encomion Musices (Praise of Music)

First Page of Luther’s Preface in Johann Walther’s Lob und preis Der Himlischen Kunst Musica (1564)

A preface by the holy, cherished man of God,
Doctor Martin Luther, on the heavenly art of music,
never before printed in German.¹

To all admirers of the liberal art of music, I, Doctor Martin Luther, wish grace and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.

Though I would sincerely like to commend and highly praise this beautiful and precious gift of God, the liberal art of music, I find that it provides so much and such great benefit, and is so glorious and noble an art, that I do not know where to begin or end in praising it, or in what manner and form I might praise it as it deserves to be praised and to be cherished and appreciated by everyone. I am so overwhelmed by the rich abundance of praise for this art, that I cannot extol and praise it sufficiently. For who can say and point out everything that might be written and said about it? And even if a person really wanted to say and point out everything, he would still forget many points. In short, it is impossible for anyone to sufficiently praise or extol this noble art.

First of all, if you give the subject proper consideration, you will find that this art was given by God to each and every creature from the beginning of the world, and was created with all of them from the beginning. For there is absolutely nothing in the world that does not produce a noise and sound, so that even the air—though it is invisible and impalpable by itself, and it seems to possess the very least music, that is, beautiful tones and sound, and seems to be completely mute and inaudible—nevertheless, when it is moved and forced through something, it too produces its music and tones, and what was previously mute now begins to become audible and a form of music, so that it can now be heard and felt, though it was not heard or felt before. The Spirit is pointing out wonderful and great mysteries through this, which I won’t talk about right now.

Second, the music, tones, and singing of the animals, and especially of the birds, is much more wonderful still. [Ah, what a glorious music it is, with which the almighty Lord in heaven has endowed his singing instructor, the dear nightingale, along with its young pupils and so many countless thousands of birds in the air, since every single genus has its own style and melody, its sweet, glorious call and singular coloratura, which no one on earth can comprehend!] King David himself, the excellent musician who sings and plays purely divine songs on his lute and string-play, testifies to this, and he prophesies and sings with great amazement and passionate spirit about the wonderful singing of the birds in Psalm 104. There he says, “Upon them² sit the birds of the sky and sing amid the branches.”

But what should I say about the human voice, with which all other singing, tones, and sounds simply cannot compare? For God has endowed the human voice with so great a music that his super-abundant and incomprehensible kindness and wisdom neither can nor may be understood even in this one thing. For the philosophers and scholars have certainly pushed themselves hard and taken great pains to investigate and understand this wonderful work and art of the human voice—how it happens that the air can produce words, sounds, singing, and tones through such a small and slight movement of the tongue, and then, too, through an even slighter movement of the throat or neck, likewise in many different styles and ways, depending on how it is governed and directed by the mind, and can do all that so powerfully and forcefully that it is not only distinctly heard, but also perceived and understood so far and wide, in every direction. But they have only attempted to investigate it; they have not actually discovered the answers. Indeed, no one has yet come forward who could even say and show where human laughter comes from (to say nothing of crying), and how human laughter happens. They are amazed by it, but that’s all the further they get; they cannot discover it. But we should entrust the reflection on the immeasurable wisdom of God in this one creature to those who have more time than we. I just wanted to touch on it briefly.

Now I should also say something about the benefit of this noble art, which is so great that no one, no matter how eloquent he may be, can sufficiently relate it. I can point out this one thing for now, to which experience also testifies: After the holy word of God nothing whatsoever deserves to be glorified and praised as highly as music does, namely for this reason, that she is a ruler over every emotion of the human heart (to say nothing right now of the irrational animals). She masters and controls the very emotion that frequently rules and overpowers humans, as if it were their lord.

For nothing on earth is more capable of making the sorrowful glad, making the glad sorrowful, bracing up the despairing, enticing the proud to humility, calming and suppressing passionate and excessive love, curtailing envy and hate, and who can enumerate all the other emotions of the human heart that rule people, and entice and drive them either to virtue or vice? For ruling these emotions of the mind and keeping them in check, nothing, I say, is more powerful than music. Yes, the Holy Spirit himself praises and honors this noble art as an instrument of his own office by attesting in Holy Scripture that his gifts, that is, the incitement and inducement to every kind of virtue and all good works, are given to the prophets through music. We see this in the prophet Elisha who, when he is about prophesy, commands that an instrumentalist be brought to him, and while the instrumentalist is playing on the strings, the hand of the Lord came upon him, etc. [2 Kings 3:14–19]. On the other hand, Scripture testifies that Satan, who drives people to every vice and depravity, is driven away through music. This is shown in King Saul. When the spirit from God came upon him, David would take his lyre and play with his hand and Saul would be refreshed and would feel better, and the evil spirit would depart from him [1 Sam. 16:14–23]. It was therefore for good reason that the holy fathers and prophets brought the word of God into many different songs and string-play[, so that music would always remain in the church]. As a result, we have so many kinds of excellent songs and psalms from them, which move the hearts of mankind both with words and also with the singing and sound.³ But in the irrational animals, string-playing, and other instruments, we only hear the singing, sound, and tones, without speech and words. It is to humans alone, in preference to the other creatures, that the voice has been given with speech, so that they would be able and learn how to praise God with singing and words at the same time, namely with the clear and sonorous proclamation and praise of God’s kindness and grace, in which beautiful words and lovely tones are heard at the same time.

Moreover, if a person compares humans to each other and considers the voice of each one, he will discover how God is such a glorious and complex creator in what he distributes to the voices of humans, how there is such a great difference among humans with respect to voice and speech, and how one is so far superior to another in this. For they say that you cannot find two people who have exactly the same voice, speech, and articulation, even if one person devotes himself to another’s style with careful diligence and tries to be like him and imitate everything like the ape.

And when natural music is sharpened and polished by craft, there a person can finally see and recognize with great amazement just a bit of the great and perfect wisdom of God in his wonderful work of music (for it cannot be comprehended or understood completely). Within this craft, it is particularly special and deserving of amazement when one person sings a plain tune, or tenor (as the musicians call it),⁴ and three, four, or five other parts are also sung alongside it, which accompany this plain[, simple] tune or tenor on all sides with shouts of joy, as it were, playing and jumping around this tenor, wonderfully adorning and embellishing this tune with many different styles and tones, and leading a heavenly round dance, so to speak[—meeting each other in friendly fashion and embracing each other with congeniality and love]. Those who understand and are affected by it just a little cannot help but be overcome with amazement at it, and they must suppose that there is nothing more remarkable in the world than a song adorned with many parts like that. But whoever has neither inclination nor affection for it, and is not moved by such a lovely wonder, must truly be a thick blockhead who does not deserve to hear such lovely music, but the desolate, wild donkey-braying of the hymn-tune by itself, or the singing and music of dogs or sows.

Now what more can I say? The subject and the benefit of this noble art is much greater and richer than may be related in a short space like this. Therefore I wish to have this art entrusted to everyone, and especially to the young people, and I hereby wish to admonish them to let this precious, beneficial, and joyous creature of God be cherished, loved, and esteemed by them. Through the knowledge and diligent use of this art, they can sometimes drive away evil thoughts, and can also avoid bad company and other vice. I then also admonish them to get in the habit of recognizing, lauding, and praising God the Creator in this creature, and to flee and avoid with all diligence those who are corrupted by sexual immorality and who misuse this beautiful element and art [Natur und Kunst]⁵ (just as the unchaste poets also do with their element and art) to serve shameful, frenzied, unchaste passion. You can know for certain that it is the devil who is driving them like that, contrary to nature. Since nature should and is meant to use such a noble gift only to honor and praise God, the Creator of all creatures, these depraved and unnatural children [ungeratene Kinder unnd Wechselbelge]⁶ are driven by Satan to take away and rob this gift from God the Lord, and to use it to honor and worship the devil, who is an enemy of God, nature, and this lovely art. With that, I wish to have you all entrusted to God the Lord. Written in Wittenberg, in 1538.

Afterword

Preliminary note: This Afterword is essentially the same as that printed in the companion post. If you already read that one, you can skip this one.

The history of the transmission of this preface through the ages is consistently marked by both admiration and errors. Since the admiration is fairly consistent, while the errors vary, I will categorize and trace the errors.

Error Category 1: Faulty Citation

Melanchthon’s Reprint of Luther’s Preface in Liber selectarum declamationum (1541)

The errors of faulty citation trace back to two facts: First, Rhau’s Symphoniae Iucundae did not enjoy particularly widespread distribution, which is the case with most printed musical collections. Second, Luther’s friend and colleague Philipp Melanchthon reprinted Luther’s preface on pages 768–71 of his Liber selectarum declamationum (Strasbourg: Crato Mylius, 1541). But he also reprinted a preface of his own immediately before it (pp. 766–68), also written in praise of music, also written for a musical collection published by Georg Rhau (Selectae Harmoniae Quatuor Vocum de Passione Domini [Select Four-Part Harmonies about the Lord’s Passion]), and also written in 1538. For his own preface in his 1541 collection, Melanchthon correctly cited the original source. But above Luther’s preface, he simply wrote, “Alia Martini Lutheri [Another Preface, by Martin Luther].” Since Melanchthon’s book experienced a wider distribution and went through reprintings, many understandably, though incorrectly, assumed that both Melanchthon’s and Luther’s prefaces had been printed back-to-back in the same work. (And since the Selectae Harmoniae also did not enjoy a wide distribution, there weren’t copies of the work handy against which to check that assumption.)

Thus the 1703 Buddeus reprinting⁷ and the 1873 reprinting in the Latin volumes of the Erlangen Edition⁸ (both Latin), Johann Jacob Greiff’s German translation (which appeared in Part 22 of the Leipzig Edition [1734]⁹ and Part 14 of the first Walch Edition [1744]¹⁰), and the 1898 German translation in the second Walch Edition (based on the Latin text of the Erlangen Edition)¹¹ all mistakenly connect Luther’s preface either to harmonies about the Lord’s Passion or, even more incorrectly, to a supposed harmony of the accounts of the Lord’s Passion.

Error Category 2: Textual Modification

Other errors originate with one or the other of the two earliest German translations.

Lady Music, woodcut printed in Walther’s Lob und preis Der Himlischen Kunst Musica (1564)

The Lutheran cantor Johann Walther was the first to translate Luther’s preface into German. He included his translation in his 1564 publication, Lob und preis Der Himlischen Kunst Musica (Laud and Praise for the Heavenly Art of Music), which was an enlarged, swan-song-reprint of his 1538 work, Lob und preis der löblichen Kunst Musica (Laud and Praise for the Laudable Art of Music). (It is important to note that Luther wrote a different, poetic German preface for Walther’s 1538 work.) The dead giveaway that the German preface is Walther’s translation and not original with Luther is how the German text in Walther’s work compares to the section about listening to “some crap-poet” in the Latin version: “But as for those who are not affected by [figural music], they indeed are truly without taste and deserve to spend their time listening to some crap-poet [aliquem Merdipoetam] or to the music of swine.”

As Martin Brecht details in the third volume of his Luther biography,¹² on Pentecost Sunday of 1538, Simon Lemnius, a talented but misguided University of Wittenberg student, offered some poems for sale outside of the Wittenberg parish church that he had secretly published through Nickel Schirlentz. In them, Lemnius made subtle insinuations about public figures in the town. He was subsequently placed under house arrest, but broke his fetter and escaped before he could be called up before the university rector (Melanchthon at the time). After his sermon on Sunday, June 16, Luther issued a pronouncement against Lemnius, in which he referred to him as a “dishonorable rogue” and a “shameful would-be poet.” After Lemnius’s escape, in September of that same year, he published an enlarged collection of poems which also took shots at Luther, among others. This led Luther to compose, apparently at least somewhat spontaneously, five elegiac Latin couplets at his table on Thursday, September 30, in which he referred to Lemnius as a Merdipoeta, “crap-poet”—no doubt a label he had already been using for him.¹³

This context not only explains Luther’s phrase, “some crap-poet,” in his Latin preface, as well as his reference to “the crude poets” in the final paragraph of that preface, but it also shows that the German preface in Walther’s edition was his own translation and not a Luther original. You can read the corresponding section in Walther’s 1564 work above. You will note there the disappearance of any reference to poets, because Luther’s original words would have been confusing in 1564 to people who knew little, if anything, about Simon Lemnius. But Walther also betrays himself in what he substitutes for Luther’s “crap-poet” reference—“the desolate, wild donkey-braying of the hymn-tune by itself.” For in his concluding remarks (Beschlus) in the back of his 1564 work, Walther not only verifies that Luther composed the preface twenty-six years earlier (1564 minus twenty-six equals 1538) but also makes it clear why he is publishing Luther’s preface in German now:

I see and experience that this art of music is being disparaged and despised by many who pride themselves in being evangelical and Lutheran. They think that it’s papistic [i.e. too Roman Catholic] when four- or five-part songs are used in Christian assembly and during divine services, and as if it would strengthen the papacy if music were promoted in figural singing.

Luther was not addressing any such problem in his own time. Thus it is clear twice-over from this one section that the Luther preface in Walther was translated and edited by Walther.

In spite of this, Johann Nicolaus Forkel in the second volume (1801) of his Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik (General History of Music)¹⁴ and Hugo Holstein in his 1883 article, “Eine unbekannte Schrift Luthers über die Musik [An Unknown Writing of Luther on Music]”¹⁵ push the German preface in Walther as Luther’s original. Forkel says that, “judging from the language, [the German version] must originate with Luther himself” (though I’ll show later that the German version at Forkel’s disposal was actually Praetorius’s hybrid), and that he had “read somewhere” (?) that Luther had nailed this preface to the church doors in Wittenberg in order to give church music the strongest possible promotion—the assumption being that, if he did so, he would have nailed up a German version. Holstein insisted that the German preface in Walther was Luther’s original and that the Latin version originated with Melanchthon, who translated it. But the idea of Melanchthon creating the concept of “some crap-poet” without it being in Luther’s original is unimaginable, not to mention that Melanchthon’s take on the Lemnius affair was different than Luther’s.

First Page of Figulus’s Version of Luther’s Preface (1575)

The second German version of Luther’s preface appeared in a musical collection published by Wolfgang Figulus (c. 1525–after 1588) in 1575. After carefully comparing this German version to both the 1538 Latin preface and Walther’s 1564 German translation, I don’t think Figulus’s version even merits being called a translation. It seems to be merely a reworking and compacting (with one glaring exception) of Walther’s translation, apparently simply for the purpose of boosting the sales of his work. (Beneath the title on the title page of the first tenor part-book, we find this “clickbait”: “With a German preface by the Reverend Father Dr. Martin Luther that has not been previously printed.”) This version would probably merit no further attention, except that the esteemed musicologist Walter Blankenburg (1903–1986) apparently went to great lengths to demonstrate “that the preface that Figulus published in 1575, rather than being an alternative German translation, was indeed Luther’s original draft that he then translated into Latin in 1538.”¹⁶ I am admittedly unfamiliar with Blankenburg’s work, but apart from the shorter length in Figulus and the first three words of his version of the preface more closely matching the Latin (Ich wolt warlich || Vellem certe), the evidence against such a conclusion is quite strong. Consider the following:

If anyone were to come into the possession of a supposed original draft in German, it would be Walther, not Figulus. Recall that Walther actually published a work in 1538, the same year Luther published a poetic preface for that work and wrote his Latin preface for Rhau’s collection. Walther was Luther’s friend and collaborator.
The idea of Luther possessing a draft for any preface he wrote at this time is problematic. In 1538 he dealt with the Lemnius affair and suffered from severe attacks of dysentery and gout, on top of his regular domestic duties and busy schedule of preaching, teaching, and letter writing. “Because of the great quantity of his business [at this time], his friends frequently had to be content with brief letters.”¹⁷ In reading the Latin preface, one gets the impression that Luther threw it out of his sleeve, as it were. His great genius is certainly still on display, but it does not possess the kind of organization and progression of thought that one finds in his more carefully crafted works, or that one would expect if he wrote it on the basis of a draft.
The preface in Figulus begins and ends the same way Walther’s translation does—word for word. (Beginning [Walther/Figulus]: Allen Liebhabern/liebhabern der freien Kunst Musica wündsch/wünsch Ich/ich Doctor Martinus Luther Gnad/Genad und Fried von Gott dem Vater und unserm HERrn/HERRN Jhesu Christ/[omit Jhesu] Christo etc. Ich wolt… Ending: Hiemit will/wil ich euch alle/allen Gott dem HERRN/HErrn befohlen/bevolen haben.) What are the odds of the beginning and ending of Walther’s translation—and I have already demonstrated that his version was indeed a translation—just so happening to match Luther’s supposed original German draft? Especially when Luther’s Latin simply begins, “Martin Luther to Devotees of Music. Salvation in Christ [to you all].”?
If what Figulus published was Luther’s original draft, Luther did a poor job following his draft when he converted it into Latin. In one place in particular the preface in Figulus has much more content than Luther’s Latin; in a number of other places it has less.
In the one place where Figulus has much more content, the word Coleratur (coloratura) occurs. Any Luther scholars reading this are invited to correct me if I’m wrong, but I did extensive searching and I am led to conclude that if Luther did use this word in his draft, it was the only time he ever used it.
One sentence in Figulus’s version doesn’t even make sense: “Indeed, no one has yet made it to the point that he could figure out the A-B-C of music, namely that, of all the visible creatures, humans alone can express the joy in their hearts by laughing, and conversely can cry when they are grieved.” How are laughter and crying the A-B-C of music? Luther’s Latin preface is much clearer when it identifies laughter as the alphabet and primary material of the human voice, not of music.
The progression from the art or craft of music in general to figural music in particular, clearly present in Luther’s Latin version, is completely missing in Figulus.
Both references to poets are completely missing in Figulus. Perhaps this is the best point under which to see Figulus’s method at work. Luther’s Latin reads: “To those who are even but modestly affected by this type of singing, it seems that nothing more wonderful can be found in this age. But as for those who are not affected by it, they indeed are truly without taste and deserve to spend their time listening to some crap-poet or to the music of swine.” Walther translates: “Those who understand and are affected by [figural singing] just a little cannot but be overcome with amazement at it, and they must suppose that there is nothing more remarkable in the world than a song adorned with many parts like that. But whoever has neither inclination nor affection for it, and is not moved by such a lovely wonder [Wunderwerck], must truly be a thick blockhead who does not deserve to hear such lovely music, but the desolate, wild donkey-braying [Eselgeschrey] of the hymn-tune by itself, or the singing and music of dogs or sows.” Figulus, imitating and compacting Walther, reads: “Whoever reflects on [figural singing] just a little and does not consider it an inexpressible wonder [Wunderwerck] of the Lord does not deserve to be called a human, and should get to hear nothing but the donkey braying [wie der Esel schreiet] and the sow grunting.”
At the end of the Latin version, Luther calls the devil “the adversary of nature and of this most delightful art.” Walther translates: “an enemy of God, nature, and this lovely art.” Figulus reads: “an enemy of God, nature, and all that God has made and calls good.” On the one hand, notice the greater similarity of Figulus’s version to Walther’s translation than to Luther’s Latin. On the other hand, notice Figulus’s omission of the reference to the devil as the enemy of the art of music—highly unlikely to be Luther’s original in a preface on music.

More specifics could have been cited, but this should suffice to show that Figulus’s version, though important for its own reasons (which I’ll touch on shortly), is a reworking and compacting of Walther’s translation, and not a presentation of an original German draft by Luther or even an original translation of Luther’s Latin. One can go through Walther’s translation section by section, comparing each one to its counterpart in Figulus’s version, and one will consistently see Figulus borrowing vocabulary and phraseology from Walther, even as he reworks and condenses Walther’s material. (He even borrows language from Walther’s own concluding remarks [Beschlus] and incorporates it into his version of Luther’s preface, as I’ll touch on briefly further below.)

Error Category 3: Ignorance of Previous Versions

Another group of errors relates not so much to the preface itself, but to its presentation; these are simply errors of ignorance.

When Johann Jacob Greiff’s aforementioned translation was published in Part 22 of the Leipzig Edition of Luther’s works in 1734, it was accompanied by this byline: “Now translated into German for the first time.”¹⁸ Either he or the editor was completely unaware of both Walther’s and Figulus’s versions.

When Forkel published the second volume (1801) of his aforementioned history of music, he wrote: “It is noteworthy that this outstanding epistle is not found in any edition of Luther’s complete works”¹⁹—when in fact Greiff’s translation had been published in both the Leipzig and first Walch Editions. (Of course, Forkel wouldn’t have been looking for a potentially different German version, since he was operating under the assumption that the hybrid version at his disposal was Luther’s original.)

Hugo Holstein unfortunately put his ignorance on display right in the title of his aforementioned 1883 article, “Eine unbekannte Schrift Luthers über die Musik [An Unknown Writing of Luther on Music].” He went on to say in the article itself that this writing of Luther had “escaped all the editors of Luther’s works and [was] therefore not recorded in any edition of his works.”²⁰ (By that point, it had also been published in volume 7 [1873] of the Latin volumes of the Erlangen Edition, but Holstein, too, was convinced that Walther’s German translation was actually Luther’s original.)

Encomion Musices: The Hybrid Version

The reason that I am publishing these two posts today, on the 400th anniversary of the death of Michael Praetorius, is because Praetorius’s German reprinting of Luther’s preface became one of its most prominent versions. As I mentioned in the Brief Introduction above, though, what Praetorius reprinted was actually a third German version—a hybrid of Walther’s and Figulus’s versions.

In my translation of the hybrid version above, you can see for yourself the text that Praetorius added from Figulus’s version in four places (placed in brackets). Most notable of these additions is the extended exclamation of wonder over the birds, and the nightingale in particular. Though this exclamation was not in Luther’s original, it does, interestingly, reflect sentiments that Luther expressed in the poetic preface he wrote for Walther in 1538,²¹ and it also borrows from language Walther himself uses in the concluding remarks (Beschlus) of his 1564 work.²²

It was this hybrid version that Forkel reprinted, as did August Jakob Rambach and Karl Grell not long after Forkel (1813 and 1817, respectively).²³ All three men were of course unaware that the Encomion Musices was a hybrid.

Even though Walther’s translation and Praetorius’s hybrid are not pure Luther in content, in that Luther did not express in that particular work all the thoughts that those versions express, they are nevertheless thoroughly Lutheran. They also give us insights into the mind, life, and work of both Walther and Praetorius—prominent and important figures in their own right. As just one example, one can distinctly hear Walther’s rendering of “wild donkey-braying” and “the singing and music of dogs or sows” in Praetorius’s dedicatory epistle for Polyhymnia Caduceatrix & Panegyrica (1619).²⁴

Generally speaking, the very fact that this preface by Luther has been handled and mishandled, represented and misrepresented, so much and so often through the centuries, bespeaks all by itself the continuous, unflagging influence and impact of Luther’s musical thought, birthed from the Holy Scriptures.

Endnotes

¹ Praetorius did not include this heading in his reprinting.

² The Luther translation reads An denselben (“Along them”), not Auf denselben (“Upon them”), as Walther has it. The former makes much better sense, since the “them” refers to the streams formed by springs of water.

³ Because of the extra clause he inserted, Praetorius tweaks this sentence somewhat: “That is then why we have so many kinds of excellent songs and psalms, which move…”

⁴ Tenor in Luther’s day referred to the main voice-part or cantus firmus. Its usage implied at least three parts—a middle-range melody (tenor or “holding” or “enduring” part) accompanied by at least one alto (“high”) part and one bass (“low”) part. Incidentally, Luther’s original Latin preface was printed in the tenor part-book of Georg Rhau’s Symphoniae Iucundae collection.

⁵ Walther’s translation of the Latin et natura et arte. Luther is referring to the fact that music occurs both naturally in creation (element) and as something crafted and refined by humans (art), as already outlined.

⁶ Walther’s free translation of the Latin phrase adulterini filii. A Wechselbalg was a supposed demon-child swapped with a human child soon after childbirth—a superstitious explanation for major deformities in a newborn. In a transferred sense, the word could then be used for an illegitimate child or, as Walther uses it here, someone considered unworthy of being called human (usually for moral reasons).

⁷ Johann Franz Buddeus, ed., Supplementum Epistolarum Martini Lutheri (Halle, 1703), 327–30.

⁸ Heinrich Schmidt, ed., D. Martini Lutheri Opera Latina, vol. 7 (Frankfurt am Main: Heyder and Zimmer, 1873), 551–54.

⁹ Des Theuren Mannes Gottes, D. Martin Luthers Sämtliche…Schrifften und Wercke, part 22 (Leipzig: Johann Heinrich Zedler, 1734), appendix, 141–43.

¹⁰ Johann Georg Walch, ed., D. Martin Luthers…Sämtliche Schriften, part 14 (Halle: Johann Justinus Gebauer, 1744), cols. 407–412.

¹¹ Johann Georg Walch, ed., Dr. Martin Luthers Sämtliche Schriften, 2nd ed., vol. 14 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1898), cols. 428–31.

¹² Brecht, Martin Luther: The Preservation of the Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 87–89.

¹³ Weimar Edition 50:348–51; Tischreden 4:89–90, no. 4032.

¹⁴ Forkel, Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, vol. 2 (Leipzig: E. B. Schwickert, 1801), 76–79.

¹⁵ Holstein, “Eine unbekannte Schrift Luthers über die Musik” in Die Grenzboten. Zeitschrift für Politik, Literatur und Kunst 42, no. 3 (Leipzig, Friedrich Ludwig Herbig, 1883) 77–83.

¹⁶ Robin A. Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 12; see also p. 313.

¹⁷ Brecht, op. cit., 230.

¹⁸ Des Theuren Mannes Gottes, D. Martin Luthers Sämtliche…Schrifften und Wercke, op. cit., appendix, 141.

¹⁹ Forkel, op. cit., 76.

²⁰ Holstein, op. cit., 78.

²¹ Weimar Edition 35:483–84; Luther’s Works (American Edition), 53:319–20; cf. 21:197; 54:351.

²² Desgleichen sihet vnd höret man von den Vogeln / wie sie mit jrem einigen Helslin vnd Rörlin / jren Gesang / so wunderbarlich vnd meisterlich / erstlich ausschlahen / vnd bald darauff jren Gesang / so künstlich Figuriren / coleriren / verdrehen vnd ritzen / das ein Mensch / der bey sinnen vnd nicht gar ein stein ist / sich darob hoch verwundern mus.

Likewise, one can see and hear from the birds how, with just the one little throat and pipe they have, they first knock out their song in such wonderful and masterful fashion, and then immediately figure, color, recast, and pick it apart so artfully, that a person in his right mind and who is not solid stone cannot help but be astounded by it.

Compare this language to the bracketed exclamation on birds, originating with Figulus, in the German version.

²³ Rambach, Über Dr. Martin Luther’s Verdienst um den Kirchengesang (Hamburg, 1813), appendix, 84–90; Grell, ed., D. M. Luthers geistliche Lieder (Berlin: Ferdinand Dümmler, 1817), 85–93.

²⁴ Gesamtausgabe der Musikalischen Werke von Michael Praetorius 17:viii.

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Martin Luther’s Praise of Music (Latin)

February 15, 2021 2 Comments

Brief Introduction

Title Page for Georg Rhau’s Collection, Symphoniae Iucundae (Wittenberg, 1538)

Martin Luther composed the following preface in Latin in 1538 for a collection of fifty-two motets published by Georg Rhau (1488–1548), formerly the cantor at St. Thomas in Leipzig. The collection was titled Symphoniae Iucundae Atque Adeo Breves Quatuor Vocum (Delightful and Very Brief Four-Part Concertos¹), and it included pieces by Josquin des Prez, Ludwig Senfl, Heinrich Isaac, Pierre de la Rue, Georg Forster, Philippe Verdelot, and Johann Walther. I will trace the subsequent use and translation of this work, and the debates surrounding it, in greater detail in the Afterword below. You can find my English translation of Johann Walther’s (1496–1570) German translation in this separate post.

I produced the following original translation from the Weimar Edition. (The preface preceding the text there also lent much assistance to my Afterword.) I did not consult Ulrich Leupold’s translation in volume 53 of Luther’s Works until after I had finished, when I used it to check my translation for mistakes. A comparison of my translation to his will preclude any possible charge of plagiarism. I present these fresh translations today, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the death of the Lutheran composer and musician, Michael Praetorius (1571–1621), to the glory of the triune God, with the prayer that they will renew and increase the reader’s appreciation for God’s gift of music.

Martin Luther to Devotees of Music

First Page of Luther’s Preface in Symphoniae Iucundae (1538)

Salvation in Christ to you all. I would certainly and sincerely like it if music, that divine and most excellent gift, were praised and made appealing to everyone, but I am so overwhelmed by the quantity and quality of its virtue and excellence, that I would not know where to start or finish, or a suitable manner of speech, and I would be forced to be a poor and helpless eulogizer with such an extreme abundance of merits to eulogize. For who could capture all of them? And if you tried to capture all of them, you would seem to have captured nothing.

First, if you should consider the thing itself, you will discover that music was imparted to all creatures, individually and collectively, from the beginning of world, or was created together with them. For nothing is without sound or sonorous rhythm, so that even the air itself—though by itself invisible and impalpable, and imperceptible to all the senses, and accounted as the least musical of all things, as completely mute and nothing, in fact—nevertheless becomes sonorous and audible when it is moved, and palpable too. The Holy Spirit means to draw attention to wonderful mysteries in this, but this is not the place to talk about them. But music is even more wonderful in the animals, especially the birds, just as that most musical king and divine lyre-player, David, prophesies [praedicit]² with tremendous amazement and exultant spirit about the wonderful skill of the birds and the serenity of their singing when he says in Psalm 104[:12]:³ “Above them⁴ nest the birds of the sky; from amid the branches they give their voices.”

But compared to the human voice, everything else is all but unmusical—so great is the super-extravagant and incomprehensible generosity and wisdom of the supreme Creator in this one thing. The philosophers have tired themselves out trying to understand this wonderful artistry of the human voice—how air pushed by such a slight movement of the tongue and an even gentler movement of the throat can produce that infinite variety and articulation of sound and words, at the will of the mind that governs it, and so powerfully and forcefully between locations separated by such great distances, that it can not only be distinctly heard, but also understood by everyone in the surrounding area. But the philosophers can only tire themselves out asking; they never find the answers and must give up in astonishment, amazed that no one has yet been found who could define and decide what laughter is (to say nothing of weeping), even though that is just a hissing of the human voice, yes, its alphabet, as it were, or primary material (materia prima). They can marvel at it, but they cannot wrap their minds around it. But we should leave these observations on the infinite wisdom of God in this one creature⁵ to better men with less work to occupy them; we are barely scratching the surface.

This would have been a good place to talk about the benefits of something so great. But this aspect of music, too, far exceeds the most eloquent eloquence of all the most eloquent speakers with its infinite variety and usefulness. We are able to cite this one thing for now, because experience testifies to it: Music is the one thing that justly ought to be honored, after the word of God, as the lord and ruler [domina et gubernatrix]⁶ of the emotions of mankind (the beasts must be disregarded for now), in spite of the fact that humans themselves are ruled and, more often, seized by their emotions, as if they were their lords. No higher praise of music can be conceived than this (not by us, at any rate). For if you should wish to cheer up those who are sad, or to terrify those who are happy, to revive the despairing, to break down the proud, to calm down those in love, to pacify those filled with hate—and who can number all those lords of the human heart, namely the emotions and impulses or inclinations, the instigators of all virtues and vices?—what more effective thing could you find than music herself? The Holy Spirit himself honors her as an instrument of his own particular office by testifying in his Holy Scriptures that his gifts, that is, the affection for all virtues, flow into the prophets through her, as can be seen in Elisha [2 Kings 3:14–19]. And he testifies, on the other hand, that Satan, that is, the instigator of all vices, is driven away through her, as is shown in Saul, king of Israel [1 Sam. 16:14–23].

It was therefore for good reason that the church fathers and prophets wanted nothing to be more connected to the word of God than music. For there are so many songs and psalms from them, in which both intelligible words and sound [et sermo et vox] are at work in the soul of the hearer, while in the other animals and bodies only music is mimicked, without any intelligible words [sine sermone]. So then, speech [sermo] has been given to humans in preference to others, coupled with the voice [voci], that they may know that they have an obligation to praise God with word and music, namely with sonorous preaching and with words united with pleasant melody. Now if you should compare humans to each other, you will see how manifold and diverse the glorious Creator is in his distribution of musical gifts, how much human differs from human in sound and speech [voce et verbo], so that one is amazingly superior to another. For they say it is impossible to find two humans who are exactly alike in voice and articulation, even if some people frequently seem to imitate others, like when some people try to ape others.

Finally, where diligence and the craft of music [Musica artificialis] are added—the craft that improves, develops, and refines natural music—here we are at last permitted to sample with amazement (though not to comprehend) the absolute and perfect wisdom of God in his wonderful work of music. In this kind of music, the best is when one and the same voice proceeds with the song’s theme [tenore],⁷ while more voices play all around in a wonderful way, adorning the main part with lively and most delightful figures [gestibus],⁸ leading, as it were, a sort of divine round dance alongside it. To those who are even but modestly affected by this type of singing, it seems that nothing more wonderful can be found in this age. But as for those who are not affected by it, they indeed are truly without taste and deserve to spend their time listening to some crap-poet [aliquem Merdipoetam]⁹ or to the music of swine.

But the thing is too great for its beneficial traits to be described in this short space. You, most virtuous of young people, should let this noble, wholesome, and joyous creature be entrusted to yourselves, so that you have something with which you may sometimes remedy your emotions, in your fight against foul desires and improper relationships.¹⁰ Then, too, you should get into the habit of recognizing and praising the Creator in this creature. And you must also watch out for and avoid the depraved souls who misuse this most beautiful element and art [et natura et arte]¹¹ to serve their own inordinate lusts, as the crude poets do. For you can be certain that the devil is carrying them away and inciting them against nature, since nature is meant to and ought to use this gift solely to praise God the creator. Those illegitimate sons, having turned the gift of God into plunder, use it to worship the enemy of God and the adversary of nature and of this most delightful art. Farewell in the Lord.

Afterword

Error Category 1: Faulty Citation

Melanchthon’s Reprint of Luther’s Preface in Liber selectarum declamationum (1541)

Thus the 1703 Buddeus reprinting¹² and the 1873 reprinting in the Latin volumes of the Erlangen Edition¹³ (both Latin), Johann Jacob Greiff’s German translation (which appeared in Part 22 of the Leipzig Edition [1734]¹⁴ and Part 14 of the first Walch Edition [1744]¹⁵), and the 1898 German translation in the second Walch Edition (based on the Latin text of the Erlangen Edition)¹⁶ all mistakenly connect Luther’s preface either to harmonies about the Lord’s Passion or, even more incorrectly, to a supposed harmony of the accounts of the Lord’s Passion.

Error Category 2: Textual Modification

Other errors originate with one or the other of the two earliest German translations.

As Martin Brecht details in the third volume of his Luther biography,¹⁷ on Pentecost Sunday of 1538, Simon Lemnius, a talented but misguided University of Wittenberg student, offered some poems for sale outside of the Wittenberg parish church that he had secretly published through Nickel Schirlentz. In them, Lemnius made subtle insinuations about public figures in the town. He was subsequently placed under house arrest, but broke his fetter and escaped before he could be called up before the university rector (Melanchthon at the time). After his sermon on Sunday, June 16, Luther issued a pronouncement against Lemnius, in which he referred to him as a “dishonorable rogue” and a “shameful would-be poet.” After Lemnius’s escape, in September of that same year, he published an enlarged collection of poems which also took shots at Luther, among others. This led Luther to compose, apparently at least somewhat spontaneously, five elegiac Latin couplets at his table on Thursday, September 30, in which he referred to Lemnius as a Merdipoeta, “crap-poet”—no doubt a label he had already been using for him.¹⁸

This context not only explains Luther’s phrase, “some crap-poet,” in his preface, as well as his reference to “the crude poets” in the final paragraph, but it also shows that the German preface in Walther’s edition was his own translation and not a Luther original. The corresponding section of the preface in Walther’s 1564 work reads: “But whoever has neither inclination nor affection for [multi-part harmonic music], and is not moved by such a lovely wonder, must truly be a thick blockhead who does not deserve to hear such lovely music, but the desolate, wild donkey-braying of the hymn-tune by itself, or the singing and music of dogs or sows.” Notice the disappearance of any reference to poets, because Luther’s original words would have been confusing in 1564 to people who knew little, if anything, about Simon Lemnius. But Walther also betrays himself in what he substitutes for Luther’s “crap-poet” reference—“the desolate, wild donkey-braying of the hymn-tune by itself.” For in his concluding remarks (Beschlus) in the back of his 1564 work, Walther not only verifies that Luther composed the preface twenty-six years earlier (1564 minus twenty-six equals 1538) but also makes it clear why he is publishing Luther’s preface in German now:

I see and experience that this art of music is being disparaged and despised by many who pride themselves in being evangelical and Lutheran. They think that it’s papistic [i.e. too Roman Catholic] when four- or five-part songs are used in Christian assembly and during divine services, and as if it would strengthen the papacy if music were promoted in figural singing.

Luther was not addressing any such problem in his own time. Thus it is clear twice-over from this one section that the Luther preface in Walther was translated and edited by Walther.

In spite of this, Johann Nicolaus Forkel in the second volume (1801) of his Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik (General History of Music)¹⁹ and Hugo Holstein in his 1883 article, “Eine unbekannte Schrift Luthers über die Musik [An Unknown Writing of Luther on Music]”²⁰ push the German preface in Walther as Luther’s original. Forkel says that, “judging from the language, [the German version] must originate with Luther himself” (though I’ll show later that the German version at Forkel’s disposal was actually a hybrid), and that he had “read somewhere” (?) that Luther had nailed this preface to the church doors in Wittenberg in order to give church music the strongest possible promotion—the assumption being that, if he did so, he would have nailed up a German version. Holstein insisted that the German preface in Walther was Luther’s original and that the Latin version originated with Melanchthon, who translated it. But the idea of Melanchthon creating the concept of “some crap-poet” without it being in Luther’s original is unimaginable, not to mention that Melanchthon’s take on the Lemnius affair was different than Luther’s.

First Page of Figulus’s Version of Luther’s Preface (1575)

The second German version of Luther’s preface appeared in a musical collection published by Wolfgang Figulus (c. 1525–after 1588) in 1575. After carefully comparing this German version to both the 1538 Latin preface and Walther’s 1564 German translation, I don’t think Figulus’s version even merits being called a translation. It seems to be merely a reworking and compacting (with one glaring exception) of Walther’s translation, apparently simply for the purpose of boosting the sales of his work. (Beneath the title on the title page of the first tenor part-book, we find this “clickbait”: “With a German preface by the Reverend Father Dr. Martin Luther that has not been previously printed.”) This version would probably merit no further attention, except that the esteemed musicologist Walter Blankenburg (1903–1986) apparently went to great lengths to demonstrate “that the preface that Figulus published in 1575, rather than being an alternative German translation, was indeed Luther’s original draft that he then translated into Latin in 1538.”²¹ I am admittedly unfamiliar with Blankenburg’s work, but apart from the shorter length in Figulus and the first three words of his version of the preface more closely matching the Latin (Ich wolt warlich || Vellem certe), the evidence against such a conclusion is quite strong. Consider the following:

If anyone were to come into the possession of a supposed original draft in German, it would be Walther, not Figulus. Recall that Walther actually published a work in 1538, the same year Luther published a poetic preface for that work and wrote his Latin preface for Rhau’s collection. Walther was Luther’s friend and collaborator.
The idea of Luther possessing a draft for any preface he wrote at this time is problematic. In 1538 he dealt with the Lemnius affair and suffered from severe attacks of dysentery and gout, on top of his regular domestic duties and busy schedule of preaching, teaching, and letter writing. “Because of the great quantity of his business [at this time], his friends frequently had to be content with brief letters.”²² In reading the Latin preface, one gets the impression that Luther threw it out of his sleeve, as it were. His great genius is certainly still on display, but it does not possess the kind of organization and progression of thought that one finds in his more carefully crafted works, or that one would expect if he wrote it on the basis of a draft.
The preface in Figulus begins and ends the same way Walther’s translation does—word for word. (Beginning [Walther/Figulus]: Allen Liebhabern/liebhabern der freien Kunst Musica wündsch/wünsch Ich/ich Doctor Martinus Luther Gnad/Genad und Fried von Gott dem Vater und unserm HERrn/HERRN Jhesu Christ/[omit Jhesu] Christo etc. Ich wolt… Ending: Hiemit will/wil ich euch alle/allen Gott dem HERRN/HErrn befohlen/bevolen haben.) What are the odds of the beginning and ending of Walther’s translation—and I have already demonstrated that his version was indeed a translation—just so happening to match Luther’s supposed original German draft? Especially when Luther’s Latin simply begins, “Martin Luther to Devotees of Music. Salvation in Christ [to you all].”?
If what Figulus published was Luther’s original draft, Luther did a poor job following his draft when he converted it into Latin. In one place in particular the preface in Figulus has much more content than Luther’s Latin; in a number of other places it has less.
In the one place where Figulus has much more content, the word Coleratur (coloratura) occurs. Any Luther scholars reading this are invited to correct me if I’m wrong, but I did extensive searching and I am led to conclude that if Luther did use this word in his draft, it was the only time he ever used it.
One sentence in Figulus’s version doesn’t even make sense: “Indeed, no one has yet made it to the point that he could figure out the A-B-C of music, namely that, of all the visible creatures, humans alone can express the joy in their hearts by laughing, and conversely can cry when they are grieved.” How are laughter and crying the A-B-C of music? Luther’s Latin preface is much clearer when it identifies laughter as the alphabet and primary material of the human voice, not of music.
The progression from the art or craft of music in general to figural music in particular, clearly present in Luther’s Latin version, is completely missing in Figulus.
Both references to poets are completely missing in Figulus. Perhaps this is the best point under which to see Figulus’s method at work. Luther’s Latin reads: “To those who are even but modestly affected by this type of singing, it seems that nothing more wonderful can be found in this age. But as for those who are not affected by it, they indeed are truly without taste and deserve to spend their time listening to some crap-poet or to the music of swine.” Walther translates: “Those who understand and are affected by [figural singing] just a little cannot but be overcome with amazement at it, and they must suppose that there is nothing more remarkable in the world than a song adorned with many parts like that. But whoever has neither inclination nor affection for it, and is not moved by such a lovely wonder [Wunderwerck], must truly be a thick blockhead who does not deserve to hear such lovely music, but the desolate, wild donkey-braying [Eselgeschrey] of the hymn-tune by itself, or the singing and music of dogs or sows.” Figulus, imitating and compacting Walther, reads: “Whoever reflects on [figural singing] just a little and does not consider it an inexpressible wonder [Wunderwerck] of the Lord does not deserve to be called a human, and should get to hear nothing but the donkey braying [wie der Esel schreiet] and the sow grunting.”
At the end of the Latin version, Luther calls the devil “the adversary of nature and of this most delightful art.” Walther translates: “an enemy of God, nature, and this lovely art.” Figulus reads: “an enemy of God, nature, and all that God has made and calls good.” On the one hand, notice the greater similarity of Figulus’s version to Walther’s translation than to Luther’s Latin. On the other hand, notice Figulus’s omission of the reference to the devil as the enemy of the art of music—highly unlikely to be Luther’s original in a preface on music.

Error Category 3: Ignorance of Previous Versions

Another group of errors relates not so much to the preface itself, but to its presentation; these are simply errors of ignorance.

When Johann Jacob Greiff’s aforementioned translation was published in Part 22 of the Leipzig Edition of Luther’s works in 1734, it was accompanied by this byline: “Now translated into German for the first time.”²³ Either he or the editor was completely unaware of both Walther’s and Figulus’s versions.

When Forkel published the second volume (1801) of his aforementioned history of music, he wrote: “It is noteworthy that this outstanding epistle is not found in any edition of Luther’s complete works”²⁴—when in fact Greiff’s translation had been published in both the Leipzig and first Walch Editions. (Of course, Forkel wouldn’t have been looking for a potentially different German version, since he was operating under the assumption that the hybrid version at his disposal was Luther’s original.)

Hugo Holstein unfortunately put his ignorance on display right in the title of his aforementioned 1883 article, “Eine unbekannte Schrift Luthers über die Musik [An Unknown Writing of Luther on Music].” He went on to say in the article itself that this writing of Luther had “escaped all the editors of Luther’s works and [was] therefore not recorded in any edition of his works.”²⁵ (By that point, it had also been published in volume 7 [1873] of the Latin volumes of the Erlangen Edition, but Holstein, too, was convinced that Walther’s German translation was actually Luther’s original.)

Encomion Musices: The Hybrid Version

The reason that I am publishing these two posts today, on the 400th anniversary of the death of Michael Praetorius, is because Praetorius’s German reprinting of Luther’s preface became one of its most prominent versions. What Praetorius reprinted, though, was actually a third German version—a hybrid of Walther’s and Figulus’s versions.

First Page of Praetorius’s 1607 Reprint of Luther’s Preface, Entitled Encomion Musices

In 1607, Praetorius had Installments 1–4 of his Musae Sioniae (Muses of Zion) series published together in Wolfenbüttel. He had his woodcut portrait printed on the back of the special title page, and immediately opposite his portrait was Luther’s Encomion Musices (Praise of Music)—the title Praetorius gave to Luther’s preface—printed on four pages. Praetorius used Walther’s translation as his base text, but he also added text from Figulus’s version in four places—additions which he felt contributed something that was missing in Walther’s version. Most notable of these additions is the extended exclamation of wonder over the birds, and the nightingale in particular. Though this exclamation was not in Luther’s original, it does, interestingly, reflect sentiments that Luther expressed in the poetic preface he wrote for Walther in 1538,²⁶ and it also borrows from language Walther himself uses in the concluding remarks (Beschlus) of his 1564 work.²⁷ I document all four of Praetorius’s additions from Figulus, and the parts Praetorius put in bold typeface, in the companion post.

It was this hybrid version that Forkel reprinted, as did August Jakob Rambach and Karl Grell not long after Forkel (1813 and 1817, respectively).²⁸ All three men were of course unaware that the Encomion Musices was a hybrid.

Endnotes

¹ Symphony did not have the more technical definition it does today. It was used as a synonym for harmony, and it also denoted any composition in which multiple vocal parts were harmonized, which was also the original definition of concerto (thus my translation). It was also the name given to various instruments, especially to stringed instruments equipped with a keyboard.

² Here Luther uses praedico not in its technical sense of foretelling the future, but in its more general sense of the speaking done by the prophets.

³ Luther cites Psalm 103, the numbering in the Vulgate.

⁴ In the context, “them” refers to the streams formed by springs of water.

⁵ Namely the voice

⁶ Luther uses the feminine forms of “lord” and “governor,” which could yield a translation such as, “mistress and governess,” but he appears to do so simply because in Latin and German music is a feminine word and concept. Since he is here comparing the regulating influence of music to that of God’s word, it seemed best to use words that would apply equally well to both.

⁷ Tenor in Luther’s day referred to the main voice-part or cantus firmus. Its usage implied at least three parts—a middle-range melody (tenor or “holding” or “enduring” part) accompanied by at least one alto (“high”) part and one bass (“low”) part. Incidentally, Luther’s preface was printed in the tenor part-book of Rhau’s Symphoniae Iucundae collection.

⁸ Gestus corresponds to the Greek σχήματα. The idea of gestures or figures in music appears to be carried over from the use of those concepts in oratory, where a figure refers to “that which is poetically or rhetorically altered from the simple and straightforward method of expression” (Quintilian, Institutes of Oratory 9.1.13). The figures in music, then, are the harmonic notes and rhythms added to the melody or cantus firmus (“the simple and straightforward method of expression”), in order to beautify and embellish it and to enhance its manner of expression. Thus the German phrase Choral and Figural contrasts the singing of a melody in unison (Choral) with the singing of that same melody along with harmonic parts (Figural).

⁹ Luther is alluding to Simon Lemnius, though with the aliquem he avoids referring to him directly. (Ulrich Leupold renders this phrase, “a certain filth poet,” in Luther’s Works [American Edition, 53:324], but that more direct reference would have been quemdam Merdipoetam.) I talk more about this reference in the Afterword. See Weimar Edition, Tischreden 4:89–90, no. 4032, for the five elegiac couplets Luther composed “against the crap-poet Lemchen” on September 30, 1538. (The nickname Lemchen is both a crass diminutive of Lemnius and pronounced exactly the same as Lämmchen, “little lamb,” yielding the same effect as if he had called Lemnius, “dumb little Lemmy-lamb.”)

¹⁰ Alternate translation: “…foul desires and associations with corrupt characters.” Johann Walther rendered pravas societates as “bad company and other vice.”

¹¹ Luther is referring to the fact that music occurs both naturally in creation (element) and as something crafted and refined by humans (art), as he has already outlined.

¹² Johann Franz Buddeus, ed., Supplementum Epistolarum Martini Lutheri (Halle, 1703), 327–30.

¹³ Heinrich Schmidt, ed., D. Martini Lutheri Opera Latina, vol. 7 (Frankfurt am Main: Heyder and Zimmer, 1873), 551–54.

¹⁴ Des Theuren Mannes Gottes, D. Martin Luthers Sämtliche…Schrifften und Wercke, part 22 (Leipzig: Johann Heinrich Zedler, 1734), appendix, 141–43.

¹⁵ Johann Georg Walch, ed., D. Martin Luthers…Sämtliche Schriften, part 14 (Halle: Johann Justinus Gebauer, 1744), cols. 407–412.

¹⁶ Johann Georg Walch, ed., Dr. Martin Luthers Sämtliche Schriften, 2nd ed., vol. 14 (St. Louis: Concordia, 1898), cols. 428–31.

¹⁷ Brecht, Martin Luther: The Preservation of the Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 87–89.

¹⁸ Weimar Edition 50:348–51; Tischreden 4:89–90, no. 4032.

¹⁹ Forkel, Allgemeine Geschichte der Musik, vol. 2 (Leipzig: E. B. Schwickert, 1801), 76–79.

²⁰ Holstein, “Eine unbekannte Schrift Luthers über die Musik” in Die Grenzboten. Zeitschrift für Politik, Literatur und Kunst 42, no. 3 (Leipzig, Friedrich Ludwig Herbig, 1883) 77–83.

²¹ Robin A. Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017), 12; see also p. 313.

²² Brecht, op. cit., 230.

²³ Des Theuren Mannes Gottes, D. Martin Luthers Sämtliche…Schrifften und Wercke, op. cit., appendix, 141.

²⁴ Forkel, op. cit., 76.

²⁵ Holstein, op. cit., 78.

²⁶ Weimar Edition 35:483–84; Luther’s Works (American Edition), 53:319–20; cf. 21:197; 54:351.

²⁷ Desgleichen sihet vnd höret man von den Vogeln / wie sie mit jrem einigen Helslin vnd Rörlin / jren Gesang / so wunderbarlich vnd meisterlich / erstlich ausschlahen / vnd bald darauff jren Gesang / so künstlich Figuriren / coleriren / verdrehen vnd ritzen / das ein Mensch / der bey sinnen vnd nicht gar ein stein ist / sich darob hoch verwundern mus.

Compare this language to the bracketed exclamation on birds, originating with Figulus, in the German version.

²⁸ Rambach, Über Dr. Martin Luther’s Verdienst um den Kirchengesang (Hamburg, 1813), appendix, 84–90; Grell, ed., D. M. Luthers geistliche Lieder (Berlin: Ferdinand Dümmler, 1817), 85–93.

²⁹ Gesamtausgabe der Musikalischen Werke von Michael Praetorius 17:viii.

Filed under Arts, Luther's Works Tagged with 1 Samuel 16, 1538, 1564, 1575, 1607, 2 Kings 3, air, alto, art, August Jakob Rambach, bass, benefits, cantor, choral and figural, choral church music, church music, concertos, crap-poet, David, debate, devil, dogs, Elisha, emotion, emotional control, emotions, Encomion Musices, errors, figural music, figures, First Walch Edition, Georg Forster, Georg Rhau, gestus, Heinrich Isaac, Heinrich Schmidt, Hugo Holstein, imitation, impersonation, Johann Franz Buddeus, Johann Jacob Greiff, Johann Nicolaus Forkel, Johann Walter, Johann Walther, Johannes Walter, Josquin des Prez, Karl Grell, Latin, laughter, Leipzig Edition, Lob und preis, Ludwig Senfl, Luther's Works, lyre, Martin Luther, Merdipoeta, Michael Praetorius, misuse, motets, Musae Sioniae, music, nature, original, parts, Philipp Melanchthon, Philippe Verdelot, Pierre de la Rue, poets, Praetorius anniversary, praise of music, Preface, Psalm 104:12, schemata, Selectae Harmoniae, Simon Lemnius, singing, sound, speech, swine, Symphoniae Iucundae, Symphoniae Jucundae, symphony, tenor, theology of music, too Catholic, translation, Ulrich Leupold, versions, voice, Walch Edition, Walter Blankenburg, Weimar edition, Wolfgang Figulus

Praetorius on the Effect and Value of Choral Church Music

December 30, 2020 Leave a comment

What follows is an excerpt taken from an article submitted to the Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly for publication in the Fall 2021 issue. To learn more about the full article, see Red Brick Parsonage’s “Published” page.

Translator’s Introduction

[Michael] Praetorius planned four installments for his Syntagma Musicum (Musical Compendium) series: 1) a complete overview of the history and significance of both sacred and secular music from their beginnings, 2) a description of all ancient and modern instruments, with a special focus on the pipe organ (this eventually included an appended, forty-five-page section of woodcut illustrations done to scale), 3) a treatment of music theory, terminology, and performance, and information about new musical developments taking place in Italy,¹ and 4) a comprehensive composition manual. Only the first three volumes are extant, though Praetorius evidently also completed the fourth.

Title page of volume I (Wittenberg, 1615) of the Syntagma Musicum by Michael Praetorius

The first volume of this series was published in Wittenberg in 1615 under the title Syntagmatis Musici Tomus Primus (The First Volume of the Musical Compendium). Of the three extant volumes of the Syntagma, this one has received the least attention, probably because it was the only volume Praetorius authored in Latin and because it is the most religious of the three (and therefore of less interest to secular music historians). …

In light of this anniversary year, and in light of ongoing discussions and debates about church music in Lutheran circles, I decided to provide for this submission a fresh translation of Chapters 3, 5, and 6 of Part 1, Section 1 of the first volume of Praetorius’s Syntagma (pp. 8–10, 16–19), which deal with the purpose, effect, and value of choral church music. [Only Chapter 3 is included in this online excerpt.] In these chapters, Praetorius regularly uses the term psalmody (which literally means “psalm-singing”) to refer to sung church music in general, though he also uses it to refer to the actual singing of biblical psalms.² The context usually makes clear which he has in mind. All of the content in brackets and parentheses is Praetorius’s own, except in the case of Scripture citations and where I include Praetorius’s original Latin.

How much Praetorius himself was influenced by the content of these chapters is evident from his inclusion of its content in his other writings, most notably his dedicatory epistles for Urania (1613) and Polyhymnia Caduceatrix & Panegyrica (1619). Between these three sources, we find basically a threefold purpose for choral church music:

To aid believers in proclaiming God’s grace and truth and in praising and honoring him “all the more joyfully and gladly”;
To more easily and deeply inculcate “the doctrine about the true God and all divine exhortations, comfort, praise, and thanksgiving” in human hearts, which are naturally inclined away from God and toward sensual pleasure;³ and
To ready believers for their participation in the glorious music of heaven.⁴

Since Praetorius prominently quotes two longer sections from Basil the Great’s (330–379) brilliant introductory remarks on the Psalms in affirming especially the second of these purposes, I include a fresh translation, from the Greek, of those sections taken together in an appendix at the end [not included in this online excerpt]. Praetorius also quotes a number of other church fathers; my abbreviated citations “PL” and “PG” refer to Jaques Paul Migne’s Latin (1844–1855) and Greek (1857–1886) series, respectively, of his Patrologiae Cursus Completus. …

Syntagma Musicum

Volume 1, Part 1, Section 1

Chapter 3
The Effects of Psalmody in General, When Combined with a Procedure and Discipline of Singing Devoutly and Modestly

This marks the μετάβασις or transition into the efficacy and benefits of psalmody, and the second and most important part of the Διανοίας [Discourse].⁵

Justin details just how supremely wonderful the effects of psalm-singing are: Ἡδύνει γὰρ [ἡ ψαλμῳδία] τὴν ψυχὴν πρὸς ζέοντα πόθον etc.⁶ That is:

The singing of psalms arouses the soul to a burning desire for that which is desirable in song-tunes.
It stifles the emotions that arise from the flesh.
It disperses the wicked thoughts that are inspired in us by our invisible enemies.
It incites the soul to bear the fruits of God’s blessings [bonorum].
It makes the noble combatants [1 Tim. 1:18; 6:12] perfect in piety so that they can persevere in adverse circumstances.
It is a remedy for the pious for all their griefs in life.
Paul calls it “the sword of the Spirit” [Eph. 6:17], since it equips the soldiers of piety with weapons against their invisible enemies. Ῥῆμα γὰρ ἐστι Θεοῦ, τὸ καὶ ἐνθυμούμενον, καὶ ᾀδόμενον, καὶ ἀνακρουόμενον. (For it is the Word of God whether it is pondered in the mind, or sung, or conveyed by striking an instrument.)
It is an ἀπελατικὸν for demons, that is, it drives them away.
Those things that the pious acquire from ecclesiastical songs make the soul perfect in the virtues of piety.

So says Justin.⁷

Pope John XXII also suggests that there is a twofold effect of hymns in the church: While psalm singers are reciting the divine words, they are receiving God in their heart, and devotion is kindled toward God by songs of this kind. He says this in Extravagantes communes, Book 3, De vita et honestate clericorum:

An altogether sweet sound resounds in the mouth of psalm singers, since they are receiving God with their heart as they recite with their words, and they are kindling devotion toward him with their songs. And that is exactly why the singing of psalms is commanded in the churches of God, that the devotion of the faithful may be aroused. For this purpose the nightly and daily office and the celebrations of masses are continually sung by clergy and people with a mature pitch [tenore] and distinct inflection [gradatione], in order that they may take pleasure in that same distinction and delight in the same maturity.⁸

Here the pontiff likewise teaches that hymns were introduced and accepted in the church especially for this purpose, that devotion toward God might be kindled and stirred up.

But in order for psalm singing to awaken its virtue in souls by the effectual grace of the Holy Spirit, it is also truly necessary to observe a manner of psalm-singing that is pleasing to God. And in this regard, the following sentence was prescribed for hymns and cantors in the Fourth Synod of Carthage: “See that what you sing with your mouth, you believe in your heart, and what you believe in your heart, you prove with your deeds.”⁹

The apostle also requires of them that they sing and make music to the Lord in their hearts in Ephesians 5[:19]. When Jerome explains this passage in Book 3 of his commentary on Ephesians 5, he addresses singers thus: “Let those who have the duty of singing psalms in church listen carefully: Songs should not be sung to God with the voice, but with the heart. … Songs should be heard in fear, in deeds, in knowledge of the Scriptures.”¹⁰ The same precept of Jerome is included in canon law, Part 1, Distinction 92, Chapter 1.¹¹ The gloss there adds two lines of verse:

Non vox, sed votum: non chordula musica, sed cor:
Non clamans, sed amans: cantat in aure Dei.

Not the voice, but prayer; not a musical string, but the heart;
Not one who cries out, but one who loves—sings in the ear of God.¹²

And Chrysostom says in a sermon on the Davidic songs:

So let us sing Davidic songs to the soul [troubled by the devil or by terrible suggestions of the flesh], in addition to other passages from Sacred Scripture, and in such a way that the mouth, by singing, may educate the mind. Nor indeed should this be regarded as petty and trifling since, whenever we instruct the tongue to sing, the soul—even the one [otherwise] feeling the opposite way—is ashamed not to imitate what is being sung, at least while singing it.¹³

And in the church, diligent care was taken that nothing would be done casually and without restraint [leviter & lascivè], but that everything would be done in a dignified and decent manner, accompanied by singing, and we read that the utmost reverence and decorum were observed by the singers and attendants. For “the learned authority of the holy fathers has decreed,” as the supreme pontiff, John XXII, says at the beginning of his decretal De vita et honestate clericorum in Book 3 of Extravagantes communes, “that in the services of divine praise, whatever belongs to the submissiveness of servitude should be exhibited, everybody’s mind should be alert, the sermon should not falter, and the unassuming dignity of the psalm singers should echo in their gentle modulation, since a sweet sound was resonating in their mouth.”¹⁴ In this decretal letter, the pontiff strongly reprehends those singers who were taking undue liberties [nimis lasciviebant] in their melodies, contrary to clerical respectability, and, in order that they might abstain from such levity in the future, he forbids them under threat of punishment. Nor indeed “should the throat and pharynx be coated with sweet medicament like the tragic actors do, so that theatrical modes and songs can be heard in church,” as Jerome says in the decretal in Part 1, Distinction 92, Chapter 1 of canon law.¹⁵

Likewise, the value the fathers placed on Paul’s rule about veiling the head, handed down in 1 Corinthians 11, is evident from the book On the Veiling of Virgins, which Tertullian, a very ancient ecclesiastical writer, wrote in its entirety. In this book he demonstrates, among many other arguments, that it is dishonorable for virgins¹⁶ to be uncovered during the psalms or at any mention of God:

How severe a chastisement do those women deserve who insist on remaining uncovered during the psalms or at any mention of God? Are they in the right when, even during prayer itself, they so readily place a fringe or tuft or any sort of thread on the crown of their head and then think themselves covered? So highly do they value their head!¹⁷

Now then, up to this point in the discourse, we have been able examine choral music’s origins in ecclesiastical psalmody and the practice of singing in multiple choirs that was introduced in the churches of the Old and New Testaments. We then examined its actual singing, the distinct variety of its modulation, its manifold effect, the manner of singing it devoutly, and the discipline and reverence of which it was deemed worthy. Now we must press the discourse more deeply into the broad field of its very frequent usefulness—a field of study that will amply demonstrate that choral music is filled with the activity of the Holy Spirit, pleasing to God, necessary for the Church, and beneficial to pious souls.

Endnotes

¹ As you can imagine, volumes II and III are of incalculable worth to the study and practice of period-correct performance.

² In Chapters 1 and 2, Praetorius discusses the “choral psalmody instituted by David and Solomon, which was later adopted by the choirs of the Greek and Latin churches,” and “the modulation [or melodies] of the ancients in psalm-singing, its purpose, the various kinds of ecclesiastical singing, and the ritual suggested in the psalms of ascents.”

³ Siegfried Vogelsänger, Heaven Is My Fatherland (Eugene, OR: Resource Publications, 2020), 61–62. Praetorius therefore also stresses in two of his dedicatory epistles the necessary balance in worship between concio and cantio—sermon (spoken proclamation of the Word) and song (musical proclamation of the Word). Elsewhere Praetorius wrote in a prayer of elegiac stanzas, in reference to his father and maternal grandfather: “One and the same is the aim (not to mention the zeal and the fervor): | What they endeavored with words, I seek with strings and with song” (Heaven Is My Fatherland, 55).

⁴ He makes this purpose clear in his dedicatory epistle for Polyhymnia Caduceatrix & Panegyrica; see Gesamtausgabe der Musikalischen Werke von Michael Praetorius, 17:viii–ix.

⁵ Praetorius divided the first volume of his Syntagma Musicum into two parts—the first on sacred music and the second on secular music. He further divided the first part into four sections: 1) Διάνοια or discourse on the choral music or sacred psalmody of the ancients, 2) Ὑπομνήματα or commentaries on the main liturgy, 3) Ἐξήγημα (elsewhere called Ἐξήγησις) or explanation of the liturgical songs of matins and vespers, and 4) Θεωρία ὀργανικῆς Sioniae or contemplation of the instrumental music used in both the Old and New Testament church. Even though he could have used the same label (discourse, commentaries, explanation, or contemplation) for all four sections, he chose different ones so that he could use each label as a shorthand reference for each section.

⁶ The author of this quote (not actually Justin Martyr; see next endnote) is answering this question: “Songs were devised by the unbelievers for deceit, and were introduced by those under law on account of the immaturity of their minds. Why then have those who have received the perfect knowledge of grace, and knowledge alien to the just-mentioned customs, continued to make use of those songs in their churches, the way the immature did who were under the law?”

⁷ PG 6:1353–56. This quote is taken from Quaestiones et Responsiones ad Orthodoxos (Questions and Answers for the Orthodox), Question 107, which Praetorius, like many before him, falsely attributed to the second century Christian apologist Justin Martyr. Scholars now generally date this work to the late fifth century.

⁸ The idea seems to be: The type of music used and the decorum and style employed in church singing will hopefully carry over into everyday life and have a moderating influence on one’s conduct. Since God wants us to exercise discipline and self-control (1 Thess. 5:6–8), to lead hard-working and unassuming lives (1 Thess. 4:11), to distinguish ourselves from the world around us (2 Cor. 6:14–18), and to have our minds set on things above, not on earthly things (Col. 3:1,2), the church’s music will reflect and encourage these characteristics. Regarding Praetorius’s source for this quote, the Corpus Juris Canonici (Collection of Canon Law) published in Rome in 1582 contained three volumes. Volume 1 contained Gratian’s collection of church laws and decretals. Volume 2 contained five books of additional decretals. Volume 3 contained a sixth book of additional decretals, the Clementine Constitutions, and the so-called decretales extravagantes or supplementary decretals, divided into the Extravagantes Johannis XXII and the Extravagantes communes. You can view the same page Praetorius likely consulted here: https://digital.library.ucla.edu/catalog/ark:/21198/zz0014rx8d. (Go to image 731 of 819.) Praetorius must have had a particular affinity for this quote, since he cites more of it later, and he included the entire section from which it was taken in an appendix on pages 456–57.

⁹ Karl Joseph von Hefele, A History of the Councils of the Church from the Original Documents, vol. 2, trans. Henry Nutcombe Oxenham (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1896), 412, no. 10. For more on the so-called Fourth Synod of Carthage, see pp. 409–410: “These 104 canons are certainly very old, but…the heading which ascribes them to the Carthaginian Synod of 398 is spurious.”

¹⁰ PL 26:528. Jerome’s entire quote may be of interest: “Let young people listen carefully to these words. Let those who have the duty of singing psalms in church listen carefully: Songs should not be sung to God with the voice, but with the heart. Nor should they have their throat and pharynx coated with sweet medicament as the tragic actors do, so that theatrical modes and songs can be heard in church. No, songs should be sung in fear, in deed, in knowledge of the Scriptures. Show me anyone you like that people are accustomed to call κακόφωνος [ill-sounding]; if he has good works, he is a sweet singer to God.” Praetorius refers to more of this quote later.

¹¹ Praetorius cites the chapter using the first Latin word, Cantantes, &c.

¹² Regarding the source, see endnote 8. You can view the same page Praetorius likely consulted here: https://digital.library.ucla.edu/catalog/ark:/21198/zz0014rx6c. (Go to image 356 of 1507.) I included the original Latin so that the reader could see the play on words.

¹³ J.-P. Migne refers to this introduction in PG 55:31–32, but does not include it even among Chrysostom’s spurious works because of a lack of a Greek original. However, parts of this sermon are very similar to thoughts appearing in another introduction to the Psalms falsely ascribed to Chrysostom that does have a Greek original (PG 55:536–37).

¹⁴ Same source as cited in endnote 8. In other words, since what the singers were singing was inherently sweet by virtue of its content, the singers should not spoil its sweetness, or attempt to overshadow it, with their own fanciness or showiness. Praetorius would not have objected to the use of some artful and tasteful singing techniques (see e.g. Heaven Is My Fatherland, 107), but he was definitely in favor of comporting oneself with unassuming dignity while singing in church, and of putting oneself completely in the service of the music and especially the textual content.

¹⁵ See endnotes 10–12.

¹⁶ Actually, in the final chapter of On the Veiling of Virgins, from which the following quote is taken, Tertullian is making an appeal to women in general, including married women.

¹⁷ PL 2:913; cf. Roberts and Donaldson, eds., Ante-Nicene Fathers, 4:37.2.

Filed under Arts, History Tagged with 1 Corinthians 11, canon law, Chapter 3, choral church music, Chrysostom, church fathers, church music, Ephesians 5:19, Ephesians 6:17, Fourth Synod of Carthage, Jerome, Justin Martyr, Michael Praetorius, Part 1, Pope John XXII, psalmody, Section 1, singing, Syntagma Musicum, Tertullian, title page, Volume I, Wisconsin Lutheran Quarterly

Morning Prayers Compiled by Musculus

September 13, 2020 Leave a comment

Translator’s Preface

Franz Friedrich, Portrait of Andreas Musculus, 1577, woodcut

Born in 1514 in Schneeberg, Saxony, Andreas Musculus enrolled at the Roman Catholic University of Leipzig in 1531. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in 1534, he briefly returned to his hometown, where he was won over to the Lutheran Reformation. (The city had adopted the evangelical position the previous year.) In 1538 he enrolled at the University of Wittenberg, where he studied under Melanchthon and Luther. He received his master’s degree the following year. Musculus particularly admired Luther, about whom he wrote in February 1561 (source):

I say this for my own part without reservation: From the time of the apostles until now, no greater man has lived or appeared on earth, who has been endowed by God with so many great and outstanding spiritual gifts, than this man Luther. It can well be said that God has poured out all his gifts in this one human. Whoever wishes to compare the gifts, enlightenment, understanding, and knowledge of the ancient teachers with those of Luther will plainly find that the difference between the dear old teachers and Luther is as great as that between the light of the sun and that of the moon.

In 1541 Musculus moved to Frankfurt on the Oder River, where he remained active until his death. In Frankfurt he served both as a pastor and as a professor of theology at the university, receiving his doctorate in 1546. There he also contributed to what eventually became the Formula of Concord. He passed away in 1581.

In 1553 he sent his first prayer book to the press, Precandi Formulae piae et selectae (Pious and Select Formulas for Praying). In 1561 he published a revised and enlarged edition, titled Precationes. Ex Veteribus Orthodoxis Doctoribus. Ex Ecclesiae Hymnis et Canticis. Ex Psalmis denique Davidis collectae, & in certos locos digestae (Prayers Collected—and, in Certain Places, Broken Up—from the Ancient Orthodox Teachers, from the Hymns and Songs of the Church, and Finally from the Psalms of David). He dedicated the work to Duke Johann Albrecht I of Mecklenburg. A staunch Lutheran, whenever Musculus included prayers or hymns in his prayer book that were originally stained with Mariolatry and other false ideas (e.g. the hymns “Stabat Mater” and “Ave Mundi Spes”), he cleaned them up and redirected the focus to Christ.

Musculus also published a German translation of his prayer book, but his Latin version seems to have had the greater longevity. It proved quite popular among well-educated Lutherans, going through multiple posthumous editions stretching well into the seventeenth century. Those known to have used it regularly include the composers and musicians Michael Praetorius (whose brother Andreas married one of Musculus’s daughters), Heinrich Schütz, and Johann Heermann. Heermann’s popular Lent hymn, “O Dearest Jesus, What Law Have You Broken” (Christian Worship 432), is based on a prayer found in the sixth section of Musculus’s prayer book.

What follows is my translation of the seven morning prayers in the second to last section (fols. 131 verso—134 recto, 135 recto–verso). The first is attributed to Augustine (but see endnote 1), while the latter six are all simply attributed to “the Church.” If I was able to discover anything further about their origins, I put that information in endnotes. My prayer is that they assist the reader in his or her morning devotions, to the glory of Jesus our Savior.

Click here to read the evening prayers compiled by Musculus.

(NOTE: This post was edited and augmented on 1/12/23.)

Morning Prayers

First¹

Omnipotent Lord God, you who are three and one, you who are always in everything, were before everything, and shall always be in everything the God blessed² into eternity: Into the hands of your power I commend, today and at all times, my soul, my head, and all my thoughts and actions, that you may guard them both day and night, at every hour and at every second. Hear me, Holy Trinity, and preserve me from every evil, from every stumbling block, from every mortal sin,³ and from all snares and harassments of the demons and of enemies visible and invisible. Teach me today to do your will. That which you hate in me drive far from me; remove from me what is harmful, and supply what is beneficial. Today and always, be lenient toward my soul, be lenient toward my sins, be lenient toward my offenses. Grant me today a heart that fears you, a mind that loves you, an intellect that understands you, ears that listen to you, and eyes that see you. Grant me today, Lord, the ability to discern between good and evil, and protect me from all evil, you who are blessed and worthy of praise into eternity. Amen.

Second

O God, be kindly disposed toward me, a sinner, and pay me heed; please be my God every day and night. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, and send a holy angel⁴ to aid me, who will guard and protect me from all my enemies. Behold the cross of the Lord! Begone, adverse forces! The Lion from the tribe of Judah has conquered!⁵ Savior of the world, our salvation, you who have redeemed us through the cross and blood, come to our aid, we pray you. Holy God, Holy Strong One,⁶ Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us and keep us this day from every evil. Amen.

Third

O sweetest Lord Jesus Christ, omnipotent God, into the hands of your ineffable mercy I commend my soul and my body; my emotions and conversations; my plans, my words, and all my steps; my thoughts, my works, and all my doings; all the necessities of my body and soul; my coming in and my going out; the passage, progress, and end of my life; my passing away, my rest, and my resurrection with your saints and elect into perpetuity. Open my heart and my lips today to bless and glorify your name, which is blessed above every name. Cleanse my heart from all wicked and corrupt thoughts, that my lips may continually extol you, my mind may continually meditate on you, my life may continually glorify you, and my soul may continually bless you, that I, who have been created by your goodness alone for the praise and glory of your name, might remain devoted to you always and as long as I may live in this mortality, in order that I might one day be entitled to render you worthy service in the presence of your divine majesty, you who live and reign as one God with God the Father, together with the Holy Spirt, through all ages to eternity. Amen.

Fourth

I give you thanks, holy Lord, omnipotent Father, eternal God, that you have seen fit to guard me this night through your great mercy. And I pray of your boundless clemency, that you may grant me to pass the coming day with all humility, gentleness, chastity,⁷ charity,⁸ patience, kindness, fear, and responsibility,⁹ in such a way that my service might be greatly pleasing to you through Him who is coming to judge the living and the dead, and the world with fire. Guard and preserve me from every evil, from every stumbling block, from every mortal sin, and from all snares and harassments of the demons and of enemies visible and invisible, through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who is blessed into eternity. Amen.

Fifth¹⁰

Lord Jesus Christ, you who are the true Sun of the world, always rising, never setting, you who with your health-giving gaze bring forth, preserve, sustain, and gladden all things,¹¹ both in heaven and on earth: Shine favorably upon my soul, I beg you, in order that, with the night of offenses and clouds of errors dispersed, and you shining brightly within, I may proceed through my entire life without setback and conduct myself decently as in the daytime,¹² free from the works of darkness, you who live and reign in every age with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sixth

I arise in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,¹³ the crucified, who has redeemed me with his precious blood. May he guide, bless, guard, and strengthen me in every good work, today and every day, and after this life of misery bring me at last to life eternal. Amen.

Seventh

O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, crucified on account of mankind, I ask you, for the sake of your holy wounds, to heal all the wounds of my soul today, and to guard me today, and all the days of my life, from mortal sin and from all confusion, temptation, and disgrace, from every stumbling block and from every threat to soul and body. Guard me today and every day, benevolent God, from a sudden and unexpected tragic death. Guard me into eternity, omnipotent God, from the sufferings of hell and its unbearable torments. Compassionate God, today and every day give me a virtuous sense and understanding of thinking and doing what is pleasing to you, and of fleeing and avoiding what is displeasing to you, so that I may never be shut out from your glory. Merciful God, benevolent God, compassionate God, whose mercies extend over all your works,¹⁴ for the sake of your holy wounds and for the sake of your bitter death, give me a good and holy death, grant that I may die the death of the righteous, and grant that I may never die unless I am perfectly pleasing to you, and after having received your most holy body and blood, so that, in correct faith and firm hope, I may be entitled to cheerfully cross over to you. Amen.

Endnotes

¹ Musculus cited the source of this prayer thus: Augustine, Meditations, Chapter 40. See J.-P. Migne, ed., Patrologia Latina 40:938,939. This is a condensed and slightly altered version of this chapter of Pseudo-Augustine’s Meditations. We now call the author Pseudo-Augustine because scholarship has demonstrated that Augustine of Hippo did not write these meditations. They more likely belong to Jean de Fécamp (d. 1078).

² There are two main words for “blessed” in both the Old and New Testaments, and those two words reflect the difference between a beatitude and a benediction. The beatitude word for “blessed” (e.g. Psalm 119:1,2; Matt. 5:3–11) is usually used instructionally. One could paraphrase it this way: “If you want to be truly happy…” Since God does not need instruction on how to be truly happy and exists every moment in the most perfect bliss, this concept is not used with him. The benediction word for “blessed” is used more broadly—to acknowledge (with admiration) a state of happiness, or to express a desire (in a wish or prayer) for someone’s happiness. When we say, “Let us bless the Lord,” we are saying, “Let us praise the Lord for his state of perfection and the way that he makes his perfection known to us.” And when we state the fact that he is blessed, as here, we are saying, “Lord, you exist in a state of perfect bliss, and you have revealed it to us in order that we may acknowledge you for it, derive joy from it, and share in it eternally.”

³ In Lutheran theology, “mortal sin” is not a label for a limited number of specific crimes (cf. the seven deadly sins in Roman Catholic theology), but refers to any sin that represents a transition in our hearts from faith to unbelief, and thus from walking the road of eternal life to walking the road of eternal death.

⁴ It appears that, in the original prayer from which Musculus took this one, the archangel Michael was referred to by name.

⁵ These three lines are taken from a prayer attributed to Anthony of Padua (1195–1231).

⁶ Latin: Sancte Fortis; from the translation of Isaiah 9:6 in Jerome’s Vulgate, where Jesus is called: Admirabilis, Consiliarius, Deus, Fortis, Pater futuri saeculi, Princeps pacis.

⁷ That is, moral purity, especially purity of bodily action and activity.

⁸ Usually charity now refers to what used to be called alms, giving to the poor and needy. But it has been traditionally used in Christian literature to denote love, in the Christian sense. Love in the Christian sense does not primarily focus on the emotions, as it does in the worldly sense. It is an attitude primarily of the will—as C. S. Lewis wrote, “that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people” (Mere Christianity [New York, NY: HarperOne, 2001], 129). However, when the will has learned to act in love, the emotions also learn to follow suit.

⁹ Latin: solicitudine. The basic idea is that of caring about our words and actions and their consequences, and undertaking our endeavors with a sense of duty and purpose, instead of having a “Whatever” attitude.

¹⁰ This prayer, and the nighttime prayer that follows it (not included here), appear to have been composed by Erasmus of Rotterdam. They appeared on the verso of folio 7 and both sides of folio 8 in his Precationes Aliquot Novae (Some New Prayers; Leipzig: Michael Blum, 1535). Erasmus wrote this book to teach young people how “to converse with God,” and dedicated it to a boy named David Paumgartner.

¹¹ Here I am assuming a mistake on Musculus’s or his printer’s part and have followed Eramus’s original: qui tuo salutifero conspectu gignis, servas, alis, exhilaras omnia. Musculus reads: qui tuo salutifero conspectu ignis servas, alis, exhileras [sic] omnia (you who with your health-giving gaze of fire preserve, sustain, and gladden all things or you who keep watch with your health-giving gaze of fire [and] sustain and gladden all things).

¹² See Rom. 13:13.

¹³ This morning blessing, appended by Musculus to Erasmus’s evening prayer (not included here; see endnote 10), is not found in Erasmus.

¹⁴ Cf. Psalm 145:9 (144:9 Vulgate).

Filed under Prayers Tagged with Andreas Musculus, Augustine, beatitude, benediction, charity, David Paumgartner, devotional life, Duke John Albert I, Erasmus, Frankfurt an der Oder, Heinrich Schütz, Jean de Fécamp, Johann Albrecht I, Johann Herrmann, Meditations, mercy, Michael Praetorius, morning prayers, mortal sin, praise for Luther, Prayers, Precationes, Precationes Aliquot Novae, protection, Pseudo-Augustine, University of Frankfurt an der Oder

Praetorius Biography in Production

April 23, 2020 Leave a comment

Finalized cover design for Heaven Is My Fatherland

n April 21 the typesetting for Heaven Is My Fatherland: The Life and Work of Michael Praetorius was completed. Today the cover design was completed. The book is currently in production and, God willing, within a month will be available for purchase in hardcover, softcover, and ebook formats.

Special thanks go to Dr. Margaret Boudreaux, Sara Schneider, and Dr. Kermit Moldenhauer for their gracious endorsements.

To stay abreast of exact publication dates and to receive other Praetorius-related updates and resources, please visit, Like, and Follow the book’s Facebook page.

To God alone be the glory!

Filed under News Tagged with biography, church history, Heaven Is My Fatherland, Michael Praetorius, Michael Praetorius biography, Michael Praetorius book, MUSIC HISTORY, Praetorius biography, Praetorius book, Praetorius funeral, publication, Resource Publications, Siegfried Vogelsänger, Wipf and Stock Publishers

Biographies in the Works

March 27, 2019 Leave a comment

Detail of the Ducal Castle in Wolfenbüttel from an engraving by Matthäus Merian the Elder, published in 1654

Michael Praetorius Biography

On March 5, I signed a contract with Wipf and Stock Publishers out of Oregon to publish an edited translation of Siegfried Vogelsänger’s 2008 biography of the confessional Lutheran composer Michael Praetorius (1571-1621).

I originally made overly ambitious plans to translate Wilibald Gurlitt’s dissertation on Praetorius. But in the spring of 2018 Winfried Elsner, who collaborated with Vogelsänger and who currently chairs the Michael Praetorius Collegium of Wolfenbüttel, acquainted me with this more concise introduction to the composer and his work and persuaded me to undertake its translation instead. The goal is to have it released in advance of the 400th anniversary of Praetorius’ death in 2021.

God willing, in addition to providing a detailed summary of Praetorius’ life and work, the book will also introduce the reader to Praetorius’ father, employers (especially Duke Heinrich Julius of Brunswick-Lueneburg), wife and children, and other relatives, friends, and acquaintances. It will also include an appendix containing the sermon and graveside remarks Pastor Peter Tuckermann delivered at Praetorius’ funeral—appearing in English in their entirety for the first time. As of this writing, the plan is also to have the book richly illustrated with artwork (both older and more modern) and photographs. Some of the primary source translations I have undertaken and continue to undertake in order to ensure the historical accuracy of the book’s content may also appear on this site in the future; some may also be included in additional appendices to the book.

If you wish to follow the progress of this biography more closely, you can do so here.

Johannes Strieter Autobiography

Many of this site’s readers are primarily interested in my work on the 1904 autobiography of Pastor emeritus Johannes Strieter (1829-1920).

The work on the autobiography itself is basically finished. The delay in getting the manuscript submitted and published is mostly due to the discovery of a slew of correspondence from the mid-1850s to mid-1860s in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod’s Presidential Papers, some of it penned by Strieter himself. The pertinent letters in this correspondence tell two stories related to Strieter’s time in Wisconsin:

The multifaceted and interesting story of the founding of Lutheran congregations in Marquette and Green Lake Counties, Wisconsin, without which Strieter would not have been called to Wisconsin in the first place, and thus also would not have played a significant role in the founding of many other Lutheran congregations elsewhere in Wisconsin through his mission trips, and
The story of the conflict between Pastor Strieter and Pastor J. J. Kern, which is tied to #1.

I want to include translations of this correspondence, as well as other primary source material (church record information, Der Lutheraner articles and announcements, newspaper articles, etc.), together with this autobiography, since it both helps to put the details of the autobiography in their proper context and comprises an important and previously little-known chapter of the history of the Wisconsin and Missouri Synods. However, it is not only taking a long time to complete due to the large number of letters available (I am approaching the halfway mark), but the appendices are quickly approaching and surpassing the autobiography itself in size.

The serial I am currently writing for the WELS Historical Institute Journal (see Published) is thankfully providing the impetus I need to continue trudging my way through, and organizing, these primary sources. Once I am finally finished, I am considering the possibility of submitting this material as two separate manuscripts for companion volumes—the first being the autobiography itself, the second the supplementary primary source material. Eventually this project will, God willing, have its own Facebook page too, but for now, if you want to make sure you don’t miss important updates on it, please revisit the information here, especially the parts in bold.

Thanks for continuing to follow Red Brick Parsonage, and the triune God bless you all.

Filed under News Tagged with autobiography, biography, church history, Heaven Is My Fatherland, J. J. Kern, Lebenslauf des Johannes Strieter, Life Story of Johannes Strieter, Michael Praetorius, Michael Praetorius biography, Michael Praetorius book, Missouri Synod, Peter Tuckermann, Praetorius biography, Praetorius book, Praetorius funeral, Praetorius funeral sermon, publication, Siegfried Vogelsänger, Wisconsin Synod

A Child Was Born to Us Today

November 18, 2015 2 Comments

“Uns ist ein Kindlein heut geborn” as it first appeared in Gesius’ Geistliche Deutsche Lieder (1601). Source.

“Uns ist ein Kindlein heut geborn”
Anonymous

Translator’s Preface

In 1601, Bartholomäus Gesius (c. 1555-1613) published the first volume of his Geistliche Deutsche Lieder D. Martini Lutheri und anderen frommen Christen (German Spiritual Songs by Dr. Martin Luther and Other Pious Christians). According to the rest of the title, the hymns in the collection “were customarily sung throughout the year in Christian churches,” and were arranged by the author “with four or five voices, according to the usual choral melodies, in a proper and pleasing manner.”

For other hymns, such as “All Praise to You, Eternal God” (folio 9) or “From Heaven Above” (folio 10), Gesius cited the author. But for the hymn on folio 16, translated below, no author was recorded. The four-voice setting is presumably his own. If the title can be applied without exception to all the hymns in Gesius’ collection, either Gesius himself had authored it before this and it had found use in one or more churches, or it may have appeared anonymously (authored by one of the “other pious Christians”) sometime between Luther and the publication of this volume.

Eight years later, when Michael Praetorius (1571-1621) published the sixth part of his Musae Sioniae (Muses of Zion) in 1609, he set the melody in Gesius’ collection to his own charming four-part setting (no. XLIX), which has been popularized in such albums as “Mass for Christmas Morning.”

I was planning to have the choir I direct sing Praetorius’ setting on Christmas Eve, and so I set about to translate it. My only departure from the original, which was admittedly not strictly necessary, was that the original two middle lines of the first stanza –

ein wahrer Mensch und wahrer Gott,
daß er uns helf’ aus aller Not.

true man, true God in full was he,
to rescue us from misery.

I changed to the following:

true man in full, yet also God,
to shatter the Oppressor’s rod.

I think it is rare when a translator is able to improve on the original, but here I was convinced such a case existed. The rest of the first stanza is basically a summary of Isaiah 9:1-7, which was the “Epistle” for Christmas Day at the time of the original composition. So I changed the two middle lines so that the entire stanza would be a summary of Isaiah 9:1-7 (rf. Isa 9:4). The “Oppressor” refers primarily to Satan, but also to sin and death by metonymy and association (Hebrews 2:14; 1 John 3:8).

This hymn just about sums up the beauty of Christian theology and the meaning of Christmas in as concise, straightforward, and lilting a way as possible. I pray it accordingly fills you, the reader, with joy and confidence.

A Child Was Born to Us Today

1. A child was born to us today
of chosen virgin, far away—
true man in full, yet also God,
to shatter the Oppressor’s rod.
Wonder and Counsel is his name;
through him the Father’s grace we claim.

2. What more for us could God have done
than that he gives us his own Son,
who from us has removed indeed
all of our sin and each misdeed,
redeemed us from the sin and pain
wherein we else would e’er remain!

3. Rejoice, dear saints of Christ, therefore,
and thank our God forevermore!
But hate the cunning, lies, and vice
which cost your Savior such a price.
Fear God and live lives pure and mild
to glorify the newborn Child.

Filed under Arts, Hymns Tagged with 1601, 1609, Bartholomäus Gesius, carol, Christmas hymn, Geistliche Deutsche Lieder, hymn, hymnody, Isaiah 9:1-7, Michael Praetorius, Musae Sioniae, translation, translation process, Uns ist ein Kindlein heut geborn

First Missions Hymn of Lutheranism

April 9, 2014 Leave a comment

“Es wollt uns Gott genädig sein” (Stanza 1)
By Martin Luther

Translator’s Preface

With a mission festival suddenly on the horizon, I was looking for a manageable setting of a Lutheran missions hymn. Michael Praetorius’ 2-voice arrangement of stanza 1 of “Es wollt uns Gott genädig sein,” found in Part 9 (1610) of his Musae Sioniae (The Muses of Zion), fit the bill perfectly. Based on Psalm 67, “Es wollt uns Gott” is not only considered “the first missionary hymn of Protestantism”; it is also one of the first Lutheran hymns, period. As such, it has a storied history. My favorite anecdote is retold in the Christian Worship: Handbook (Milwaukee: NPH, 1997) on p. 581 (altered slightly to fit the new translation of st. 1 presented below):

In Wolfenbüttel the Catholic prince permitted the singing of several of Luther’s hymns in his chapel. When a priest challenged him concerning this practice and told him finally that the singing of such hymns could no longer be tolerated, the prince asked, “Which hymns?” The priest answered, “My lord, it is called ‘To Us May Our God Gracious Be.'” Whereupon the prince snapped, “Well, then, should the devil be gracious to us? Who can be gracious to us but God?” Thus, the practice of singing Luther’s hymns in that particular chapel was continued.

Unfortunately, the translation of st. 1 found in hymn 574 of Christian Worship (“May God Bestow on Us His Grace”) did not lend itself well to Praetorius’ setting.

Time to translate.

First, the original text, with lines ( | | ) demarcating phrases that had to be kept intact in the translation (that is, had to contain the same number of syllables and make sense, not breaking off in the middle of a word or prepositional phrase) in order to fit the setting:

Es wollt uns Gott genädig sein
Und seinen Segen geben
| Sein Antlitz uns | mit hellem Schein
Erleucht zum ew(i)gen Leben
| Daß wir erkennen | seine Werk’
Und was ihm liebt auf Erden
| Und Jesus Christus | Heil und Stärk’
Bekannt den Heiden werden
Und sie zu Gott | bekehren |

Then, a literal translation unhindered by meter or other restrictions:

May it please God to be gracious to us
And give (us) his blessing,
May his countenance with brilliant shine
Illuminate us to eternal life,
So that we recognize his works
And what is pleasing to him on earth,
And (so that) Jesus Christ’s salvation and strength
Are broadcast to the heathens,
And convert them to God.

Lines 5-8 proved most difficult by far. I ended up having to make all the verbs passive, instead of alternating between the active voice in lines 5-6 and the passive voice in lines 7-8, as in the original. What I ended up with is the product below.

Since, instead of copying the music from an original 1610 edition, it was graciously copied for me from the Gesamtausgabe der musikalischen Werke (Georg Kallmeyer, 1929) by the staff of the Martin Luther College Library, I don’t feel comfortable sharing the music publicly here. However, I am willing to share it legally for non-profit purposes with other confessional Lutheran clergy and choir personnel upon request. Simply use the contact info on my About page to submit a request for a PDF file of the 2-voice choir setting.

I pray this fresh translation of the first stanza of Lutheranism’s first missions hymn serves to remind especially Lutherans of the high priority that the Lutheran Church has always (rightly) placed on mission work, and that, even if only in a very small way, it encourages her to continue to do so with ever-increasing zeal. I pray that it might also serve any English-speaking Christians that come across it as a fitting, and memorizable, missions prayer.

To Us May Our God Gracious Be

To us may our God gracious be
And bless us in rich measure;
May his kind face shine brilliantly,
Guide us to life forever.
To us shall God’s works then be known
And God-pleasing behavior,
And to the heathens shall be shown
The pow’r of Christ their Savior,
Which shall cause their conversion.

Filed under Arts, Hymns, Prayers Tagged with 1523, 1610, choir music, chorale, composition, Es wolle Gott uns gnädig sein, Es wollt uns Gott genädig sein, evangelism, hymn, hymn writing, hymnody, Martin Luther, May God Bestow on Us His Grace, Michael Praetorius, mission festival, missions, Musae Sioniae, music, To Us May Our God Gracious Be, translation, translation process

16th Century Christmas Hymn

February 24, 2014 2 Comments

By an anonymous author, possibly of Finnish origin

Translator’s Preface

One of my favorite Christmas hymn settings is Michael Praetorius’ 1609 4-voice arrangement of “Parvulus nobis nascitur” from Part 6 of his Musae Sioniae (The Muses of Zion). According to John Julian’s Dictionary of Hymnology, this Latin hymn first appeared in the 1579 edition of Lucas Lossius’ Psalmodia.

The now dissolved Chorus Cantans Latine of Martin Luther College, consisting of 12 male voices at its height, performed this arrangement several times, and its memory has stuck with me. I recently had an opportunity to translate it so that it could be sung by an American Lutheran church choir.

First, I pulled up my literal translation from years ago:

1. A little child is born for us,
Given birth from a virgin.
Because of him the angels rejoice
And we [his] servants give thanks:
“To the Trinity be glory without end!”

2. We have the King of grace
And the Lion of victory—
The only Son of God
Who gives light to every age.
To the Trinity be glory without end!

3. He came to bring us, [God’s] dear children,
Back to God from death,
And to heal the severe wounds
Inflicted by the cunning of the serpent.
To the Trinity be glory without end!

4. To this sweet little infant
Sing you all with one accord,
[Who is] lying in a manger,
Humbled in a shabby bed.
To the Trinity be glory without end!

In undertaking a rhyming translation to fit Praetorius’ setting, I wanted to accomplish several things:

The nobis (“for us“) of st. 1 was emphasized by being set to two ascended Ds (“no-bis”) after three G notes (“Par-vu-lus”). I wanted to retain that gospel emphasis on “for us” by having “us” occur with the first of the two Ds. In other words, “us” had to be the fourth syllable of the first line of st. 1.
In the refrain (last line of each st.), Praetorius has the music match the concept of eternity, either by dragging out the syllables with multiple notes (soprano) or by repeating the lyrics (tenor and bass). I didn’t want my translation to get in the way of that feature; the refrain had to conclude with the concept of eternity and have lyrics that could be easily and pleasantly repeated.
I wanted to have the same clear allusions to various Scripture references as the original. The “lion of victory” in st. 2 clearly alludes to Revelation 5:5, the second half of st. 2 to John 1:1-18, the second half of st. 3 to the fall into sin in Genesis 3, etc.
It’s always nice if one can introduce a new theme or thread while being faithful to the original. In this case, after opening st. 1 with “See,” I thought about starting each stanza with “See” – to give the whole hymn a sort of “Behold!” or surprise-like character to match the wondrous miracle of the incarnation that is celebrated on Christmas. But when that didn’t work, I ended up going with a sort of sensory progression in the first three stanzas – sight (“See”) to hearing (“Hear”) to touch (“to snatch…From death’s firm clutches”). This also made st. 4 stand out more as a conclusion by the absence of any direct sensory reference in it.
Without getting ridiculous, I like to repeat consonant and vowel sounds within stanzas and lines of stanzas. It helps to unify.

What I ended up with is the product below. You can also access the English choir score here. One suggestion is to have the choir sing “To the Trinity” in st. 4 in unison, before returning to 4 parts for the remainder of the stanza. This would audibly comply with the immediately preceding exhortation: “In unison let all rejoice.”

Unless I am mistaken, this is the first publication of a singable, rhyming translation of “Parvulus nobis nascitur” in English. May it serve to the eternal glory of the Trinity.

See, Born for Us a Precious Child

1. See, born for us a precious child,
Son of a virgin undefiled!
The angels praise him in the sky
And we on earth make glad reply:
“To the Trinity ascend
Sweet songs of glory without end!”

2. Hear now the King from Judah roar!
With all our foes he shall wage war!
The Father’s Son, the God of grace!
The light of life beams from his face!
To the Trinity ascend
Sweet songs of glory without end!

3. Sent down to snatch God’s children dear
From death’s firm clutches, and its fear,
He came the serpent’s head to smite
And heal his sin-envenomed bite.
To the Trinity ascend
Sweet songs of glory without end!

4. Though in a manger poor he cries,
Though on a bed of straw he lies,
To this sweet infant raise your voice!
In unison let all rejoice:
“To the Trinity ascend
Sweet songs of glory without end!”

Filed under Arts, Hymns Tagged with 1579, 1609, anonymous, arrangement, choir music, chorale, Chorus Cantans Latine, Christmas, Christmas hymn, composition, hymn, hymn writing, hymnody, Lucas Lossius, Michael Praetorius, Musae Sioniae, music, Parvulus nobis nascitur, Psalmodia, See Born for Us a Precious Child, translation, translation process

Michael Schulteis: Educational Setting in Torgau

February 18, 2014 Leave a comment

By Wilibald Gurlitt

Translator’s Preface

The following was translated from Wilibald Gurlitt’s Michael Praetorius (Creuzbergensis): Sein Leben und Seine Werke (Michael Praetorius [of Creuzburg]: His Life and His Works) (Leipzig: Druck von Breitkopf & Härtel, 1915), p. 10-13. This is the fourth in a series of posts on Michael Praetorius.

For more on the author, click here. For more on this particular work of the author, read the Translator’s Preface here.

This section picks up after Michael Schulteis, Michael Praetorius’ father, has either obtained his Bachelor’s degree from, or dropped out of, the University of Wittenberg and has been called to teach at the Latin grammar school in Torgau around 1534, at about age 19.

Gurlitt takes much of what follows from Section 2, Part 4 of Karl Pallas’ Die Registraturen der Kirchenvisitationen im ehemals sächsischen Kurkreise (The Registries of the Church Visitations in Former Electoral Saxony) (Halle: Druck und Verlag von Otto Hendel, 1911), which is Volume 41 of the series Geschichtsquellen der Provinz Sachsen und angrenzender Gebiete (Historical Sources from the Province of Saxony and Neighboring Regions), published by the Historical Commission for the Province of Saxony and the Duchy of Anhalt. I added a couple sentences from this source that Gurlitt did not include because, based on Endnote 10, the extra sentences perhaps lend further insight into Schulteis’ life in Torgau.

Michael Schulteis: Educational Setting in Torgau

In contrast to Wittenberg, which is regarded as the “mother of the Reformation,” Torgau is rightly called the “wet nurse of the Reformation.” More than anything else, the remarkable effectiveness of the Torgau grammar school¹ seems to justify this reputation. After Wittenberg, it was the best and most sought-after school in electoral Saxony, and the Reformers took particular satisfaction in it. Luther became thoroughly acquainted with it on his first church visitation to Torgau in April, 1529, and afterwards praised it again and again as an ideal model school. He was also on friendly terms with many of its teachers. In August, 1531, Melanchthon reorganized it at the request of the Torgau council.² Information about the setup of the school in which Michael Schulteis began his career can already be found in the visitation minutes of 1529. They essentially agree with the well-known model plan for a three-level Latin school which was appended as the final chapter to the Instructions for the Visitors of the Parish Pastors in Electoral Saxony (Wittenberg, 1528).³

Since we have no useable presentation of Torgau’s city history pertaining to the Reformation era, permit me to compile some excerpts from the “Special articles submitted to the council in Torgau” (March 22, 1534)⁴ that are significant for understanding Schulteis’ teaching years in Torgau. They are arranged according to the following areas:

1) Church: “The affairs of this place pertaining to the doctrine and life of the pastor [Gabriel Zwilling (Didymus)], the chaplain, and the other church and school officers – God be praised – have been found to be in order and absent of all dissension and discord.” The good relationship between the first Protestant clergymen and teachers in Torgau is also confirmed by a note in the diary of Summer, Torgau’s city physician and a contemporary of Luther: “There was utmost harmony among them; no disagreement was ever heard among them. They were each tolerant of each other and compliant with each other.”⁵

“The council has also consented that henceforth the pastor shall be the one to choose which chaplains, schoolmasters, schoolmaster’s assistants, sacristans, and students who have studied in Wittenberg for several years should be obtained for service in this city. He shall do so according to necessity, not choosing the ones to whom he is partial, but those who are the most qualified, always keeping in mind that the schoolmaster’s assistants should be people who will render due obedience to the schoolmaster. The pastor and council shall also have the authority to dismiss the deacons and other church and school officers if there is just cause, and to make other fitting Christian arrangements in religious matters… Since it has also been determined that another deacon is urgently needed on account of the large number of people [and the influx of nonresidents occasioned by the temporary residence of the court]⁶ and for many other pressing reasons, the Visitors have also prescribed another deacon at the request issued by the council and the congregation. He shall render the same obedience to the pastor that is required of the other two deacons, and shall serve by proclaiming God’s word clearly, purely, and without error, unmixed with the word of man or idle talk; by administering both sacraments in a Christian manner, in conformity with God’s word and the prescription of the visitation; by conducting services; and by visiting and comforting the sick on the basis of God’s word. In return his annual recompense shall be: 40 florins, 1 bucket of grain,* 5 cords of wood, and 1 bushel of salt – all from the general fund.” (Michael Schulteis took over this newly created position on November 19, 1539.)

“Also henceforth, on the evening of every high festival and on the actual festival day, a vesper service shall be held in which a Christian sermon about that particular festival shall be delivered in the presence of all the students, until such time in the future as the vesper service and sermon can also be prepared every Saturday at the convenience of the people. When the third deacon is taken on, an attempt may be made to see whether a short vesper service and sermon might be held every Saturday, and especially the Small Catechism for the youth and others. As for the evening sermon on workdays during the week, it is reasonable to discontinue it once again, considering that the morning sermon is sufficient, and so that the ministers of God’s word are not loaded down with too much. Also, the sermons, both on festivals and Sundays and on workdays and normal days, should not be drawn out for too long.”

2) School: “Henceforth there shall be four paid school officers, until further notice and amendment, namely the schoolmaster [Benedikt Flemming (served 1528-1539)]⁷ and three bachelors. In addition, there shall be a cantor [Johann Walther, beginning in 1534]⁸ and custodian for our dear women. Until the general fund has greater resources, the following bachelors and other church and school officers shall in the meantime be given the annual raise hereafter specified: Bachelor Markus [Crodel; became schoolmaster in the place of B. Flemming in 1539] – 10 florins; Bachelor Georg [Wachsrink] – 10 florins; Bachelor Michael [Schulteis]⁹ – 10 florins. Also in the meantime, until the general fund is healthier, 10 florins shall be bestowed and given to the organist every year as his honorarium, and 1 florin to the bellows operator every quarter… In return the aforementioned church and school officers shall also, in exchange for such improvement, attend to all the aspects of their ministry [Diensts] all the more diligently, considering that they have such an important ministry. … Since also the schoolmaster and his assistants have lived at the school up until now (some of them along with their wives), the Visitors have made provision, in order to prevent any sort of impropriety, that henceforth none of the school officers shall ever again live at the school along with his wife and children. However, one of these bachelors, if he has no wife, may have living space at the school, together with the nonresident students.¹⁰ And the bachelor who lives at the school shall take good care of the fire, the windows, and the boys who live with him at the school, so that the school does not fall into ruin. The bachelor who lives at the school shall also collect the wood money and purchase wood. … Also, when necessity demands that the students be punished, the schoolmaster and his assistants shall henceforth not carry out such punishment with knocking, shoving, and undue and excessive blows, but in good moderation… In return an honorable council shall also see to it that the students render all due obedience to the schoolmaster and the bachelors…for the youth, especially in these recent, dangerous times, are very quick to seize an opportunity to disobey. … Also, since the school in Torgau – God be praised – is invested with many and learned assistants, the school officers shall accordingly apply themselves diligently to the youth, so that the poor boys who are unable to be in universities, on account of their parents’ lack of means and the lack of other people’s patronage, may learn grammar and Latin thoroughly and well in the school at low cost… The schoolmaster and his assistants shall also see to it with all diligence that the instruction takes place in simplicity, as detailed in the Visitors’ printed instructions.”

“The youth and their abilities should be exercised by reciting the comedies. This suits us well, and we know of no better place where such a performance might be put on than our city hall in the summer, and at the drinking hall in the winter, which drinking hall we have hitherto lent them for this purpose as often as they have required it and have kept the doors closed to the rabble. We are also at liberty to give the boys 1 florin for refreshment for every comedy they put on, provided that the boys also derive benefit from such performances, and that a comedy shall be performed more than just on the last day before Lent.”¹¹

3) Library: “The council in Torgau shall also take care that the library and books in the Franciscan monastery do not get torn up, but are maintained faithfully, well, and in such a way that those who want to study and read may go there to do so. They shall also take care that this library is augmented from year to year with the best and most useful books, to be furnished by the general fund.”

4) Choir [Kantorei]:¹² “Since God the Almighty has favored this city of Torgau, more than many others, with a glorious ensemble of musicians and singers, the Visitors deem that, for the people who serve in this way, it is only reasonable that a publicly funded dinner be henceforth given to compensate them [what later became the convivum musicum generale or public musical banquet], as has been done in the past. They likewise make provision that, besides this, a council should also afford such persons an advantage over others in their respective trades, as much as ever possible and feasible, in order to make them all the more willing to exercise their abilities in this Christian and honorable way, and in order to encourage others all the better in that direction, until such time as a regular yearly honorarium can be made in return for their services.”

These content-packed primary source testimonies speak for themselves, and they offer deeper insights into the educational circumstances of Torgau at that time than the paltry collection of anecdotes that Grulich cites in an attempt to characterize this period.¹³ All that remains for us is to become more closely acquainted with the personalities with whom the young Schulteis came into contact, both by virtue of his office and in his day-to-day life.

Endnotes

¹ Cf. Friedrich Joseph Grulich, Denkwürdigkeiten der altsächsischen kurfürstlichen Residenz Torgau aus der Zeit und zur Geschichte der Reformation, 2nd ed. by J. Chr. A. Bürger (Torgau: Verlag der Wienbrack’schen Buchhandlung, 1855), p. 167ff. The information imparted here requires careful verification, since the primary sources in the Grammar School Library [Gymnasialbibliothek], on which the work is based and from which also Otto Taubert confidently draws (Die Pflege der Musik in Torgau vom Ausgange des 15. Jahrhunderts bis auf unsere Tage [Torgau: Verlag von Friedr. Jacob, 1868]), are simply far too muddied.

² Friedrich Lebrecht Koch, De scholae Torgaviensis constitutione ac forma (Wittenberg, 1815), p. 48f.

³ Karl Hartfelder, Ph. Melanchthon als Praeceptor Germaniae (Berlin, 1889), p. 419ff. Also cf. Fr. Paulsen, Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts, 2nd ed. (1896), part 2, and the ample examples of specialized literature recorded in both places.

⁴ Karl Pallas, ed., Die Registraturen der Kirchenvisitationen im ehemals sächsischen Kurkreise, in Geschichtsquellen der Provinz Sachsen und angrenzender Gebiete, vol. 41, sect. 2, part 4 (Halle: Druck und Verlag von Otto Hendel, 1911), p. 19-24.

⁵ J. Grulich, op. cit., p. 56, note †.

⁶ K, Pallas, op. cit., p. 15.

* German: 1 mld. Korns. I have taken “mld.” to be an abbreviation for “Mulde.”

⁷ Grulich, op. cit., p. 172.

⁸ O. Taubert, op. cit., p. 4. Note that 1534 was only when Walther began his work as cantor in the school. See further down under “4) Choir,” where the work he had already accomplished is alluded to with the phrase “glorious ensemble of musicians and singers.” – trans.

⁹ Cf. the thorough study by C. Knabe, Die Torgauer Visitations-Ordnung von 1529 (Torgauer Schulprogramm, 1881), p. 9f, where indeed no distinction is made between the identity of “Schulteis” and “Michael from Bunzlau,” and his arrival in Torgau is erroneously given as 1536. Notwithstanding this small mistake, the work contains valuable reports on Torgau personalities, compiled on the basis of account ledgers and council minutes. “Donat Michael” as an identification for Schulteis can hardly be debated, since only the first names are mentioned for the other two bachelors. What probably happened was that the young Schulteis, by participating in an especially memorable way in the edition of the Donat that the Torgau faculty published for their school in 1533 (cf. Karl Hartfelder, Melanchthoniana Paedagogica [Leipzig: Druck und Verlag von B. G. Teubner, 1892], p. 49f), acquired a nickname that he could not shake – “Donat Michael.” This name does not seem to correspond to a separate individual.

¹⁰ After this, Schulteis, as the last-named (and thus probably the youngest and unmarried) bachelor, may have lived “at the school.”

¹¹ Letter from the council to the school personnel from 1534, quoted by K. Pallas, op. cit., p. 16.

¹² Cf. O. Taubert, op. cit., p. 3f.

¹³ Grulich, op. cit., p. 53ff.

Filed under History Tagged with Bachelor of Arts, Benedikt Flemming, biography, choir, church, compensation, convivium musicum generale, discipline, doctoral dissertation, Donat Michael, Gabriel Zwilling, Georg Wachsrink, grammar school, History of Torgau, inaugural dissertation, Instructions for the Visitors of the Parish Pastors in Electoral Saxony, Johann Walther, Kantorei, Latin grammar school, Latin school, library, Lutheran Reformation 500th anniversary, Lutheran worship, Markus Crödel, Martin Luther, Michael Praetorius, Michael Praetorius (Creuzbergensis), Michael Praetorius (Creuzbergensis): Sein Leben und Seine Werke, Michael Schulteis, Michael Schultze, ministry, MPC, recompense, school, Torgau, Torgau faculty, University of Wittenberg, Vespers, visitation, visitors, Wilibald Gurlitt, worship

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500th Anniversary of the First Lutheran HymnalJanuary 19, 2024

In a letter to Willibald Pirkheimer dated January 19, 1524, Georg Spalatin implied that the first Lutheran hymnal had already left the press. That hymnal was "Etlich Cristlich lider, Lobgesang, und Psalm, dem rainen wort Gotten gemeß, auß der heyligen schrifft, durch mancherley hochgelerter gemacht, in der Kirchen zu singen [Several Christian Hymns, Songs of Praise, and Psalms, Composed by Various Highly Learned Men in Accordance With the Pure Word of God on the Basis of Holy Scripture for Singing in Church]," published by Jobst Gutknecht in Nuremberg. Now called the "Achtliederbuch [Book of Eight Hymns]," it included "Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice" (Luther), "Salvation Unto Us Has Come" (Speratus), "In God I Trust, For So I Must" (Speratus), "O God, Man’s Ruin Is So Broad and Grim" (Speratus), "O Lord, Take Pity Once You've Seen" (Luther), "The Mouth of Fools May Well Confess" (Luther), "From Depths of Woe, Lord God, I Cry" (Luther), and "In Jesus' Name We Upward Lift" (anonymous).

Red Brick Parsonage

Martin Luther’s Praise of Music (German)

Brief Introduction

Martin Luther’s Encomion Musices (Praise of Music)

Afterword

Endnotes

Martin Luther’s Praise of Music (Latin)

Brief Introduction

Martin Luther to Devotees of Music

Afterword

Endnotes

Praetorius on the Effect and Value of Choral Church Music

Syntagma Musicum

Volume 1, Part 1, Section 1

Chapter 3
The Effects of Psalmody in General, When Combined with a Procedure and Discipline of Singing Devoutly and Modestly

Morning Prayers Compiled by Musculus

Translator’s Preface

Morning Prayers

Praetorius Biography in Production

Biographies in the Works

Michael Praetorius Biography

Johannes Strieter Autobiography

A Child Was Born to Us Today

First Missions Hymn of Lutheranism

16th Century Christmas Hymn

Michael Schulteis: Educational Setting in Torgau

Editions of Luther

Sources

Translation

Observance Countdown

Brief Introduction

Martin Luther’s Encomion Musices (Praise of Music)

Afterword

Endnotes

Brief Introduction

Martin Luther to Devotees of Music

Afterword

Endnotes

Syntagma Musicum

Volume 1, Part 1, Section 1

Chapter 3 The Effects of Psalmody in General, When Combined with a Procedure and Discipline of Singing Devoutly and Modestly

Translator’s Preface

Morning Prayers

Michael Praetorius Biography

Johannes Strieter Autobiography

Editions of Luther

Sources

Translation

Observance Countdown

Chapter 3
The Effects of Psalmody in General, When Combined with a Procedure and Discipline of Singing Devoutly and Modestly