The Music of Early Lutheranism: Shaping the Tradition

The Music of Early Lutheranism: Shaping the Tradition (1524-1672). By Carl Schalk. Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2001. 206 pages. Paper. 16 illustrations, 59 musical examples. $30.99.

Carl Schalk deserves commendation for installing some historical speed bumps on the road from Luther to Bach so that travelers and tourists don't move too quickly, missing the scenery in between. If there is such a thing as a Lutheran tradition in music, one could surmise, with Schalk, that tradition should be apparent, maybe most apparent, in the generations that closely follow the reformer. This book proposes to help us see some of the constants on that landscape of music that accompanied the growth of Lutheranism.

That the author should offer this volume at this point in his career is not surprising. He has proven himself a venerable proponent of church music in the Lutheran strain and is a living missionary of a tradition embodied in his teachers and colleagues such as Paul Bunjes and Walter Buszin (to whom the book is dedicated). Schalk here keeps alive and develops their insights and concepts.

The book consists of seven central chapters, each devoted to a key player in the unfolding tradition of Lutheran church music: Johann Walter, Georg Rhau, Hans Leo Hassler, Michael Praetorius, Johann Hermann Schein, Samuel Scheidt, and Heinrich Schutz. An introductory chapter reviews some of Luther's opinions about music and provides some help for understanding stylistic changes occurring across musicdom during the 150 years that span the lives of these seven individuals. In an Afterword Schalk begins to formulate the tradition which he finds operative in the lives and work of the seven individuals, drawing some lessons for the contemporary church musical situation. Two appendices and an index follow.

Each of the central chapters develops from the same pattern: short sketch of the individual's life, descriptions of musical output (usually with examples), a list of published works (in critical editions) and a short bibliography of further readings, usually in English. Because such a layout is typical for most histories of music, it suggests that the intended reader of this book is someone who knows, or should know, the ins and outs of musical research, who measures historical significance by output, and who understands the meaning of terms like gorgia and cantional, all of which leaves the interested but less-prepared reader at the margins. Specific help in interpreting the musical examples and a basic glossary would have helped to mediate the problem, but one looks in vain for either, all the more surprising since Schalk is the editor of a helpful volume called Key Words in Church Music (Concordia, [1982] 2004). The lack of audience focus here is unfortunate because the book contains much that would benefit the common reader.

Therefore be not faint-hearted, ye readers of this journal; there is plenty here for those who regularly need to think about and struggle with how music and faith work together. Early in the book, for instance, the author notes that all seven of these individuals--by the way, one would think that Concordia's editors could give the reader some relief from the constant use of "men" in the volume--connected their work and energy to the liturgy of the church and to the Lutheran chorale (that body of hymnody evolving from the needs of Lutheran worship for nearly two centuries). He further notes that all of these musicians were highly trained, were all involved with "secular" music (Schutz wrote the first German opera), were interested in new musical styles emerging around them, and were influential as teachers. These are characteristics worth emulating at any time.

But Schalk's research yields other common characteristics worth noting and pondering: A larger percentage of their output was in the Latin language, and that without apology; nearly all benefited from patrons who were not afraid to invest in manifest talent; almost all worked as court musicians; nearly all were, in spite of their Lutheran commitment, ecumenically inclined and connected; all engaged the latest means of dissemination of their work, in this case from burgeoning printing enterprises; and three of the seven wrote about their theological understandings of music.

Schalk's sense of the importance of tradition gets us all to slow down a little. One can only hope that somewhere there are those who, with the same kind of reverence for their teachers and with the same kind of conviction about the constants that seemingly propelled the early proprietors of Lutheran music, will take up the interpretive task anew by receiving with gratitude what Schalk here passes on and by posing some alternative questions of these pioneers. Here are some that may provide another view of the scenery:

1. What was the music of the people like during these years? The seven musicians aptly described here worked in the best of situations and wrote for professional choirs. What did the common people sing? What was music like in the small parishes?