Yale Journal of Music & Religion

Volume 4 | Number 2 Article 5

2018 Deutscher Kirchengesang in der Neuzeit: Eine Gesangsbuchanthologie Philip V. Bohlman

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Recommended Citation Bohlman, Philip V. (2018) "Deutscher Kirchengesang in der Neuzeit: Eine Gesangsbuchanthologie," Yale Journal of Music & Religion: Vol. 4: No. 2, Article 5. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17132/2377-231X.1126

This Review is brought to you for free and by EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. It has been accepted for inclusion in Yale Journal of Music & Religion by an authorized editor of EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Deutscher Kirchengesang in der Neuzeit: Eine author of the remarkable Deutscher Kirchengesang Gesangsbuchanthologie, ed. by Gustav Adolf in der Neuzeit: Eine Gesgangsbuchanthologie, Krieg. Berlin: Verlag der Weltreligionen im describes as a Volksliteratur and coalescing as a Insel Verlag, 2013. 984 pp. ISBN: 978-3-458- counterpoint of music histories formed 70040-1. through the copresence of religion and every- day life in the modern world. When gathering provisions for settlement on a The Neuzeit that Krieg documents and utopian island in Johann Gottfried Schnabel’s analyzes by collecting hymns themselves, as early eighteenth-century novel, which would well as detailed commentary about their come to be known simply as Insel Felsenberg creators, published sources, and transmission, (1731–43), those founding the community of had its roots during an earlier moment that was German pietists were careful to make space for also distinguished by the confluence of 400 “song- and prayerbooks,” the largest single historical streams: the emergence of print category of materials necessary for survival as culture in early modern Europe and the they struggled to establish a new way of life in revolutionary impact of the Luther Reform- a world far removed from Europe. Regarded ation in , together with those forces by many literary scholars as the first true novel that led to a proliferation of reform and those in the , Insel Felsenberg that countered it. The first songs and song- contains only a few accounts of music making books arose from oral tradition and circulated in the new colony, but these are inevitably through the earliest forms of print culture, in made possible by the function of the sacred other words as folk songs. The sources for songbooks and performances from them, in these songs were often medieval texts and smaller or larger gatherings of congregational melodies, which the early anthologizers, Martin worship on the island, or in more personal and Luther chief among them, gathered as evidence pietistic settings. The narratives in the song- of continuity with the past. The transition from books paralleled those of encountering and earlier oral transmission to contrafacts (e.g., the establishing a Christian presence in new broadsides of 1524, with which Krieg begins worlds, and in this way they also presaged a his history of songbooks) to canonic reper- literary trope that would accompany the spread tories and their revival and renewal was critical. of German religious practices through the Individual songs might enter the songbooks centuries that followed. When German Prot- from different sources—the earliest Lutheran estants settled in the American Midwest or songbooks, for example, borrowed freely from southern Brazil, when the Amish, Mennonites, Catholic sources as well as from songs of the or Hutterites established colonies across the Bohemian Brethren—where they conjoined in world, when German Catholics established the expression of common religious and missions in German East and West Africa, or musical practice. when the German Jewish Reform movement In a different way during the Counter- spread from its early nineteenth-century roots Reformation of the late sixteenth century, as the vanguard of a modern, urban Judaism, songbooks became the material possession of sacred songbooks, hymnals, and siddurim were the rapidly expanding waves of pilgrims in there as well, exemplifying what Gustav Adolf central Europe, accompanying them on Krieg, compiler, editor, and contributing journeys to shrines across Europe and the

Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 4, No. 2 (2018) 123 Mediterranean. In the late twentieth century, beginning in the sixteenth century (e.g., specific during another revival of pilgrimage, acts of persecution), while hymn singing even songbooks again mobilized Catholic pilgrims as into the twenty-first century grows from oral they crossed the landscapes of a reunified tradition and collective improvisation in Europe. At the moments framing the performance practice. modernity that Krieg documents here, sacred The materiality of the songbook assumed songbooks served as texts for the restoration different forms, all emerging as print culture of a Europe historically imagined as Christian. expanded from the fifteenth century to the Throughout this historical longue durée religious present. Hymns appeared as printed folk and differences were critical for the proliferation of popular songs that circulated in various forms, the songbooks, and yet their contents bore for example, as broadsides for purchase in witness to many similarities and overlapping vernacular culture (according to Krieg, “von repertories. The books themselves, gathering kleinen Menschen unter das Volk gebracht,” p. sacred songs from multiple sources and shared 605) during the Reformation and the Counter- canons alike, led to the creation of anthologies Reformation. Notably for the history that reflected diversity. documented here, the early folk-song print As an anthology and gathering of song versions were often sold on the street together, texts from diverse sources, the sacred or even as pamphlets containing several texts-- songbook itself coalesced from communication for example, with the first source addressed by between creators, publishers, religious in- Krieg, the eight songs in the 1524 Etlich stitutions, and everyday worshippers. The Christlich lider Lobgesang un Psalm (Various anthology became a means of transforming Christian Songs, Songs of Praise, and Psalms), oral into written tradition. Many songbooks which circulated in Wittenberg. Pilgrimage had texts only, with references to tunes that songbooks in general, but extensively during could be used. It is particularly helpful to the Reformation, gathered broadsides as understanding these processes of exchange that anthologies and circulated folk songs as print Krieg mixes texts with melodies at the time of anthologies. Songbooks also formed from their appearances together with those that have praxis, in other words, their use in moments of only references to previous melodies or change and the transition to new congre- printings. In a section devoted to “Textgrund- gational practices—for instance, various forms lage, Melodien und Textgestaltung” (pp. 827– of pietism or restoration. When August 928), he then provides detailed descriptions of Hermann Francke (1663–1739) incorporated the text and melody sources for each of the new expressions of ecstatic piety in Halle in the 418 hymns appearing in the book. During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, early centuries of the songbook tradition, the he did so by holding regular singing gatherings music itself—primarily melodies, but also (Singstunden), which began with a few dozen choral arrangements and some instrumental congregants in his home, but rapidly expanded versions—circulated as folk song, shared by to gatherings as large as 2,000, requiring a and constitutive of local congregational move from the private to the public sphere. practices. We are able to witness this even Clearly, a new hymnbook with additional and today in the Amish hymnbook, the Ausbund, different songs was required to accommodate whose texts describe the history of the Amish that moment (pp. 735–37).

Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 4, No. 2 (2018) 124 The sacred songbook and hymnbook itself, them (text: ABC; melody: AAB)—appear in therefore, exhibited not one form but several. the earliest German sacred songs, defining, for Krieg stresses that, as different as their content example, the Reformation, but they were also and liturgical uses may be, even the modern used in folk and popular song; think, for Evangelisches Gesangbuch and the Gotteslob example, about the , now the function in similar ways today to give German German national anthem, originally adapted by Protestants and Catholics broad and diverse Joseph Haydn from a “Volck’s Lied” as the repertories for religious practice. I would say Emperor’s Hymn for the set of variations in the the same for the prayerbooks, or siddurim, of C-Major String Quartet (Hob. III:77). The Jewish sacred practices in the modern Reform crucial point here is that musically and textually and Conservative movements. The importance German sacred songs provided the means for of the anthology is evident in the efforts used gathering the collective and the congregation. to create it. Martin Luther and Johann Deutscher Kirchengesang in der Neuzeit mirrors Gottfried Herder, for example, both contri- the genre of music that is its subject matter. It buted substantially to anthologies, though is an anthology that grows from anthologies. neither was a professional musician, in the Its 418 sacred songs unfold historically from church or otherwise. The anthology became a the early sixteenth century through a series of way of imagining common culture and historical moments both shaping and shaped common history. It bore witness to a history of by the creation of German sacred song—the and their religious practices, a Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, and convergence and musical space from the confessionalism, pietism, the Enlightenment, bottom up and the top down. This is what and the Restoration—establishing its most Krieg means when claiming that “the influential canonic editions for modernity in songbooks of German-speaking Christianity the nineteenth century. Krieg’s remarkable are folk literature, and those for whom they are volume captures the spirit of songbooks, which intended are the folk of the church” (p. 596). are never simple collections, but rather living Throughout his own anthology Krieg and changing testimonies to performance and makes excellent analytical points about the the formation of religious communities and ways in which sacred hymns function as they congregations. In this way, moreover, Krieg do: they use clear poetic forms; the language in has succeeded in shedding new light on the their texts is straightforward; analogy and sacred song as prosopography, a history metaphor create narratives that can be applied resounding with many voices. to everyday Christian experience; rhymes and German-language sacred song, at first metric patterns enhance the potential that the glance, might not seem to throw light on songs will be sung by many, often together “world religions,” especially for a publishing with other worshippers. Musically, too, it is series—Verlag der Weltreligionen, an imprint possible to speak of attributes and structure of the distinguished German publisher Insel that lend the songs to easy learning and Verlag—that contains major texts such as the distribution among many worshippers. These Bhagavad Gita and the Qur’an, and approaches are the attributes of the hymn itself, as sacred practices largely from non-European congregational and common practice. Basic religions through thorough translation and musical forms—the Bar form chief among meticulous exegesis. In fact, German sacred

Yale Journal of Music & Religion Vol. 4, No. 2 (2018) 125 song and its complex movement through time and use by diverse religious communities challenge us to expand too-comfortable notions that locate the religious practices of non-Christians in the other worlds that constitute world religion. Krieg’s anthology and the essays examining how the songs gathered in this volume spread among worshippers who experience religious worlds in many and complex ways provide an exemplary model for understanding religion by listening to sacred musical practices as the voices, vernacular and exalted, in world religions.

Philip V. Bohlman University of Chicago

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