Throughout Holy Week, we shared recordings of liturgical music composed by masters of the Late Renaissance and Baroque periods – Heinrich Schütz and Johann Sebastian Bach. As composers for the Lutheran church in Germany, their output of liturgical music was not only prolific, but highly influential both within and outside the church. Bach, still considered to be the greatest composer in Western history, was a fiercely orthodox Lutheran who endeavored to embody his confession within his art, and to do so with fidelity, often consulting his substantive theological library for this purpose. Schütz, considered the most important German composer second to Bach, wrote almost exclusively for the Lutheran church. He masterfully wedded his musical compositions with the German language, the purest manifestation of which, for him, was Martin Luther's translation of the the Bible. Even though his compositions may seem "stark" in comparison to Bach's, he maintained fairly strict fidelity to the very words of the text, rarely straying from it for the sake of explanation or poetic expression. Unlike musical compositions of today, the sacred works of these composers were not intended for the entertainment of the masses, but as liturgical devices for use within the church – as liturgical proclamations of the Gospel, the words of the liturgy, including the lessons, being set to music so that they could be sung, or chanted. A very fitting practice for "The Singing Church."
It had been the historic practice of the Lutheran church to hold services every day during Holy Week, and thus through the week to present the Passion account from the perspective of each of the Evangelists. Since it was also the practice to chant these Gospel lessons, these Passion accounts needed to be set to music. Both Heinrich Schütz and Johann Sebastian Bach composed liturgical music for each of the Passion accounts, some of which we shared last week. On Monday of Holy Week, in Part 1 of our "Music for Holy Week" series, we provided a brief biography of these composers, including some details indicating their importance to Lutheran liturgical music and its resulting impact, and we invite the reader to visit that post for further information in this regard. Also on Monday, we presented excerpts from performances of compositions by Bach and Schütz which set the Passion account of St. Matthew to music, for sake of recitation by the congregation's appointed liturgists. On Tuesday of Holy Week, we shared excerpts from Bach's composition of St. Mark's Passion account. On Wednesday of Holy Week, we posted a complete recording of Schütz's Johannes Passion. On Maundy Thursday, we again posted excerpts from both Bach and Schütz – their compositions of the Passion account according to St. Luke. Finally, on Good Friday, we featured excerpts from Bach's Johannes Passion, along with the entirety of Heinrich Schütz's Die Sieben Worte Jesu Christi am Kreuz.
The Divine Service falling on the Festival of Christ's Resurrection would also have a Gospel lesson, which would also be chanted and which would therefore also require a musical setting. This morning we offer to you, dear reader, an excerpt of one such setting composed by Heinrich Schütz: Auferstehungshistorie – the Biblical account of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Throughout this Holy Week, we have been featuring excerpts from recordings of liturgical compositions which deliver to their hearer the very words of Christ's Passion according to Gospel writers, in song. During Holy Week, the historic Lutheran Church had selected lessons from each of the Gospels for each day of the week, such that the Passion of Christ would be heard by the congregation from the perspective of each Evangelist, and these lessons were presented to the congregation as part of the liturgy. It was also customary that the Gospel not be merely read, but chanted or sung. The excerpts we have featured this week demonstrate various liturgical compositions via which liturgists would deliver these lessons -- and not just any compositions, but the works of two of the most important German composers in Western history: Johann Sebastian Bach and Heinrich Schütz. On Monday, in Part 1 of this "Music for Holy Week" series, we provided a brief biography of these composers, including some details indicating their importance to Lutheran liturgical music and its resulting impact, and we invite the reader to visit that post for further information.
We have, in the previous four days this week, visited the Passion accounts of St. Matthew (Monday), St. Mark (Tuesday), St. John (Wednesday), and St. Luke (Thursday). Today, Good Friday, we revisit the Passion according to St. John in a recording of Johann Sebastian Bach's Johannes Passion, and also hear a composition by Heinrich Schütz that would be heard during the Good Friday Tenebrae Service: Die Sieben Worte Jesu Christi am Kreuz -- the Seven last Words of Christ on the Cross.
Here are two musical settings of the Gospel accounts. The first is an excerpt from Bach's Johannes Passion; the second is a full performance of Schütz's Die Sieben Worte Jesu Christi am Kreuz.
Throughout this Holy Week, we will be featuring excerpts from recordings of liturgical compositions which deliver to their hearer the very words of Christ's Passion according to the Gospel writers, in song. The Lutheran composers we have selected are mounted high on the throne of Baroque artistic achievement, and have been thus recognized for generations the world over: Johann Sebastian Bach and Heinrich Schütz. On Monday, in Part 1 of this "Music for Holy Week" series, we provided a brief biography of these composers, including some details indicating their importance to Lutheran liturgical music and its resulting impact. One of those details included the liturgical practice of chanting or singing the Gospel lesson, rather than merely speaking it. That is what these Passion compositions, written by Lutherans for the purpose of Lutheran worship, are: liturgical compositions which set the words of the Passion accounts to music, so that they can be sung as part of the liturgy of the church. That is to say, these singing liturgists were functioning as God's Ministers. Yesterday, in Part 3 of this "Music for Holy Week" series, we stated without commentary the fact that women were not part of these liturgical choirs. This practice was not a culture of sexism invading the church, nor was it a chauvinistic devaluation of their gifts. It was the application of clear Scripture teaching. Because such singing was liturgical, it was also ministerial and authoritative, a role from which females are directly prohibited in Scripture, as such public actions amount to usurpation of God's will for the ordering of His Church on Earth (1 Ti. 2:5-3:2; Ti. 1:5-9; 1 Co. 11:8-10;14:33-40; Ep. 5:18,21-24; 1 Pe. 3:1-6; Co. 3:17-18,23-25). The question of who may function as a liturgist in our own congregations, is answered today with the same abundant clarity of these Scripture references: only males may function as ministers in Christ's congregation, and this includes liturgists, whether they are singing or speaking the message of Scripture.
We have in the previous three days of this week visited the Passion accounts of St. Matthew (Monday), St. Mark (Tuesday) and St. John (Wednesday). Today, Maundy Thursday, we hear excerpts from performances of musical settings of St. Luke's account of the Passion of Christ, Lukas Passion, which were composed by Johann Sebastian Bach and Heinrich Schütz, respectively, below:
Throughout this Holy Week, we will be featuring excerpts from recordings of liturgical compositions which deliver to their hearer the very words of Christ's Passion according to the Gospel writers, in song. And not just any old compositions, either, but those written by Lutherans who aspired to excellence in their craft for the sake of Jesus Christ, Lutherans who stand today among the most important composers in Western history: Johann Sebastian Bach and Heinrich Schütz. We provided a brief biography of these composers on Monday, including the importance of their compositions and the nature and purpose of liturgical music, in Part 1 of this Music for Holy Week series, and we invite the reader to (re)visit that post for more information about them.
So far this week we have sampled recordings from their compositions of Christ's Passion according to St. Matthew (Part 1), and according to St. Mark (Part 2). Today we listen to a full recording of Heinrich Schütz's composition of Christ's Passion according to St. John: Johannes Passion. This is a delightfully old scratchy recording from the early 1950's, demonstrating a technique which one rarely hears in modern recordings or performances (at least not to the extent heard in this recording): a full-bodied choral vibrato. For sure, it adds to the nostalgia of the recording, as this sort of vocal effect seems to have been widespread at that time. No one is quite sure, it seems, how or why that sort of intense choral vibrato became popular through the first half of the 20th Century or so, but at least two influences are responsible for its relative decline since then. First, beginning in the late 1940's, strong interest in the art of the chorale was renewed, principally with the emergence of a young choir director named Robert Shaw, whose career as a conductor renewed the choral repertoire and returned excellence to choral performance. Part of this excellence required that the modern choir be finely intonated, maintaining pitch with precision. Excessive choral vibrato, of the sort that had grown popular by the mid-20th Century, distorted pitch. So, under the influence of Robert Shaw, choral vibrato was subdued quite a bit, for the sake of tonal precision.
A second influence contributing to the decline of choral vibrato has been the rise of interest in "period correct" performances. Such "authentic" performances means using period instruments and vocal techniques according to the principles that were generally followed when the compositions were written. In the case of compositions from the Mediæval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods, this meant that many of the instruments were not capable of easily producing a significant vibrato; and it also meant that vibrato, in principle, was considered a vocal or instrumental device to be used for the purpose of emphasis or affect, not a technique that was to be continually used throughout the performance of a given piece. In the case of sacred works from these periods, there was an added factor contributing to an elimination of vibrato: women were not members of the church choir. Only boys and men (usually young men) were members of the choir – and boys have no natural vibrato. Thus, to produce "period correct" performances, vibrato has been nearly eliminated from more modern recordings of sacred works from these periods.
Here is a video reproduction of an old recording of St. John's account of the Passion of Christ, Johannes Passion, composed by Heinrich Schütz:
Yesterday, in Part 1 of this Music for Holy Week series, we introduced the historic practice of daily lessons through Holy Week covering the Passion accounts from each of the Gospels and reported how "The Singing Church" delivered the words of these accounts to their hearers in song. Yesterday, we heard excerpts from compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach and Heinrich Schütz, the two greatest German composers in history, which gave the account of Christ's Passion according to the Gospel of St. Matthew. Today, with much less introduction to the composer and his work, we share with our readers excerpts from Johann Sebastian Bach's Markus Passion. It is important to note, however, that these were not composed as performance pieces. These were works of liturgical music, which set the appointed Gospel lesson to music and were intended for the context of worship. For more details on the composers, and their liturgical compositions, please refer to yesterday's post. In addition to excerpts from Markus Passion, today we have included some images of the recently restored Frauenkirche in Dresden, in which one of the recordings featured below was made.
The site of the present-day Frauenkirche had been occupied by a large Gothic structure since the Middle Ages, but by 1722 had fallen into such a state of disrepair that it needed to be demolished and rebuilt. The rebuilding began in 1726 under the watchful eye of Dresden superintendent, Valentin Ernst Löscher (1673-1754) -- the last of the orthodox Lutheran theologians to emerge directly from the Lutheran Age of Orthodoxy. He is remembered for his vigorous polemic against the German Pietists under August Hermann Francke (1663-1727) and Joachim Lange (1670-1744), which is preserved for us in his Complete Timotheus Verinus, recently translated into English by Robert Koester and James Langebartels and currently available from Northwestern Publishing House. Designed by George Bähr and finally completed in 1744, the Frauenkirche stood from that time forward as a marvel of architectural engineering, until it was destroyed in the 1945 fire-bombing of Dresden. It sat, awaiting the fall of the Berlin Wall, as a dingy pile of rubble. Immediately following the end of Soviet occupation of East Germany, in 1989, efforts to rebuild it were organized, and work began in 1993. Working from original plans and historic photographs, the rubble was sifted for re-usable materials so that new materials could be constructed as required. It was completed in 2005.
The video excerpts, below, come from a musical setting of St. Mark's account of the Passion of Christ, Markus Passion, which was composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. The first video was performed at the Frauenkirche in Dresden, Germany:
Excerpt from Bach's Markus Passion (Recorded at the Frauenkirche in 2009)
It may sound "a bit much" to the ears of modern American church-goers, who busy themselves about their business through the week, going to-and-fro, hither-and-thither. These days, mid-week services themselves seem to be regarded as a bother, and this Holy Week, when we Lutherans generally have two mid-week services, attendance can really seem to be a burden. But in "times of yore," for each day of the week leading up to the most important Festival of the Church Calendar, The Festival of Christ's Resurrection, there were appointed lessons, telling the story of Christ's Passion from the perspective of each Gospel writer.
By the early 16th Century, the Western system of musical notation had been so sufficiently developed (mostly in ecclesiastical circles), that systematic exploration of polyphonic forms, which were championed most notably in Paris and Florence in the centuries leading up to the Renaissance, could be broadly pursued. As a consequence of Renaissance humanism and the invention of the printing press, Europe enjoyed an explosion of such exploration. The result for the Church was the great gift of high-art in musical form, which was produced most significantly from the Renaissance period through the Baroque – art which continues to set the bar of excellence for sacred musical expression even today.
In the generation following the Reformation, Lutherans began emerging as leading composers of sacred works, whose creativity and excellence continue to inspire the world. For example, Michael Praetorius, whose father was a pastor and student of Martin Luther's, was a solid Lutheran composer who is considered to be the greatest organist to have ever lived. His three-volume Syntagma musicum, a treatise on baroque instruments, composition, and performance, is considered definitive even today. If one has ever had the good fortune of listening to Praetorius - Lutheran Mass for Christmas Morning, however, one will notice at least one peculiar thing: the Gospel lesson (track 9) is not spoken; rather, it is chanted. This was a rather common practice -- perhaps giving us, in our day and age, a more full idea of what it meant that the Lutheran Church was considered "The Singing Church." In a comment to the post C.F.W. Walther: Filching from sectarian worship resources equals "soul murder", C.P. Krauth was quoted regarding the prominent role of music in the Lutheran Church, characterizing it as follows:
“But especially in sacred song has the Lutheran Church a grand distinctive element of her worship. 'The Lutheran Church,' says Schaff, 'draws the fine arts into the service of religion, and has produced a body of hymns and chorals, which, in richness, power, and unction, surpasses the hymnology of all other churches in the world.' 'In divine worship,' says Goebel, 'we reach glorious features of pre-eminence. The hymns of the Church are the people's confession, and have wrought more than the preaching. In the Lutheran Church alone, German hymnology attained a bloom truly amazing. The words of holy song were heard everywhere, and sometimes, as with a single stroke, won whole cities for the Gospel'” (Krauth, C. (1871). Conservative Reformation and its Theology. Philadelphia: Lippincott. pp. 152-154)
And this musical character extended to the liturgy as well, especially given that, prior to the Enlightenment, congregational singing was generally a cappella (Kretzmann, P. (1921). Christian Art: In the place and in the form of Lutheran Worship. St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House. pp. 405-410 – and I urge the reader to find these pages and absorb their content fully). The main task of church musicians was not to apply themselves to the accompaniment of worshipers in the congregation as they sung hymns, but to use instrumental music to accompany the liturgy, and move it forward. One of the main tasks of church composers, therefore, was to compose liturgical music that would accompany the liturgy and the proclamation of the Gospel. We see this in the fairly popular recording of Praetorius - Lutheran Mass for Christmas Morning, mentioned above, but more so in the various Baroque compositions of Christ's Passion. In these compositions, the Gospel accounts are not spoken, but sung or chanted. In this way, in this musical way, 17th Century Lutheran churchgoers would have the account of Christ's Passion delivered to their ears during Holy Week.
Throughout this Holy Week, we will be featuring excerpts from recordings of such compositions, written by two Baroque composers who are considered Germany's greatest: Johann Sebastian Bach and Heinrich Schütz. Bach perhaps needs little introduction: he was and remains the master of counterpoint and represents the pinnacle of Baroque musical achievement. In addition to his many secular works, as Cantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig he composed a full series of Cantatas to accompany the Lutheran liturgy for each week of the Church Calendar, along with many other Sacred works as he was commissioned. The definitive collection of Bach's works, the life's work of maestro Helmuth Rilling (a recognized specialist in the compositions of Bach), contains this entire series of Cantatas in addition to the rest of his body of Sacred and secular works. It is worth noting, however, than in addition to his status as a composer, Johann Sebastian Bach was also fiercely orthodox in his Lutheranism. Being active as a composer during the rise of German Pietism and attempting to ward it off through the Sacred works he was often commissioned to compose, his professional library was proliferate with personally annotated works of Lutheran theology – he had the library of a theologian, and he used it as reference material in the composition of his works.
Unlike Bach, it is likely that Heinrich Schütz, along with Praetorius, is an unfamiliar name. Yet, Schütz is considered to be the greatest German composer second to Johann Sebastian Bach, his works consequently being of significant influence on Bach and others. How can it be that a composer of such stature – second in line to Bach, and one whom Bach himself looked to for inspiration – is generally unknown? Answer: like Praetorius, he composed almost exclusively for the Lutheran Church. Heinrich Schütz studied at St. Mark's Basilica in Venice under none other than Giovanni Gabrieli, who, along with his uncle Andrea, was of prime influence in the development of Western music during the Renaissance, particularly that of antiphonal and polychoral music. This was the influence that Schütz brought back to Germany and upper Europe, and which he masterfully wedded with the German language, the purest manifestation of which, for him, was Martin Luther's translation of the the Bible. In other words, it is impossible to substantively confront the compositions of Heinrich Schütz without also being confronted by the message of the Holy Scriptures. This makes him politically incorrect and therefore rather unpopular these days, despite his importance as a composer.
Finally, it might be noticed that the compositions of Schütz seem somewhat "stark." This was neither a factor of style nor indicative of a lack of talent, as his Doppelchörige Motetten, Psalmen Davids, and especially his Geistliche Chormusik fully attest -- but of social and political conditions during most of his career: the period of the Thirty Years' War. The devastation wrought by this extended conflict resulted in a dearth of musicians. So, the musical genius of Heinrich Schütz was applied to the task of creating liturgical compositions for small ensembles of moderate ability.
Here are a couple video excerpts from performances of musical settings of St. Matthew's account of the Passion of Christ, Matthäus Passion, composed by Johann Sebastian Bach and Heinrich Schütz respectively:
Note: Intrepid Lutherans cannot endorse all the content found at the following links, and expects that the visitor accessing them will exercise mature Berean judgment in assessing and making use of them.
Throughout Holy Week, we shared recordings of liturgical music composed by masters of the Late Renaissance and Baroque periods – Heinrich Schütz and Johann Sebastian Bach. As composers for the Lutheran church in Germany, their output of liturgical music was not only prolific, but highly influential both within and outside the church. Bach, still considered to be the greatest composer in Western history, was a fiercely orthodox Lutheran who endeavored to embody his confession within his art, and to do so with fidelity, often consulting his substantive theological library for this purpose. Schütz, considered the most important German composer second to Bach, wrote almost exclusively for the Lutheran church. He masterfully wedded his musical compositions with the German language, the purest manifestation of which, for him, was Martin Luther's translation of the the Bible. Even though his compositions may seem "stark" in comparison to Bach's, he maintained fairly strict fidelity to the very words of the text, rarely straying from it for the sake of explanation or poetic expression. Unlike musical compositions of today, the sacred works of these composers were not intended for the entertainment of the masses, but as liturgical devices for use within the church – as liturgical proclamations of the Gospel, the words of the liturgy, including the lessons, being set to music so that they could be sung, or chanted. A very fitting practice for "The Singing Church."
