Jürgen Heidrich (Münster, Germany)

On the Early History of the Hymn A Mighty Fortress Is Our God in the 16^th Century

First, this contribution will investigate the origins of the hymn Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (A Mighty Fortress Is Our God) and focus on Martin Luther’s exegeses and poetry of the psalms. Then, the early transmissions of the hymn within their specific political and confessional contexts will be illuminated. With this in mind, further reflections on the hymn’s musical form will follow. Its melody is generally attributed to Luther himself, although not all reasons for this thesis are completely convincing. In the end, the position of this hymn within Luther’s other hymns referring to psalms will be explained.

 

Christian Thomas Leitmeir (Oxford, Great Britain)

A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. Strategies and Limitations of ›Nostrification‹ in the Confessional Era

Concerning music, the Psalterium became a central ›battle field‹ in confessional debates. Both the Lutheran hymns of Psalms and the metrical Psalms, written by theologians of the continental reformed churches, tried to catch the hearts of believers. In 1582, with the publication of Ulenberg’s Psalterium, even the Catholic party took part in this musical debate. At the same time, the Psalms belong to the Bible’s core, shared by all confessions and sung in their services (except for the Zwinglians). So, the hymns and motets of Psalms suited to accentuate both the separating and the uniting moments, and therefore this corpus could be used as an indicator for militancy and ›conciliancy‹ of the confessional era. This is true even of the 46^th Psalm, which is well-known in Luther’s version Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (A Mighty Fortress Is Our God) and was elevated to the battle cry of the Augsburg Confession.

 

Dominik Gerd Sieber (Sigmaringen and Tübingen, Germany)

»Von dem rechten Christlichen Gebrauch der Music, vnd der Orglen« (On the Right Christian Use of the Music and the Organ). The Role of Church Music in the context of Lutheran Confessionalization in the Imperial Cities of Upper Swabia

In Upper Germany and Switzerland, the Reformation led to the abolishment of organ and church music in the imperial cities of Upper Swabia. But just a generation later, the Peace of Augsburg, which preferred Lutheranism in terms of imperial law, brought music back into churches. To celebrate the new installation of organs, which are documented in the last quarter of the 16^th century, sermons were printed. These ›Organ sermons‹ tried to justify the use of church music in a theological and historical way, and were strictly set against the Catholic as well as the Reformed position. In this way, they indicated a significant step from Zwinglianism to the Lutheran confessionalization in Upper Swabia.

 

Thomas Schmidt (Manchester, Great Britain)

A Migthy Fortress Is Our God? The Chorale in 19^th Century Instrumental Music between a Sacred Devotional Topos and a Confessional Statement

Luther’s chorale Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (A Mighty Fortress Is Our God) as a thematic source of the finale of Felix Mendelssohn’s Reformations-Sinfonie (the Reformation) is the most famous example of the adoption of Protestant chorales or chorale-like melodies in 19^th century instrumental music. But what message is meant to be implied or evoked by those musical quotations and topoi? In what cases is the music’s purpose a generally sacred atmosphere of devotion as could be compared with the so called preghiera-topos in the contemporary Italian opera, and in what cases is it a real confessional statement? By looking at Mendelssohn’s oeuvre, where this tension is emphatically manifested, this contribution develops and discusses criteria and categories of the chorale sound in the 19^th century.

 

Stefan Menzel (Weimar, Germany)

A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. Otto Kade, the ›inventio‹ of the »Luther-Codex«, and German Culture-Protestantism

This paper examines Otto Kade’s memorial edition of Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (A Mighty Fortress Is Our God) (1871) within its contemporary context. The edition is chosen as an example of 19^th century German Culture-Protestantism as a movement that unhinged religious culture out of church institutions and formed and transformed it as a part of public civil culture borne chiefly by bourgeois clubs and societies. The paper argues that civil ›cultural functionaries‹ like Kade used 16^th century Lutheran church music as a medium of memorial culture through which they strove to contribute to the public discourse on events like the Franco-Prussian War or the First Vatican Council and the Kulturkampf it provoked, while also pursuing a redefinition of German national culture as bourgeois and protestant.

 

Chiara Bertoglio (Turin, Italy)

Interpreting musical ›holy texts‹

In the 19^th century, the acknowledgement of the greatness of J. S. Bach’s works led to the need for guidance on how to interpret them, particularly for students and amateurs. So-called »instructive editions«, offering ready-made performances, claimed to hand down an authoritative interpretive tradition, while the birth of Urtext editions represented an effort in a historic-critical direction. These two approaches to a musical ›holy text‹ reflect complementary attitudes similar to (and probably influenced by) those adopted by (respectively) Catholics and Evangelicals with respect to the Bible. The influence of the Reformation on Scriptural exegesis thus extended itself also to a very different field such as that of music interpretation.

 

Ruth Dewhurst (Atlanta, USA)

Luther’s Noble Art of Music. The Evolution of 16^th Century Congregational Singing into 21^st Century Crowd Harmonics

Whether at a sports game or a revolution, group singing has become a popular way to express national pride. I argue that the roots of this phenomenon lie in the Reformation with its emphasis on congregational singing. The fixing of national vernaculars and mass printing nurtured a popular singing culture, and nineteenth-century choral associations engendered a new means of political expression. Today, group singing, both inside and outside churches, fosters emotional bonds that strengthen group identities. Whether a nation was directly affected by the theological tenets of Protestantism, choral singing became a means of group communication that resonated in various incarnations over the centuries and continues to contribute to twenty-first century culture.