RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Sacred Music
from the treasure of Latin hymns, from the sequences, from the spiritual folk-song, as also from
the treasure of secular folk-song. What
2. The Six- little the Reformation period contrib-
teenth and uted to the treasure of melodies out of
te^nth" its own invention (Luther's Ein' feste
Centuries. Burg, for example) reflects the classical
type of the church folk-tune. Toward the close of the sixteenth century there is an increase of originators of new melodies (Selnecker, 1530- 1592; Philipp Nicolai, 1556-1608; Melchior Franck, c. 1573-1639; Melchior Teschner, 1614; Melchior Vulpius, c. 1560-1615; Johann Hermann Schein, 1586-1630; Michael Altenburg, 1584-1640; Matthaus Apelles von Lowenstem, 1594-1648; Johannes Criiger, 1598-1662). The seventeenth century increasingly exhibits, in the composition of melodies, the influence of the aria song which toward the end of the sixteenth century had arisen in Italy (Heinrich Albert, 1604-51; Johann Georg Ebeling, 1637-76; Jakob Hintze, 1622-1702; Johann Rudolf Able, 1625-73; Georg Neumark, 1621- 1681; Joachim Neander, 1650-80; Adam Drese, 1620-1701). The church melody as softened down into the spiritual aria, with its sentimental or "heart's revealing" nature, stands as far removed from the compact force and the sonorous full tones of the folk-song, as pietism, whose favorite mode it becomes, from the Reformation. In evidence of the lively and zealous activity which pietism displayed in behalf of church song, there are the Darmstddter Kantional (1687); the Freylinghausen'sche Gesangbuch (1704 sqq.); the Choralbucher of Dretzel (1731), Konig (1738), and others; in evidence of the religious vitality inherent in the movement, there is a succession of hymns, which, if not betokening vernacular simplicity and primitiveness, yet indicate hymnal buoyancy.
The " age of enlightenment " completes the process of modernizing the church melody. It becomes a popularized art hymn, which is distinguished from the parallel secular art song only in that it dispenses with all rhythmical charm, merging into the " slowest song " that " can fairly be conceived " (Justin Heinrich Knecht, Preface of the Choralbuch of 1799). In only particular instances
have the numerous melodies which the
_.. ,\ e "age of enlightenment" produced,
Eighteenth. • , •, ,-, T, r ,, , ,J
and evinced vitality. It was a matter full
Nineteenth °^ P0I-tent, that the new trend of taste Centuries. " improved upon " the transmitted wealth of the Fathers. The characteristic and ever charming polyrhythm of the old tunes appeared to the modern conception of musical measure hard and unintelligible; likewise it seemed impracticable for popular use; while the rhythmical vivacity seemed incompatible with the idea then entertained of the sublimity and " dignity " of music for the divine service. The old tunes were approximated to the ideal of the " slowest song that can fairly be conceived," being divested not only of polyrhythm, but of rhythm altogether. This leveling process for the church tune, at first in the direction of isometry, then to the completely unrhythmical plain-song, was at the same time evoked and favored by means of the growing sway
of the organ in Evangelical worship. The revival of religious life and the deepening of the ecclesiastical consciousness in the first decades of the nineteenth century manifested itself less in the production of new melodies (Bernhard Klein, 1793- 1832; Johann Georg Freeh, 1790-1864; Conrad Kocher, 1786-1872; Heinrich Carl Breidenstein, 1796-1876; Arnold Mendelssohn, b. 1856; and others) than in the growing intelligence in behalf of distinctive charm, the historical as well as ecclesiastical and esthetic justification of the original form of the transmitted melodies; and in the zealous endeavor to recover for congregational singing the rhythmical vivacity and original freshness of the Reformation period. How far this endeavor, which is thoroughly justified from the standpoint of historic fidelity, is feasible in practise, and at what point it becomes restricted by considerations as to the nature of choral song, and of the characteristic tones of the organ, still indispensable for accompaniment, are matters which even to-day are still subject to great differences of opinion. For this reason, and because of the numberless variants which have established themselves in the several church provinces through venerable custom, attempts to secure uniformity of usage in the German churches have been successful only in a limited degree.
2. The Artistic Side: The first ten centuries of the Christian Church knew none but homophonic song. For the non-Latin peoples who came into the Church, this was artistic song, which required expert schooling, and this was the reason why it came to be more and more exclusively 1. Church agSigne(l to the choir of singers trained
f ? " specially for church song. It was renmophonic , , ■ i r • x ai.
till the dered m a language loreign to the con- Year 1000. gregation, and in a mode of musical articulation unusual to them, viz., the antique Greco-Roman. The liturgical song was choir song. The people still had the canticum vulgar e, the song of their native speech; and from the twelfth century onward this became more and more independently developed, and on the chief festivals, at least, was even tolerated in the liturgy of the mass (between epistle and Gospel in place of the psalm which succeeded the halleluiah; or, as the case might be, in place of the sequence, and subsequently also following the Gospel in the way of a German creedal song, either instead of the Latin credo or attached to the same).
From the eleventh century and continually thenceforward, out of modest, and, according to modern ideas of musical beauty, rude attempts, as they appear in the light of the fifth and octave parallels of the Benedictine monk Hucbald of St. Amand (c. 840-930), there developed itself under the fostering care of the Church, through the middle terms of the descant (principle of reciprocal harmony) and of fauxbourdon (habituation to the harmonic euphony of thirds and sixths), the composite or polyphonic choir song, which for the most part aimed to be nothing more than the artistic expansion and enrichment of the liturgical song. By the end of the fourteenth century, polyphony, the art of counterpoint, had reached its
Sacred Music