Dr. Martin Luther's Deutsche Geistliche Lieder / The Hymns of Martin Luther Set to Their Original Melodies, With an English Version
INTRODUCTION
A fit motto for the history of the Reformation would be those words out of the history of the Day of Pentecost, "How hear we, every man in our own tongue wherein we were born….the wonderful works of God!" The ruling thought of the pre-reformation period was not more the maintenance of one Holy Roman Church than of one Holy Roman Empire, each of which was to comprehend all Christendom. The language of the Roman Church and Empire was the sacred language in comparison with which the languages of men's common speech were reckoned common and unclean. The coming-in of the Reformation was the awakening of individual life, by enforcing the sense of each man's direct responsibility to God; but it was equally the quickening of a true national life. In the light of the new era, the realization of the promise of the oneness of the Church was no longer to be sought in the universal dominance of a hierarchical corporation; nor was the "mystery" proclaimed by Paul, that "the nations were fellow-heirs and of one body," to be fulfilled in the subjugation of all nations to a central potentate. According to the spirit of the Reformation, the One Church was to be, not a corporation, but a communion – the communion of saints; and the unity of mankind, in its many nations, was to be a unity of the spirit in the bond of mutual peace.
The two great works of Martin Luther were those by which he gave to the common people a vernacular Bible and vernacular worship, that through the one, God might speak directly to the people; and in the other, the people might speak directly to God. Luther's Bible and Luther's Hymns gave life not only to the churches of the Reformation, but to German nationality and the German language.Concerning the hymns of Luther the words of several notable writers are on record, and are worthy to be prefixed to the volume of them.
Says Spangenberg, yet in Luther's life-time, in his Preface to the Cithara Lutheri, 1545: "One must certainly let this be true, and remain true, that among all Mastersingers from the days of the Apostles until now, Luther is and always will be the best and most accomplished; in whose hymns and songs one does not find a vain or needless word. All flows and falls in the sweetest and neatest manner, full of spirit and doctrine, so that his every word gives outright a sermon of his own, or at least a singular reminiscence. There is nothing forced, nothing foisted in or patched up, nothing fragmentary. The rhymes are easy and good, the words choice and proper, the meaning clear and intelligible, the melodies lovely and hearty, and in summa all is so rare and majestic, so full of pith and power, so cheering and comforting, that, in sooth, you will not find his equal, much less his master."1
The following words have often been quoted from Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
"Luther did as much for the Reformation by his hymns as by his translation of the Bible. In Germany the hymns are known by heart by every peasant; they advise, they argue from the hymns, and every soul in the church praises God like a Christian, with words which are natural and yet sacred to his mind."
A striking passage in an article by Heine in the Revue des Deux Mondes for March, 1834, is transcribed by Michelet in his Life of Luther:
"Not less remarkable, not less significant than his prose works, are Luther's poems, those stirring songs which, as it were, escaped from him in the very midst of his combats and his necessities like a flower making its way from between rough stones, or a moonbeam gleaming amid dark clouds. Luther loved music; indeed, he wrote treatises on the art. Accordingly his versification is highly harmonious, so that he may be called the Swan of Eisleben. Not that he is by any means gentle or swan-like in the songs which he composed for the purpose of exciting the courage of the people. In these he is fervent, fierce. The hymn which he composed on his way to Worms, and which he and his companion chanted as they entered that city,2 is a regular war-song. The old cathedral trembled when it heard these novel sounds. The very rooks flew from their nests in the towers. That hymn, the Marseillaise of the Reformation, has preserved to this day its potent spell over German hearts."
The words of Thomas Carlyle are not less emphatic, while they penetrate deeper into the secret of the power of Luther's hymns:
"The great Reformer's love of music and poetry, it has often been remarked, is one of the most significant features in his character. But indeed if every great man is intrinsically a poet, an idealist, with more or less completeness of utterance, which of all our great men, in these modern ages, had such an endowment in that kind as Luther? He it was, emphatically, who stood based on the spiritual world of man, and only by the footing and power he had obtained there, could work such changes on the material world. As a participant and dispenser of divine influence, he shows himself among human affairs a true connecting medium and visible messenger between heaven and earth, a man, therefore, not only permitted to enter the sphere of poetry, but to dwell in the purest centre thereof, perhaps the most inspired of all teachers since the Apostles. Unhappily or happily, Luther's poetic feeling did not so much learn to express itself in fit words, that take captive every ear, as in fit actions, wherein, truly under still more impressive manifestations, the spirit of spheral melody resides and still audibly addresses us. In his written poems, we find little save that strength of on 'whose words,' it has been said, 'were half-battles'3– little of that still harmony and blending softness of union which is the last perfection of strength – less of it than even his conduct manifested. With words he had not learned to make music – it was by deeds of love or heroic valor that he spoke freely. Nevertheless, though in imperfect articulation, the same voice, if we listen well, is to be heard also in his writings, in his poems. The one entitled Ein' Feste Burg, universally regarded as the best, jars upon our ears; yet there is something in it like the sound of Alpine avalanches, or the first murmur of earthquakes, in the very vastness of which dissonance a higher unison is revealed to us. Luther wrote this song in times of blackest threatenings, which, however, could in no sense become a time of despair. In these tones, rugged and broken as they are, do we hear the accents of that summoned man, who answered his friends' warning not to enter Worms, in this wise: – 'Were there as many devils in Worms as these tile roofs, I would on'; of him who, alone in that assemblage before all emperors and principalities and powers, spoke forth these final and forever memorable words, – 'It is neither safe nor prudent to do aught against conscience. Till such time as either by proofs from holy Scripture, or by fair reason or argument, I have been confuted and convicted, I cannot and will not recant. Here I stand – I cannot do otherwise – God be my help, Amen.' It is evident enough that to this man all popes, cardinals, emperors, devils, all hosts and nations were but weak, weak as the forest with all its strong trees might be to the smallest spark of electric fire."
In a very different style of language, but in a like strain of eulogy, writes Dr. Merle d'Aubigne, in the third volume of his History of the Reformation: "The church was no longer composed of priests and monks; it was now the congregation of believers. All were to take part in worship, and the chanting of the clergy was to be succeeded by the psalmody of the people. Luther, accordingly, in translating the psalms, thought of adapting them to be sung by the church. Thus a taste for music was diffused throughout the nation. From Luther's time, the people sang; the Bible inspired their songs. Poetry received the same impulse. In celebrating the praises of God, the people could not confine themselves to mere translations of ancient anthems. The souls of Luther and of several of his contemporaries, elevated by their faith to thoughts the most sublime, excited to enthusiasm by the struggles and dangers by which the church at its birth was unceasingly threatened, inspired by the poetic genius of the Old Testament and by the faith of the New, ere long gave vent to their feelings in hymns, in which all that is most heavenly in poetry and music was combined and blended. Hence the revival, in the sixteenth century, of hymns such as in the first century used to cheer the martyrs in their sufferings. We have seen Luther, in 1523, employing it to celebrate the martyrs at Brussels; other children of the Reformation followed his footsteps; hymns were multiplied; they spread rapidly among the people, and powerfully contributed to rouse it from sleep."
It is not difficult to come approximately at the order of composition of Luther's hymns. The earliest hymn-book of the Reformation – if not the earliest of all printed hymn-books – was published at Wittenberg