Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 56:224 (Oct 1899)
Article: Two German Hymns: A Study In German Hymnody Of The Reformation
Author: Edwin W. Bowen

BSac 56:224 (Oct 1899) p. 673

Two German Hymns: A Study In German Hymnody Of The Reformation

Prof. Edwin W. Bowen

German hymnody had its origin in the Reformation. Prior to this great religious revolution of the sixteenth century, the hymns which the Germans used were of course the mediaeval hymns of the Romish Church, the Missals and Sequences. Though many of these are among the finest specimens of hymnography and still retain a place in our modern hymn-books, they were yet exotics, written in Latin, not in the vernacular of the people. For this reason the sentiment of these hymns, apart from their association with worship, was not readily comprehended by the people; and not being part of their mental furniture, so to say, they did not influence them as indigenous hymns, written in the mother-tongue, would have done.

The German people had songs of their own. The popular ballads which were lisped in infancy and still sung in old age appealed much more forcibly to the people, as a nation, than did the hymns imported by the church, however excellent these might be. For the Germans are, and always have been, preeminently a music-loving nation, and song has been honored by them from a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. The historian Tacitus, in his monograph on Germany, which gives us the first methodical account we have of the Teutonic tribes, informs us of the characteristic passion of the ancient Germans for song, and adds that they were accustomed to sing even on going into battle, and that by the

BSac 56:224 (Oct 1899) p. 674

singing of these battle-songs they aroused the spirit and courage of their soldiers to the highest pitch. This same passionate love of song has manifested itself all along through the history of the people down to the present day; and Germany offers a list of musicians, from Bach and Handel to Liszt and Wagner, which no other country can surpass, and few, if any, equal. But behind this list of illustrious musicians lay a deep and abiding national passion for song, a native instinct; just as, behind those superb fragments of the Parthenon frieze from the chisel of Phidias, and behind those soul-stirring tragedies of Sophocles, lay an exquisite innate appreciation in the Greek character for art and literature.

Martin Luther recognized this fact, and it was his knowledge of the appreciation of the people for their own native songs that led him, in the very beginning of the Reformation, to compose sacred songs and set them to the well-known tunes of the old, familiar ballads. This was a happy stroke of genius on his part, and this fact serves, in a large measure, to explain the early success of the great movement which Luther fathered. Viewed from this point, there is then much truth, though not so much a...