I think we can appreciate Martin Luther’s strides, that he helped launch The Reformation, discovered the Agape of God in Romans, formulated the age old truth in the Scriptures of salvation by faith (Philippians 3:9, Ephesnians 2:5-9), and his early writings were full of tenderness, “we must be tender towards are Roman (religion) neighbor, and give them time to come our way in the reforms. For some are running ahead of us in reform, others walk, and some are but crawling. So let us be patient and kind towards them as they grow.” (From The Ninety-Five Theses and Other Writings, Martin Luther, Penguin Publishers, Ebook ISBN: 9780698187931) . Granted, later he became a crumpus and even contradicted his major hallmarks. It is without question that his hymns are very catchy, especially A Mighty Fortess Is Our God.
Having been brought up as Lutheran, I do appreciate the music. Not much on the modern "rock n preach" services that I see at non-liturgical churchs
Same here. The modern worship feels like its trying so hard mimic pop culture music (and its sales) rather than usher you into the presence of the Lord Trinity.
I really like what we might call “High-church Lutheran music,” that is to say, the masses, motets and cantatas composed by Bach, Schubert and other composers. As far as the Lutheran type hymn, the chorale in four part harmony, I grew up singing these, and I greatly like them, however, after exposure to the anthems and canticles of Anglicanism, and the chant of the old Latin Rites and the Eastern churches, I feel that type of music should lead, but the chorale, as found in, for example, the incredibly good English Hymnal of 1906 or the Episcopal Hymnal of 1940, should have a clearly defined liturgical role, which ideally would entail providing proper congregational hymns related to the proper scripture lessons and the collect of the Liturgy of the Faithful. But because people aren’t bothering to do Mattins and the Litany, the result is in a typical 1979 BCP service, all of that musical bliss we would get in Mattins from the Psalms and anthem, and a vestigial liturgy, are crammed into the main service, along with a reduced number of chorales compared with what we would get otherwise, and this is a tragedy. Part of the fight to restore traditional Anglicanism has to center around making Mattiins, the Litany and Evensong ubiquitous, while utterly removing from the entire Anglican communion praise and worship music, which in my opinion, by destroying traditional worship and confusing people’s ideas about what worship, as Jeffg mentions, cause as much damage as, for example, the capitulation of the church on the issues of human sexuality or the ordination of women. Because lex orandi, lex credendi is such an essential part of Anglicanism and the other traditional churches, if disruptive music is allowed which is not prayerful, which falls outside of the traditional categories of Anglican music (organ preludes and postludes, chorale hymns such as those by Luther, canticles, anthems, and the intonation of the preces, psalms and other things, by means of Anglican chant or Plainsong), it has a deleterious effect of the meaning of the worship as a whole, even if the priest himself is a traditionalist who does not deviate from tje form contained in the BCP. Thus, the congregational chorale becomes of vital importance, especially those by Luther, Charles Wesley and so on which can be said to have a strong doctrinal content. Singing them has an effect similiar to the congregational recitation of the three creeds.
I met a chap at a non denominational church where I had to exit the “nave” due to the unpleasant praise and worship music, and this poor man after we had chatted for a fee minutes then entered the nave, saying he “wanted to get some worship in.” They have redefined worship as attending a rock concert! And these forms of music which praise and worship bands copy in many cases are copied from the music of people who were not pious Christians, but were rather countercultural musicians whose religious views ranged from eccentric Oriental mystical atheism, like the Beatles, to satanism and the occult (various death metal musicians, and so on). Herbert Howells, who I consider the most talented Anglican musician, and one of the three most talented church musicians, of the 20th century (the other two being Michaelides and Rachmaninoff), warned about this, in a lecture he gave in 1971, which I can try to hunt for on YouTube if anyone is interested; his lecture warned that the organ loft was a sacred place, and the introduction of inappropriate church music would be a disaster, which the musical directors of Anglican churches had a responsibility to prevent, instead preserving the musical traditions of the church. And it should be stressed on that point that in contrast to Praise and Worship music, the Lutheran chorales, later composed in Britain with such a great effect by Charles Wesley, Vaughan Williams, and others, and the traditional systems of chant (plainsong and Gregorian chant, and the other forms of Latin chant and Eastern chant, such as Ambrosian, Byzantine, Coptic “tasbeha”, Znamenny chant of Russia, and others), and the four part harmony derived from it, used in Anglican anthems from the era of Renaissance Polyphony until the present, and in chant systems like Anglican Chant or Prostopinije, were all developed by, in and for the church. The early church it is known in the West initially avoided melody and relied on an ascetic monotony (and monotone chant can still be heard in 1950s recordings of Choral Evensong, during the confiteor); in the East, based on a dream St. Ignatius of Antioch had of two choirs of angels singing alternately, an antiphonal system was developed, which according to ecclesiastical legend reached the West when St. Ambrose of Milan used it to keep the spirits of his congregation up, when they were holding vigil in a besieged church the Emperor had declared should be given over to the Arians (this, perhaps the oldest sit-in on record, worked). From there, we have the development in Gregorian, Byzantine, West Syriac, and derived systems of chant, like the older forms of Slavonic chant, the eight modes or tones, which survive in Plainsong, and then from there, the next step was Renaissance Polyphony followed by four part harmony and tonality, which first appeared in early Protestant hymnody like the Lutheran chorales, and some Calvinist hymns, such as the melody known as “The Old 100th.” And from there, increasingly sophisticated music was written, taking us to the exquisite, contemplative, prayerful compositions of Herbert Howells, George Dyson and Healey Willan. So that is one system of music, developed in the Church, for the Church, free from heretical and pagan influence, and the introduction of rock music destroys that.
Herbert Howells,YES. What about Healey Willan ? a much forgotten and underused composer of good liturgically centred music. Any other greats of the 20th c. ? Lloyd Webber (of All Saints',Margaret Street, London), George Oldroyd, ???? any others who are in the "classical tradition" ?
I will (surprisingly for me) put in a good word for Praise and Worship music. Due to the time I can go to Divine Service I am only able to make one of my church's services and it's one of the Contemporary services(although on Easter and one other time I was able to go to the Traditional service, which is true to this geographical area so quite casual). The music at this service is always good Christian pop that I wouldn't mind listening to at home, just not at church. The vocalists have amazingly good voices which I love listening to and the background instrumental stays in the background. There are no strange light effects, the video screen doesn't cover the altar, and there is never actual rock music or (perish the thought) heavy metal. The words are somewhat shallow, however they always pay attention to Him and what He's done - not to the congregant. From a died-in-the-wool high church traditionalist, that's quite a lot to acknowledge, but I must be honest and maybe I'm too set in my ways. Maybe He wants me to broaden my horizons.
There are quite a few gems in the contemporary music collection, I agree, Brigid. As a music minister, the problems I found were that very few of them are readily singable unless you're already steeped in the style (and my rather aged congregation was not able to keep up with them) very few of them contribute coherently to the liturgical calendar, decreasing their functional usefulness there is so much chaff to sift through, especially if you're trying to "keep up with the latest hits" Something I really like about the new hymnal from Reformed Episcopal Church is that it includes a small handful of contemporary songs like In Christ alone my hope is found, highlighting for us some of the good we can harvest from the past few decades.
I experienced a wonderful worship service tonight! Besides receiving the Eucharist (which always thrills me, ever since I was a teen), the children-about ages 11-16 from our music camp/ministry joined with our praise band who have wonderful voices anyway, and sang so wonderfully! Granted, the kids who took part in the music camp/ministry were probably some of the best young voices around, but according to the Pastor they had spent everyday this last week becoming saturated in all aspects of musical worship and in these particular songs inc. Amazing Grace and I go down to the River. Instead of the usual 2 songs pre-service we had 3, then every opportunity that they could sing they did. (As you can tell besides traditional high liturgy, I adore music/singing inc. good CCM.
That's great, Brigid! We sang "Amazing Grace" toward the end of Eucharist today in our church. It made me cry a little, because it brought back memories of my father-in-law's funeral 2 years ago. My mother-in-law's funeral was three days prior to it in the same building, and the deacon who led things at her funeral could not carry a tune in a bushel basket when he attempted to lead the singing of "Amazing Grace." So when he was again conducting the ceremony for my father-in-law three days later, I summoned my courage and offered to lead the singing of "Amazing Grace" (an offer which he eagerly accepted). Since then, whenever I sing this hymn I choke up. You see, my wife and I were the ones who walked in after a 1,000 mile drive and found his body. It's an uncomfortable memory.
That must have been so very hard for you and your wife, understandably! I commend you for offering your voice at the funeral. It was such a thoughtful, brave thing to do! "Amazing Grace" is a powerful song and should not be left to Rock bands (or poor Deacons with ill-formed vocal chords). Fortunately (at least for now), we have a good P & W group. And with the youth voices it was great. Is this song Anglican or maybe Lutheran or.....? Not that it really matters. I love it.
Your question made me wonder, so I searched online and found this article: https://www.biography.com/news/amazing-grace-story-john-newton It was created by a former slave trader who became an Anglican priest!
I keep a copy of the ELS Hymnal Evangelical Lutheran Hymnary on hand. I think it is the best of the Lutheran hymnals, although the LCMS Lutheran Service Book is also excellent. My introduction to liturgical worship was via the LCMS for about 3 1/2 years. I know the settings for the graduals and anthems from their book well. For instance: when I see Nunc Dimmittis, I hear the Lutheran setting.
It seems pretty good, all things considered. It preserves a one year lectionary. My sole objection to it is the contemporary language, and in particular, the dreaded response to the Sursum Corda “et cum spiritu tuo” mistranslated as “And also with you.” But of the currently produced Lutheran liturgical texts, it and the 1941 Lutheran Hymnal are the best. My favourites however are the final hymnal produced by the Augustana Synod, of which my great uncle and godfather Eugene was a priest, and the 1959 Lutheran Service Book and Hymnal, which I believe he likely used in the latter years of his career; not just for sentimental reasons, but for their content, which is excellent. In particular, the 1959 book was the first American Lutheran hymnal to introduce the Litany of Peace from the Byzantine divine liturgy, and this Litany also appears in the 2006 LSB, but is ruined by a silly rubric (each petition ends with “let us pray to the Lord” to which the choral or congregational response in an Orthodox church is most commonly either “Kyrie eleison”, “Gospodi Pomuli”, or “Lord Have Mercy”; in the 2006 LSB, the compilers thought it would be cute to have the response “Lord Have Mercy” start at the same time as the petition ends with “Let us pray to the Lord”, so the word “Lord” overlaps, and this just sounds contrived, and severely damages the rythm of the litany).
My thoughts on LSB: it has five communion rites, which is too many. My experience was that pastors would usually choose two and switch when the calendar switched between ordinary time and festival time. But the last parish I worshipped at was determined to use all five at some point each year. They used the fifth, which is a setting of the German chorale mass (which oddly has no creed!) only once a year - on the Sunday of Christ the King if I remember correctly. Also, they've got Spanish translations of about 40 or 50 of the hymns and some of them are truly awful. My wife was a native speaker and she would cringe at the text they had come up with sometimes. It wasn't usually an issue of inaccurately conveying the meaning, but more that whoever who had worked on the translations had no sense of the cadence of Spanish and the melodies just did not work with the text.