With our music this Reformation Sunday we celebrate with a service filled with music sung corporally, beginning with the German Singmesse and including the Offertory anthem, with verses 1 and 3 to be sung by all. So, today we are all members of the Choir- enjoy!

Today’s Choral Service Music: The German Singmessse or Liedmesse

In western Europe before the Reformation, cathedrals in cities and the larger churches in towns had choirs, often made up of schoolboys, that could sing the congregation’s parts of the Latin High Mass for the main services on Sunday and feasts.

But in small villages and the smaller churches in towns and cities, a choir was not always available. It became customary for the priest and the altar server to say all the parts of Low Mass quietly, in Latin, facing East away from the people, behind the rood screen, while the people did… whatever.

The people were still expected to attend Mass every Sunday. They could meditate, say prayers, or sing hymns while the priest said Mass, and if they could read and afford to buy them, Primers were popular books to aid individual devotions in some areas, such as England.

But in Germany, it became customary, as early as the 12th century, for the congregation to sing specific hymns that paraphrased, in German, the main unchanging songs of the Mass (Kyrie Eleison, Gloria in Excelsis, Credo, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei) while the priest said them in Latin. This was the type of service that Dr. Luther was writing about in Deutsche Messe und Ordnung des Gottesdeinsts (German Mass and Order of Divine Service) in 1526. This practice remained the custom even in Roman Catholic parishes in German-speaking countries even into the 20th century and is still influential in the worship of the Evangelical Church in Germany.

During the reformation era, Protestant pastors saw this as a quick way to transform the Mass into language that the ordinary people could understand, and if they had musical talent, as many did, composed German hymns in this genre. Several of these hymns can be found, translated into English, in Evangelical Lutheran Worship.

Kyrie (Lord have mercy) Hymn 409

Kyrie! God, Father in Heaven Above is set to the tune Kyrie Gott Vater in Ewigkeit, adapted from a 9th century Gregorian chant in the Latin Mass II Fons Bonitatis Pater Ingenite for solemn feasts. The German hymn was published in Wittenberg in 1541 and might be by Pastor Johann Spangenberg (1484-1550)

Gloria (Glory to God in the Highest) Hymn 410

All Glory be to God on High is set to the tune Allein Gott in der Höhe sei Ehr adapted from a 10th century Gregorian chant in Latin Mass I Lux et Origo for the Easter season. The German hymn was published in Brunswick in 1523 by Pastor Nikolaus Decius (1485-1550).

Credo (We believe in one God) Hymn 411

We All Believe in One True God is set to the tune Wir Glauben All an Einen Gott adapted by Dr. Luther. and his music publisher Johann Walter (1496-1570) in 1524 from a 14th century tune. It was later included in Deutsche Messe 1526.

Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy) Hymn 868

Isaiah in a Vision is set to the tune Jesaiah dem Propheten adapted by Dr. Luther from an 11th century chant (Mass XVII for Sundays in Advent and Lent?) and published in Deutsche Messe 1526.

Lord’s Prayer Hymn 746

Our Father God in Heaven Above is set to the tune Vater Unser in Himmelreich. Dr. Luther wrote the words with a different tune in mind, but printer Valentin Schumann (1520-1559) published it with this tune in 1539. The hymnal version was shortened to four verses from nine. The longer version is Hymn 747.

Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) Hymn 357

Lamb of God, Pure and Sinless is set to the tune O Lamm Gottes, Unschuldig adapted by Pastor Nikolaus Decius from a 13th century chant in 1525.

— Tom VanPoole

Hymn of the Day: “Salvation unto Us Has Come” ELW 590
Text: Paul Speratus (1484-1551)
Tune: ES IST DAS HEIL, Etlich christlich Lieder, Wittenberg, 1524

This hymn by Paul Speratus was published in what is sometimes called the first hymnal of the Reformation, Etlich christlich Lieder (the "Achtliederbuch," 1524). One of the oldest "Lutheran" hymns, Speratus probably wrote it in 1523 when he was jailed at Olmütz for his evangelical preaching. In the "Achtliederbuch" it had fourteen stanzas and was headed "A hymn of law and faith, powerfully expounded by holy scripture." "Powerfully expounded by holy scripture" referred to two pages of smaller print that followed the hymn. There "reports from scripture" about how the hymn "was grounded on all sides" were given in sets of biblical references, one set for each of twelve of the fourteen stanzas. Brief comments formed a kind of study guide.

The hymn was one of the Lutheran Kernlieder- central "kernel" or "core" hymns-for more than a century after the Reformation, but there have been those, especially but not only among Rationalists and Pietists, who have regarded it as didactic rhymed doctrine and not a hymn at all. It certainly sets out the essence of things from the very outset. With its point of departure Romans 3:28, it says clearly that salvation has come to us by God's free grace and favor.

Lutheran Book of Worship (1978) printed stanzas 1, 3, 5, 10, and 13 from Speratus's original German. Evangelical Lutheran Worship prints one additional stanza and uses 1, 2, 6, 10, 13, and 14 from the original. Both translations make modifications, but they rely on The Lutheran Hymnal (1941), which relied on the Evangelical Lutheran Hymn Book (1912). It should be noted that stanza 13, now stanza 5 in Evangelical Lutheran Worship's numbering, begins with doxology. Hymnals, like Lutheran Book of Worship, have tended therefore to make it final, but its last three lines begin the Lord's Prayer. The hymn is thus incomplete without Speratus's final stanza, which is the rest of the Lord's Prayer in a metrical version. Evangelical Lutheran Worship wisely included Speratus's last two stanzas. They complete and contextualize what goes before them, and they modify criticism. Doxology and the Lord's Prayer cannot be construed as didactic rhymed doctrine. When they are present the rest of the hymn finds its focus in God and not in human systems.

Paul Speratus was born near Ellwangen in Württemberg, Germany. He probably is the person who in 1503 went to the University of Freiburg as "Paul Offer de Ellwangen." His name was either Offer (or Hoffer) before he Latinized it to Speratus. He also studied in Paris and Vienna, earning doctorates in philosophy, Jurisprudence, and theology. In 1506 he was ordained a priest and faithfully served for the next twelve years or so in Salzburg, Dinkelsbühl, and Würzburg. He even wrote a hymn text praising Johann Eck, who in 1518 opposed Luther's Ninety-Five Theses. Around 1519 Speratus began to adopt evangelical views. One of the first priests to break his vow of celibacy, he married Anna. Forced to leave Würzburg, he enrolled at the University of Vienna in 1520 and earned one of his degrees, Doctor of Divinity, there. On January 12 of 1522 at the Cathedral of St. Stephen in Vienna he preached a sermon supporting marriage and justification by grace through faith. The faculty of the University of Vienna condemned him. He went to Moravia, where he continued to preach about justification. This time it got him imprisoned at Olmütz for three months on bread and water and almost burned at the stake. He went to Wittenberg in 1523, where he helped Luther with the "Achtliederbuch" and translated Luther's Formula Missae into German. In 1525 he became court preacher in East Prussia for Duke Albrecht, in 1526 helped formulate the Kirchenordnung (the liturgy and regulations) for East Prussia, and from 1530 to the end of his life was a devoted and faithful bishop in poverty-stricken Pomerania So far as is known, this is one of only five hymn texts he wrote.

This tune was one of four printed in the Etlich christlich Lieder (the "Achtliederbuch,"1524). It was paired with two texts there, Paul Speratus's hymn (ELW 590), for which it is named, and Martin Luther's (ELW 263) paraphrase of Psalm 22, "Ach Gott vom Himmel sieh darin." Also in 1524 it was printed in Walter's Geistliche Gesangbüchlein and in the Erfurt Enchiridia. Its composer is unknown. It probably was in circulation by the fifteenth century and can be found in later Catholic hymnals with the text "Frue dich, du werte Christenheit."

This is a tune in bar form, with potent but graceful drive. Without alterations, as given in Zahn, Die Melodien der deutschen evangelischen Kirchenlieder (1889-1893), it is Mixolydian. However, the G sharps and C sharps in Evangelical Lutheran Worship were inserted already in the sixteenth century. The version we sing today is a more original rhythmic version.

Offertory: “God Whose Giving Knows No Ending” David Cherwien (1957)

First of all, many thanks to Nathan Bastuscheck for sharing his music with us today!

C. Hubert H. Parry's RUSTINGTON was first published in the Westminster Abbey Hymn Book (1897) as a setting for Benjamin Webb's "Praise the Rock of Our Salvation." The tune is named for the village in Sussex, England, where Parry lived for some years and where he died. This distinguished melody has been paired with at least 35 texts. “God Whose Giving Knows No Ending” by Robert L. Edwards (1915-2006) is probably the most popular pairing.

This celebratory anthem of praise is commissioned from David Cherwien, celebrating RELC’s 75th Anniversary and dedicated to the Choir and Roy Guenther, Organist/Choirmaster.

Opening Voluntary: Sonata op.65 No. 6, Chorale and Variations 1-3 on "Vater unser im Himmelreich," Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

The organ music of Felix Mendelssohn represents an approach gesturing not towards the future but towards the glorious past of German composition and the work of J.S. Bach in particular. (Liszt once called him “Bach reborn.”) The stark dissimilarity in compositional approach between Mendelssohn and Liszt was heralded by the coolness of their personal relationship, manifested for instance at a soirée when Mendelssohn drew a picture of Liszt playing the former’s music with five hammers, rather than fingers, on each hand. (This somewhat childish action is perhaps understandable given Liszt’s description of preceding events: “The truth of the matter is that I only played his Concerto in G minor from the manuscript, and as I found several of the passages rather simple and not broad enough…I changed them to suit my own ideas.”) Inherently conservative in character, Mendelssohn formed a profound aversion to the iconoclastic work of Liszt and kindred spirits such as Berlioz, of whose work Mendelssohn remarked: “one ought to wash one’s hands after handling one of his scores.” Mendelssohn was undoubtedly a Romantic composer, but his Romanticism was often of the Biedermeier kind; he was capable of composing dramatic and inventive works such as the Hebrides Overture, yet his individual musical poetry emerged perhaps most strongly in miniatures such as the Songs without Words for piano and in those works (e.g. the Quartet in F minor) wherein he recaptured the youthful genius that had burst forth so forcefully in the Octet and Midsummer Night’s Dream Overture.

Mendelssohn’s posthumous reputation in the country of his birth suffered from Wagner’s pen (this time through the faintest of praise rather than vitriol) and, in due course, the Nazi regime’s efforts to expunge his name from musical history. In England, where Mendelssohn had made a strong impression on musical life over the course of ten visits, his stock remained considerably higher. Mendelssohn enjoyed particular success with his organ recitals in the late 1830s and early 1840s, leading the publishers Coventry and Hollier to commission a set of six “voluntaries” from him in 1844. The planned voluntaries soon became Mendelssohn’s six Organ Sonatas Op 65, with the term sonata here implying the Bachian sense of the term—i.e. suites of varied pieces which are played instrumentally, as opposed to sung cantatas—rather than works exhibiting classical sonata form. The Organ Sonata No 6 in D minor (1845) demonstrates Mendelssohn’s consummate craftsmanship and mastery of organ texture in a set of variations upon the Lutheran Bach chorale Vater unser im Himmelreich (BWV416). Following a five-part harmonisation of the Chorale, which pervades the sonata as a whole, Mendelssohn presents four variations of increasing brilliance before a restatement of the Chorale. Today’s Closing Voluntary is the final variation. The sonata concludes with a substantial fugue and the finale in D major, whose quiet religiosity symbolises the completion of a journey from stern Lutheranism to an essentially English brand of sentiment. In this work and its companion sonatas, Mendelssohn revitalised the then-moribund European organ tradition, spurred English organ-builders to new heights, and, through his particular blend of chorale, counterpoint and domestic spirituality, substantially augmented the organ repertoire for the first time since Bach. Musing on his passion for structural innovation, Liszt once remarked that “new wine demands new bottles”; Mendelssohn here demonstrates the continued potency of an older brew.

Closing Voluntary: “Ein feste Berg,” David Cherwien (1957)

David Cherwien, artistic director of the National Lutheran Choir, is a nationally known conductor, composer, and organist. Recognized for his contributions to the field of church music and liturgy, he is in demand as a clinician and hymn festival leader across the country.