Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism: Choir, Congregation, and Three Centuries of Conflict (review)

Abstract

Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism: Choir, Congregation, and Three Centuries Conflict By Joseph Herl. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. [xi, 354 p. ISBN 0-19-5154398. $65.] Index, bibliography. Joseph Herl, assistant professor music at Concordia University, Seward, Nebraska, has done a masterful job assembling and analyzing sources that relate to choral and congregational singing in Lutheran churches sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries (with some coverage nineteenth century). Many us have longed for kind information this study supplies. (I wish, for example, it had been available before I finished book I just completed on hymn tunes.) After a preface that explains topic and dates it from 1523 to 1780, Worship Wars is divided into nine chapters and a conclusion. It begins with Luther and liturgy in Wittenberg, then backs up to Catholic liturgical practices before Reformation which are traced through sixteenth century as a backdrop for Luther's changes. Luther is pictured as a conservative liturgical reformer who picked up on congregational singing he inherited and was therefore so much an innovator as a popularizer of it (p. 35). Lutheran church orders are analyzed for prescriptions they give choral and congregational singing, but they are not left to stand alone. They are wisely contextualized in next chapter by reports ecclesiastical visitations in order to try to understand what actually happened. Hymnals and their rise are surveyed, debates choral versus congregational music are summarized, and organ's role is explained. Along with this comes performance practice hymn singing throughout these centuries. Appendices provide further supporting detail with sources German hymns, translations selected writings, tables choral versus congregational singing in Mass, and comparative liturgical tabulations which indicate how Mass was treated by Lutherans in various localities. Copious notes to chapters come at end book followed by a substantial bibliography and then an index. Conclusions summarize each chapter, and an overall conclusion summarizes whole book. Herl has searched both primary and secondary sources, read them with discrimination, brought together a wide array relevant detail, and analyzed it very carefully. He has made a welcome addition to literature, partially by giving so many sources, but also by pulling them together in a well-researched manner with clarity and context. In process some important matters arise. Though not central points, they are nonetheless critical to study and help our understanding hymn singing and music in Lutheran church more generally as well. One is relationship between Lutheran and Reformed practice, and between Lutheran and Catholic practice. This study, without explicidy trying to demonstrate it, makes clear that Lutherans have provided bridges on both fronts. Though sometimes embattled, influences that have ridden across bridges are not insignificant and often have moved quietly under batdements. A second is development music's role for arousing emotions in eighteenth century. Herl helpfully distinguishes this perspective from that sixteenth century when, as he explains, obvious point music was to convey a liturgical text or substitute for one (see, for example, p. 123). Without understanding this shift, our current circumstances are incomprehensible. A third is role organ in development hymn singing, a fourth its tempo, and a fifth move from rhythmic to isometric structures. As a whole book pits choral services against congregational ones and argues that, though it took about two hundred and fifty years (p. 175), the congregational conception service won out (p. 178). Protestant rhetoric Luther making a radical break with past by suddenly introducing hymn singing is shown to be false. …