The Singing of the Strasbourg Protestants, 1523-1541

Daniel Trocme-Latter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317016021
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music History & Criticism

This book explores the part played by music, especially group singing, in the Protestant reforms in Strasbourg. It considers both ecclesiastical and 'popular' songs in the city, how both genres fitted into people's lives during this time of strife and how the provision and dissemination of music affected the new ecclesiastical arrangement.

CHAPTER 1
The Church and the ‘Wonderful Art’ of Music

During the Frankish reign of King Clovis I (c. 466–511), the Christians of Alsace led a pious and respectable life:

All priests lived with their wives and children in the church … Before Communion a sermon was held; this was followed by a broad and general confession, and then the Absolution. After this, psalms were sung in the common tongue; hereafter the blessing was given and everyone went home.¹

This is, at least, how the chronicle of Daniel Specklin, an architect born in Strasbourg in 1536, reads. It is a document that betrays the bias of retrospect, not least in its naïve-sounding assurances that the clergy all abided with their nuclear families, and everyone attended church to sing the Psalms, translated into the vernacular. The chronicle also reports that Frankish priests read the Holy Gospels and the Psalms in all churches. On Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and at Easter and other holy festivals, everyone dressed in white and processed to the church while singing ‘Christian songs’ (christlichen gesangen).² However, even if this seems to be something of a rose-tinted reminiscence, this same sentiment and conviction that the Church was once both purer and more community orientated is clearly prevalent in the Protestant reformers’ own longing for the halcyon days of the Church Fathers.

It was the view of the sixteenth-century reformers that liturgical practices and ecclesiastical traditions had strayed so far from the intentions of the early Church as to be almost unrecognisable.³ The earliest Christian hymns, for example, had given way to plainchant, and the role of the congregation gradually declined. In the Carolingian Empire during the eighth and ninth centuries, Gregorian chant became the staple musical ingredient of the liturgy.⁴ Furthermore, as musical notation was developed, new polyphonic styles gradually began to be heard alongside plainchant.⁵ By the middle of the fifteenth century, polyphonic settings of the complete text of the Mass Ordinary had become commonplace. Other elements of the liturgy were also often set to music, including introits, graduals, and anthems.⁶ The Protestant reformers, therefore, inherited an ever-flourishing tradition of choral polyphony, which they did not deem to be fit for use in worship. Music, they decided, had become too elaborate, and often concealed the text being sung. Sometimes, profane melodies were used,⁷ which some felt carried connotations with inappropriate texts. Furthermore, the Latin language was not comprehensible to the common people, and there was usually little, if any, room for congregational participation, as choirs sang on behalf of the people.⁸ During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, for example, St Thomas’s Church in Strasbourg had employed 15 ‘summissaries’ to sing Masses at the high altar, as well as two Seelmessern to sing Requiem Masses for the souls of the departed. Likewise, the Church of St Peter the Young employed 14 choral vicars to sing the offices with the canons.⁹ In 1429 the city established an annual Mass to be sung ‘to praise and thank Almighty God, his worthy mother Mary, and all the saints’.¹⁰ Congregations, on the other hand, would sing only in processions and on some feast days.¹¹ Prior to the Reformation, there had been various conciliar recommendations concerning music and other liturgical practices, although such advice had tended to fall on deaf ears.¹² The reformers argued that radical change was required.

¹ ‘Alle prister mit weib und kind wohneten ahn den kirchen … Vor der cumunion geschahe ein predig, daruff ein breicht und offne beicht, doruff die absolution. Hernach sange man psalmen in gemeiner sprach, hernoch gab man den segen und ging iederman heim’. Fragments des anciennes chroniques d’Alsace, II (1890), no. 619.

² ‘Der konig Clodoveus ordnet auch allen bischoffen und pristern ihr narung vir weib und kind. Er liesz auch in alle kirchen die Evangelia schreyben, das gleichen auff die psalmen, der wahren numen zwelff … In der ostern, pfinsten und carfritag oder sunst etwan heiligen festen, ist alles volck in weyssen kleydern und liechtern mit christlichen gesangen aum [sic] mitternacht zu den kirchen gangen’. Fragments des anciennes chroniques d’Alsace, II (1890), no. 619. See also nos 627 and 628.

³ As demonstrated below, this view seems to have been reached through a combination of guesswork and historical accounts.

⁴ For a background to Gregorian chant and its dissemination, see in particular S. Boynton, ‘Plainsong’, and M. McGrade, ‘Enriching the Gregorian heritage’, in M. Everist, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 9–25 and 26–45 respectively.

⁵ On early polyphonic styles, see Everist, ‘The thirteenth century’, in Everist, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music, pp. 67–86.

⁶ For a detailed explanation of the texts of the Mass, see J. Harper, The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

⁷ See the complaint made by Bucer in 1529 in S. psalmorum libri quinque, fol. 170r.

⁸ See J. Janota, Studien zu Funktion und Typus des deutschen geistlichen Liedes im Mittelalter (Munich: Beck, 1968). See also R. Bornert, La Réforme protestante du culte à Strasbourg au XVI^e siècle (1523–1598) (Leiden: Brill, 1981), pp. 472–3; A. Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 42.

⁹ F. Rapp, Réformes et Réformation à Strasbourg : Église et société dans le diocèse de Strasbourg (1450–1525) (Paris: Ophrys, 1974), p. 86.

¹⁰ ‘ewiglich zu singen in Unser Frauencapellen allzeit auf den nechsten Montag vor Nativitatis Mariae, zu lob und danck dem allmechtigen Gott, seiner würdigen mutter Maria und allen heyligen um gnedige vorsehung der Statt’. Fragments des anciennes chroniques d’Alsace, IV (1901), no. 3939.

¹¹ See the elaborate description of pre-Reformation processions during Holy Week and Easter in A. Straub, Geschichtskalender des Hochstiftes und des Münsters von Strassburg (Rixheim: Sutter, 1891), pp. 69–70.

Since the early centuries of the first millennium, the terms psalmus and hymnus had both referred to a spiritual song used in worship. Unlike the Psalms, the texts of hymns were often not purely scriptural. By the eleventh century, a canon of between 200 and 300 hymns existed,¹³ intended for use in the Divine Office and during processions on festivals and on other occasions. Although it is not known precisely how hymns were performed during the times of the Church Fathers, the reformers attempted to return to what they believed was a more ancient and therefore more authentic model of worship, and one that permitted the congregation to sing.

The origins of the Christian hymn can be found in the legend of St Ambrose (c. 340–397) who as Bishop of Milan introduced songs for his congregation to sing. Others, including Aurelius Prudentius (d. c. 413), St Gregory of Nazianzus (d. 390), and St Hilary of Poitiers (d. 368) also tried...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables and Music Examples
• Notes on Style and Language
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Church and the ‘Wonderful Art’ of Music
• 2 Abolishing the Mass
• 3 The Move Towards Conformity
• 4 Song Texts and their Messages
• 5 The 1541 Gesangbuch and Strasbourg’s External Influence
• Conclusions
• Appendix A List of Liturgical Orders (in German) and Books of Sacred Music (in German and Latin), Strasbourg, 1524–1541
• Appendix B Wolfgang Köpfel’s First Preface to the Strasbourg Liturgical Orders
• Appendix C Joannes Dulcis’s ‘Strasbourg cite dempire’ (c. 1526) in French and German, from manuscript 1 AST 166, 5.2, fols 85v–87r
• Appendix D A Selection of German Church Songs in Strasbourg not directly from the Bible, 1524–1540
• Appendix E Polemical Songs about Religion, Strasbourg, 1520–1540
• Appendix F A Selection of Polemical Song Texts from Strasbourg Relating to the Reformation
• Appendix G Excerpt from Wolfgang Capito’s Von drey Straβburger Pfaffen (Strasbourg: Köpfel, 1525)
• Appendix H Martin Bucer’s Preface to the Gesangbuch (Strasbourg: Köpfel and Messerschmidt, 1541)
• Bibliography
• Index