St. Paul's Lutheran Church - Luther On Music

St Paul's Lutheran Church
Ashland, Kentucky

“Luther on Music”

Dr. Martin Luther, alone among the reformers of the 16^th century, welcomed music into the worship and praise of God with open arms. For Luther, music was a “noble, wholesome, and joyful creation,” a gift of God. For Luther, music was a part of God's creation with the power to praise its Creator, and it found its greatest fulfillment in the proclamation of the Word.

“Therefore, accustom yourself to see in this creation your Creator and to praise Him through it. If any world no sing and talk of what Christ has wrought for us, he shows thereby that he does not really believe…” ¹

For Luther to “say and sing” was a single concept resulting from the inevitable eruption of joyful song in the heart of the redeemed. In contrast to some other reformers who saw music as always potentially troublesome and in need of careful control and direction, Luther, in the freedom of the Gospel, could exult in the power of music to proclaim the Word and to teach the heart and mind of people.

In emphasizing music as God's – not humanity's – creation and as God's gift to people to be used in His praise and proclamation, and in stressing particularly the royal priesthood of all believers, Luther laid the foundation for the involvement of every Christian – congregation, composer, instrumentalist, choir – in corporate praise at the highest level of ability. In seeing all music as under God's redemptive hand, Luther underscored the freedom of the Christian to use music in the proclamation of the Gospel. The music that developed in this tradition is eloquent testimony to the fact that the church's musicians and its people found that Luther's views provided a healthy and wholesome context in which to work, to sing, and to make music in praise of God.

Luther encouraged the most sophisticated forms of music of his day – Gregorian chant and classical polyphone – to be taught to the young and sung in church together with the simpler congregational chorales. In contrast to both the Latin tradition and that of the Calvinist reformation, it was the Lutheran reformers' understanding of music as a gift of God that successfully encouraged the reciprocal interaction of simple congregational song and art music of the most sophisticated kind. A flourishing tradition of church music was the happy result.

¹ Walter E. Buszin, Luther On Music, reprinted 1958 by the Lutheran Society for Worship, Music and the Arts by permission of G. Schirmer Inc., New York, N.Y.