I'm writing this article while on a Christian camp.
Here and at camps all over the country we’ve been learning about the extraordinary events of the Reformation. It’s struck me that the applications driving through the talks are focussed on making sure that the Word of God is clearly understood, leading to absolute assurance of salvation because (and only because) of the grace of God.
Music serves the Word
One of the happy results of the work of Luther and some of his fellow reformers was that there was also a rethinking about the way music was done in churches where there was a commitment to hearing the Word of God clearly. The biggest driving factor was the insistence that the Word of God needed to be served by music, and not the other way round.
Pre-Reformation church music had, in some circles, become a bit of a battleground for composers, as their writing became more and more complex and ethereal. This continued as the Reformation struggled to take hold in England in the late 16th century. The most famous example of this is Tallis’ 40-part motet, Spem in Alium, written in 1570. All 40 voices sing different lines of music at the same time creating an incredibly beautiful experience for the listener, but as you can imagine, the words are absolutely unintelligible (as well as being in Latin). The effect in the last few bars is remarkably similar to what some modern-day churches call singing in tongues.
The congregation must sing
The Reformation, however, helped wrestle the sung truth out of the hands of clergy and trained choirs and back into the hands and, therefore, voices of the congregation. The Genevan Psalter (1562) was compiled as a result of John Calvin’s desire for congregations to be able to sing biblical truth in their own language. One of the most famous of the songs included in this Psalter is The Old Hundredth (the tune written to accompany Psalm 100, All people that on earth do dwell ). Now, instead of the congregation having to listen to the religious ‘elite’ producing a spiritual experience for the gathering, all people everywhere could sing solid truths together and even at home.
Mighty fortress
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was a Christian who was also a musician and despite being as flawed as the rest of us, he was committed to writing music that served the Word of God. Though he was born 200 years after Luther, his music writing reflected the same motives that drove his German forefather. All of his church music was signed SDG (Soli Deo Gloria – Glory to God alone) in recognition of Reformation principles. He even used one of Luther’s melodies (Ein feste Burg – A mighty fortress) as a basis for one of his own cantatas.
He was keen not to leave music just to the professionals – the chorales he wrote as part of his Passions were to be sung by the congregation as a response to the events surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus. These chorales still form part of modern day hymnody (e.g. O sacred head, sore wounded).
Memorable tunes
The other effect of taking the emphasis away from musical extravagance and putting it onto the clarity of the Word is that we have also inherited tunes that are memorable, thereby helping to implant truth into hearts.
We have the Reformers to thank for rediscovering the biblical nature of corporate encouragement and praise of Jesus in song, and it would be worth praying that the hymn writers of today will be driven by the same goals: wanting to give glory to God alone; and taking the sung word out of the hands of our modern day ‘worship leader’ clergy and their professional bands and putting it instead into the hands and voices of our congregations.
