2007 marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of Lutheran pastor and hymnist Paul Gerhardt. He was born in 1607 in a village near Wittenberg, Germany and he died in 1676 in Lubben, Germany. Gerhardt wrote a total of 133 hymns. Gerhardt’s hymns were born during a life of adversity, yet they proclaim a strong trust in God’s Word.

Lutheran hymns have a rich heritage of confession, profession, and faith. Their main theme is faith in a gracious God and in Jesus as the Savior of the world. The Lutheran Sentinel pays tribute to those hymns by looking at Paul Gerhardt’s life during this year.

And with united heart and voice, and holy rapture singing;

Proclaim the wonders God hath done! M. Luther, ELH 378

As the church sings...

(Augsburg Confession, XX: 40)

The Lutheran Church uses music as a means to proclaim, teach and confess God’s Word: “We should know nothing to sing or say, save Jesus Christ our Savior” (Luther, Wittenberg Hymnal, 1524). Lutheranism recognizes the strength of music as a memory device; melody wed to a text makes the text more memorable. It also recognizes the inherent and inexplicable power of the musical art to comfort the sad, quiet the angry, and heighten the joy of those who are happy. ”Next to the Word of God music deserves the highest praise” (Luther, Preface to the Symphoniae jucundae, 1538).

Because Lutheranism saw music as the bride of theology it made a point to develop the office of “kantor” in its cities and schools. A kantor in the Lutheran church was a musically-trained theologian, or a theologically-trained musician, who was responsible for the preparation of singers for the schools and services, and had oversight of the musical aspects of the Divine Service.

Paul Gerhardt was both a pastor and poet. His hymns were given wings of song by two important kantors in Berlin, Johannes Crüger and Johann Ebeling. Without their musical compositions, it is unlikely that Gerhardt’s texts would have found a place in the liturgical and devotional song of the church.

Lutheranism was introduced into Berlin as early as 1539. The choirs of the two largest schools in the city were expected to provide choral music for the regular Lutheran liturgies; and in the choral service, these choirs would sing the “ordinary” (Kyrie, Gloria, Creed, Sanctus, Agnus Dei) and the “proper” (Introit, Alleluia, Communion) for each service. They would also sing chorales (German hymns) along with the congregation. All this singing required a significant music curriculum in the schools, and this level of choral leadership and liturgical participation was common in the Lutheran churches with parish schools during the first century of Lutheranism. One of the kantors in Berlin, Johannes Eccard (sometimes called the “Palestrina of Lutheranism”) is represented in ELH by hymn 238.

The uncertainty and destruction of the Thirty Years War contributed to the demise of the Lutheran choral tradition in cities like Berlin. In many parts of Lutheran Germany, schools and choirs were destroyed along with church buildings, musical instruments, musical scores, and liturgical books. At the end of the war Berlin was a “Protestant” rather than a Lutheran city. The Elector’s preference for Calvinist theology and worship practice (he had been raised in Holland in a strong Calvinist environment) threatened the foundations of Lutheran liturgical music. Nonetheless, the musical tradition developed by Eccard and Johannes Crüger’s forty-year tenure strengthened the use of music in the Lutheran churches of Berlin. Crüger’s compositions promoted a climate that allowed for the development of liturgical musical life in the spirit of the Baroque. Works for choir, solo voice, instruments and organ were produced for use in the Lutheran church, school and home, and many of the melodies were likely written so that Gerhardt’s poetry could be sung first as a part of Lutheran household devotions.

Crüger (1598-1662) received an “international” musical education in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia and Saxony. He was acquainted with the “old style” of Renaissance composition as well as the more “modern” style of the Italian Baroque. When he was 21 years old he enrolled as a student of theology at the university of Wittenberg. At the same time some of his music was being published in Berlin, and in 1622 he became Kantor at the St. Nikolaikirche. In 1647 Crüger published musical settings for fifteen of Gerhardt’s texts in a work called the “Praxis pietatis melica.” Ten years later Gerhardt became a deacon at the St. Nikolaikirche, a position which allowed a close working relationship and friendship to develop between these two men. The Crüger-Gerhardt collaboration appears four times in the ELH:

# 52, All Ye Who On This Earth Do Dwell

# 94, O How Shall I Receive Thee

# 115, All My Heart Sings and Rejoices

# 341, Awake, My Heart, with Gladness

When Crüger died in 1662 the Lutheran cantorate in Berlin passed to Johann Georg Ebeling (1637-1676). This twenty-five year old musician had been trained in the musical art of northern Germany at Lüneburg, and he studied theology at the University of Helmstedt. He came to Berlin from Hamburg where he had been a member of the collegium musicum of Matthias Weckmann, one of the most important composers and theoreticians of Lutheran Germany. In Berlin he enjoyed a high degree of collegiality with Gerhardt. Ebeling’s publication of “Paul Gerhardt’s Spiritual Devotions, 1667” was the first published collection of Gerhardt’s hymn texts; which includes 120 hymns along with melodies by Ebeling for 112 of the poems.

Despite the offer of a position in Luneburg, Ebeling remained in Berlin until 1667 when he resigned his position because of Gerhardt’s dismissal from the ministerium of the Nikolaikirche. Ebeling moved on to the Lutheran city of Stettin where he supported himself as a teacher of music, poetry and Greek. He was also an historian, and in 1675wrote a history of music. Gerhardt’s texts are sung to two settings by Ebeling in ELH:

# 57, Evening and Morning

# 377, Why Should Cross and Trial Grieve Me?

The chorale tunes of Crüger and Ebeling are a timeless treasure. When we learn them and sing them with a confident heart, we join a choir of Lutheran angelic musicians who cannot help but “say and sing” the glad tidings of the Gospel!

“Glad tidings of great joy I bring,

Whereof I now will say and sing..” M. Luther, ELH 123

“Awake, My Heart, with Gladness”

1. Awake, my heart, with gladness,

See what today is done;

Now, after gloom and sadness,

Comes forth the glorious Sun.

My Savior there was laid

Where our bed must be made

When to the realms of light

Our spirit wings its flight.

2. The foe in triumph shouted

When Christ lay in the tomb;

But, lo, he now is routed,

His boast is turned to gloom.

For Christ again is free;

In glorious victory

He who is strong to save

Has triumphed o’er the grave.

8. He brings me to the portal

That leads to bliss untold,

Whereon this rhyme immortal

Is found in script of gold:

“Who there My cross has shared

Finds here a crown prepared;

Who there with Me hath died

Shall here be glorified.”

Dennis Marzolf is a professor of music at Bethany Lutheran College in Mankato, Minnesota.