Forum on Music and Christian Scholarship

The Reception of Paul Gerhardt’s Hymns before Pietism: New Evidence and New Perspectives
Andrew Cashner, University of Notre Dame

In the seventeenth century, hymns like O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden (“O Sacred Head, Now Wounded”) by Paul Gerhardt (1607–1676), and others by Rist, Franck, and Heermann, helped to introduce a new kind of piety into the German Lutheran church. Gerhardt’s hymns are still sung today in many Christian traditions, and are also well known to music lovers through Bach’s use of them in his Passions and oratorios. Scholars do not agree, though, about how quickly sacred poems of this new type were received into the public church service as sung congregational hymns. The evidence most frequently considered is difficult to interpret and has led to opposing readings; other evidence has sometimes been neglected. Most of Paul Gerhardt’s poems were first published with melodies in hymnbooks, such as those of Johann Crüger (1647, 1653, etc.) and Johann Georg Ebeling (1666/7, 1669, etc.). Does the appearance of the poems in hymnals mean that they were being sung as congregational hymns?

The three leading scholars who have considered this question are Irmgard Scheitler, Walter Blankenburg, and Christian Bunners. According to Scheitler, the new sacred song of the seventeenth century (geistliches Lied) was intended for use in private and home devotions, not in the public church service; and, according to Walter Blankenburg, Gerhardt’s poems were not commonly sung in church until the mid-eighteenth century, under the influence of Pietism. More recently, however, Bunners has asserted that in addition to home use, Gerhardt’s poems were also sung in the public church service in many places early on, first by school choirs, and then by the congregation, who learned the hymns by hearing them sung by the choir.

There is no doubt that these hymns were used in private and domestic devotions (Hausandachten) as well in home music-making (Hausmusik). But a significant amount of musical evidence not considered by Scheitler, Bunners, or Blankenburg strongly suggests that the school choirs were indeed the first to sing settings of Gerhardt’s poems in the church service, and thus introduced them to the congregation. This evidence includes published collections of four-voice settings of the new poems of Gerhardt and others, such as the 1655 Andachts-Zymbeln of Christoph Peter, as well as manuscript copies of Gerhardt settings used in the Latin school choirs of Löbau and Colditz (now housed in the Sächsische Landesbibliothek—Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden)—most notably, these manuscript copies include Ebeling’s settings for four-voice choir and instruments, in a style that Blankenburg insisted was reserved for home use. The choir’s singing of Gerhardt texts was reinforced by home devotional practices to familiarize people with Gerhardt’s hymns even before the rise of Pietism. In this study I will reconsider the conclusions drawn by Scheitler, Blankenburg, and Bunners in the light of this new evidence, and discuss what the evidence does—and does not—tell us about the reception of Gerhardt’s hymns by Lutheran congregations in the seventeenth century.

“New Piety” (neue Frömmigkeit) and Lutheran Worship in the Seventeenth Century
Mary E. Frandsen, University of Notre Dame

In the seventeenth century, Lutheran spiritual life was revitalized by a phenomenon that scholars have come to call “new piety” (“neue Frömmigkeit”). From the beginning, a distinguishing feature of this new piety was a highly personalized devotion to Christ drawn from medieval mysticism. During this period, theologians produced a host of devotional manuals, prayer books, sermon collections, and hymns, all of which sought to foster active lives of prayer and meditation among Lutherans. At the same time, composers of sacred art music (motets and sacred concertos) also responded with settings of devotional texts. But while the new devotional hymns from this period (such as Heermann’s “Ah, Holy Jesus” and Gerhardt’s “O Sacred Head”) generally formed part of private devotion, this devotional sacred art music formed part of the worship service. Rare liturgical records from the Dresden court chapel reveal how extensively settings of Christocentric devotional texts were integrated into church services there throughout the 1660s and 1670s. Often the reading of the Gospel was followed by a sacred concerto (such as Peranda’s “Jesu dulcis, Jesu pie”) in which an anonymous speaker expressed an intense desire for mystical union with Christ. But the Dresden records also demonstrate that the corpus of hymns of the Luther era, which were predominantly corporate expressions that focused on salvation, justification, and other fundamental articles of faith, held sway well into the 1670s, despite the presence in the 1656 Dresden hymnal of many new hymns by Heermann, Rist, Gerhardt, Franck, and others. In my paper, I will show how markedly these new works of sacred art music contrasted with the older hymns, and how their first-person texts gave voice to the individual worshiper, and served as vehicles through which each worshiper might enter into spiritual communion with Christ–in other words, through which each might withdraw temporarily from the gathered community and experience the intimacy of private devotion within the church service. I will also suggest that the Dresden practice was quite typical of Lutheran worship generally from the mid-1630s until at least 1680, given the wide ownership of devotional music by many other churches (as revealed by surviving inventories).

Jesuit Influence on Roman Opera: The Spiritual Exercises in Il Sant’Alessio
Amy Lewkowicz, University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music

Scholars of seventeenth-century Roman opera rarely explore the theological content of these works, contenting themselves with questions of musical and political interest. When they do look at theology, it tends to be a very generic Christianity, often contrasting Neri’s “Christian optimism” with “Jesuit pessimism.” This approach ignores both the extensive training and the missionary nature of these orders. Instead, scholars should acquaint themselves with the training materials used in these schools; this makes possible the identification of their influence where it might not be expected.

The opera Il Sant’ Alessio (libretto by Guilio Rospigliosi, later Clement IX) provides both internal and external evidence for Jesuit influence. Significant plot points exemplify principles set forth in the Spiritual Exercises, written by Jesuit founder Ignatius Loyola. These include the characteristics of temptation by the devil and the process of discernment of spirits—through desolations and consolations—in order to reach the right decision and act in accord with God’s will. While the opera is ostensibly about the life of a particular Roman saint, the tension of the drama comes from in internal conflicts within the characters, whose struggles serve as a parable or object lesson in Ignatian principles.

External evidence supports this interpretation: Rospigliosi, while not himself a Jesuit, attended a Jesuit-run seminary in Rome. Well-known characteristics of Jesuit schools were their use of the Spiritual Exercises in formation, their extensive use of theatre as an educational tool, and great consistency in method between schools. There are also political reasons why the Jesuits might have been courted through this opera.

Neither Margaret Murata nor Frederick Hammond, prominent scholars of Roman opera and the Barberini legacy respectively, have addressed Jesuit influence within this repertoire, and scholars of Jesuit theatre do not concern themselves with opera. Since it falls into a grey area between these two areas of study, the influence of Jesuit drama and theology on Roman opera remains largely unexplored.