The Lutheran connection

In the 16th century, the Reformation took more than one path in its efforts to reform the western catholic church. Two of these streams are the Lutheran and the continental Reformed, which went their separate ways over the sacraments. At the Marburg Colloquy in 1529, while the Ottoman Turks were besieging Vienna nearly 800 kilometers to the east, Luther defended the real presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper against Ulrich Zwingli, who asserted that Christ's body was at the right hand of God following his ascension and thus could not be physically present in the sacrament.

Besides their confessional differences, the Lutheran and Reformed also differed liturgically. Luther was content to translate the existing Roman rite of the Mass into German with modifications intended to purge it of its mediaeval accretions. The Reformed, by contrast, sought to recover a lost liturgical heritage as indicated in the title of the 1542 edition of the Genevan Psalter published in Geneva: La forme des prières et chantz ecclésiastiques: avec la manière d'administrer les sacremens, & consacrer le mariage : selon la coustume de l'Église ancienne. Note especially that last phrase, "according to the custom of the ancient Church." The Reformed sought a more thorough reworking of the liturgy in accordance with God's word and what they knew (or thought they knew) of early church usages, while Luther's followers were willing to retain what they deemed to be of value in the existing rites.

However, despite their differences, there is remarkable continuity between the melodies of the Genevan Psalms and those of the Lutheran chorales, suggesting that they draw from a common musical heritage. We have already noted the debt that Geneva owed to Gregorian chant. We know that Luther too drew on the Gregorian heritage in his own hymnody. So let us briefly compare the two traditions. We begin with the Jubilee Octet singing the familiar Psalm 42:

Now we turn to a beautiful paschal hymn which is not well known outside the Lutheran tradition, Awake My Heart with Gladness:

 Immediately we notice several similarities between these two lovely melodies: 

• Both see the first two bars, i.e., the first line, repeated in the second line.
• Both have alternating masculine (stressed) and feminine (unstressed) lines.
• Both have irregular metrical structures: 87 87 77 88 and 76 76 66 66 respectively. These fit with languages, in this case French and German, that have more words than English does with feminine endings.
  
• In each tune the first and second bars in the third and fourth lines have parallel movements in the melody line.

Of course, there are many Genevan and Lutheran chorale tunes with quite different metres and melody patterns in which the parallels would not be as obvious as in these two. But it seems clear that Geneva and Wittenberg draw on a common continental European musical treasury, with Anglo-Celtic psalmody and hymnody taking another route characterized by regular metres and masculine endings.

Aside from these commonalities, there were some borrowings across the Lutheran/Reformed divide. Matthias Greiter (1490-1550) composed the tune that would eventually be matched with Psalms 36 and 68 in the Genevan Psalter. Greiter was born in Bavaria but spent much of his life in Strasbourg, where he died. He embraced Lutheranism in 1524, returning to Catholicism shortly before his death. The similarity of this tune with the familiar Lasst uns erfreuen is evident, as indicated below:

Psalm 36 (68):

 Lasst uns erfreuen:

Finally, we note a pronounced similarity between the Genevan tune for Psalm 138 and Mit freuden zart, which appears to have been a Lutheran borrowing and adaptation from Geneva.

Psalm 138:

Mit freuden zart:

Finally, here is one last Lutheran chorale that I would love to bring into our Reformed liturgies, Who Trusts in God a Strong Abode, beautifully performed in this Concordia Publishing House recording: