I. Spectrum of the Song

Since the days of Martin Luther, "sacred song" inferred both definition and programmatic design. Like secular music, sacred song is based on an easily remembered and sung strophe composition. "Sacred" music emphasises a contrast in content to the pleasure and pain of sexual love in worldly music. Luther regarded the new divine service as the true sphere for sacred song. Later, however, private devotion claimed increasing importance. After about 1630, Martin Opitz began to influence German song. Indeed, it was the influence of Opitz, which was instrumental to the growing diversity and complexity in music, which came to characterise the culture of German song during the age of Baroque. According to the current criteria of "style", "setting", "function", and "social sphere", German sacred song during the Thirty Years' War can be distinguished as just barely modern, densely polyphonic, didactic, and school choir-like. In the second half of the century, however, German sacred song can be described as modern, soloistic, impassioned and private. [1]

These are of course rough assessments, based on idealised categories. However, we must also account for mixed and special forms of sacred music. Like no other, German song constituted a major component of vocal music: the texts of strophic songs could be arranged as motets and, in this case, become distinct types of sound and composition like the song tricinia. Distinctions must also be made between compositions with music repetition (where the music is repeated in each stanza) and continuously set compositions (where different music is set to each stanza). Of course, the sacred song concert and, to mention a completely different model, the propagandistic or news-conveying market song must also be included. This latter form of song borrowed the "tone" of sacred concert music as well as its message, which (could it have been any different then?) also extended into the spiritual. [2]

Within the jumble of various forms of German song during the first decades of the century, the predominant form of sacred song with its distinctive characteristics constitutes a kind of axis. Its limited modernity is evident in the cantional setting, usually a four-voiced "contrapunctus simplex" with descant melody [3], no text repetition, and almost no word interpretation (since subsequent stanzas had the same music as the first stanza). This tonal form, which also allowed non-musicians to sing along, had, at the outbreak of the war, been in existence for about half of a century. It fitted into a style of composition in which traces of Opitz' reforms were hardly yet visible. The new features were limited to particular material characteristics: "produced ad hoc" and thereby "openly or latently corresponding to contemporary events." The word "Seufzer", for example, which was preferred for sacred song between 1620 and 1640, expresses the fervour informed by dread and consolation. [4] In contrast to earlier compositions, such texts were apparently more often set to original music. Although the old German choral, the song of the Reformation period, was also occasionally set to music, only the new song had its "own" composition from the very beginning. The contralto, tenor, and bass parts make it densely polyphonic.

The new sacred song emphatically agreed with the old Lutheran call for penance ("Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir" - "Out of the depths I cry to Thee", 1523); wars were still regarded as a judgement of sins. [5] Under the impression of catastrophe, the "giving of certain penitential sermons [...] in today's highly dangerous times" (1626) was prescribed. [6] Because the old repertoire of song was turned to, the differences between church song and sacred song became even less significant.

A standard of this period, the Leipzig "Cantional" by Johann Hermann Schein (1627), contains more than the five plus four songs for the hours devoted to prayer (sung at the beginning and at the end of the event) that had been recommended in 1619. Included are fifteen other psalm compositions, all by Cornelius Becker (1602), with tones to be sung that had been newly composed by Schein. In addition, Schein summarily referred to the song groups "Creutz / Verfolgung / etc." ("Crucifixion / Persecution / etc."), "Beicht vnd Buâ" ("Confession and Penance"), and other psalm songs. [7] A school choir, which was necessary for all of these songs, also sang outside of the church - in alleys and squares, in front of and in community buildings, and in churchyards. [8]

Accordingly, sacred song during the Thirty Years' War still had a distinctly representative character. Indeed, this art form's strong appeal to tradition must constantly be kept in mind. No composer in that day called for penance or divine praise without an awareness of "the" litany, "the" "Da pacem Domine", and "the" "Te Deum laudamus". The village school master and musician Johann Thüring (1621) from central Germany, for example, framed the fifteen stanzas of his partially strophic and partially prosaic supplicational songs for four to eight voices with the litany and "Te deum laudamus". The weather was also addressed (title wording, text from n. 14 [9] and 16), corresponding to litany petitions against "hale and thunderstorm" or for the "fruits of the land," which were meant to drive away the danger of famine. Thüring expressed the wish (in his dedication preface) that "in these hard times" these pieces would be sung in the churches within his sphere of activity in Thuringia and Saxony.



II. Negative Occasions and Hard Times

Like the traditional church song, the newer sacred song had a clearly outlined task: it designated something and served a purpose. While the ecclesiastical year and the ministrations of the clergy governed the inventory of church songs, other events in life were addressed in the newer sacred song: these were the "occasions". Carl von Winterfeld (1845) has named those musical works bound to specific events "occasional compositions." [10] They served private and public occasions and were included only in part in opus collections and song books (cantionals).

During the Thirty Years' War, family festivals continued to be lavishly observed whenever possible, and victory celebrations and peace treaties offered musicians and poets additional commissions and income. It was almost only the Lutherans - and for good reason - who expressed themselves in these situations: they did so out of duty to the respective "powers". Catholic rites obviously were able to integrate exceptional occasions more successfully than Protestant. [11] Artistic imbalance was accentuated even more by the dominance of the central German region. Here, especially in the area of Leipzig, dramatic events of the war took place. And here, musicians and poets were also present who were capable of giving expressive form to their impressions. Their factious jubilation cloaked the accompanying misery. The death of King Gustavus Adolphus on the battlefield near Lützen on November 6/16, 1632 however, taught that even a momentary triumph could be an occasion to lament.

Indeed, major festive singing transgressed the boundary of song. Likewise, songs of distress could develop into musically ambitious creations. Such is the case with the work "Piorum Suspiria. Andechtige Seufftzen vnnd Gebet / vmb den lieben Frieden / vnd abwendung aller Hauptplagen vnd Straffen" (1629) ("Piorum Suspiria. Pious sighs and prayers / for the beloved peace / and averting of all major plagues and punishments") by Erasmus Widmann from Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Despite the strophic text structure, Widmann appeals to Lodovico Viadana's "style", a few-voiced vocal concerto. [12]. In Eilenburg, the poet and musician Johann Hildebrand even composed thoroughbass monodies to "rhythmic prose" (1645). [13] These "sighs of war anxiety of an almost desolated Germany" give this style of composition - which is actually the most modern because it is oratorically and expressively the strongest - a tinge of desolation. Only with more than three voice parts, could "harmony" be expected. In this respect, the cantional setting with its full sound promises hope.

Within the context of a reality without music, a world that was only filled with clamour and cries and the conventional disorderly singing (without notes), one can go even further with this typology and differentiate the degrees of tonal structure as "thin", "full", and "magnificent". Again, in this context the four-part texture appears axial: neither poor nor magnificent and open to both sides. The respective circumstances of the music determine its status. Where church music was usually absent, the status was high.

However, social-historical circumstances were not the only relevant factors in the history of the period. References like those of Johann Thüring in 1621 or the comment made in Breslau in 1622 about the "current afflicted times" express a kind of "negative de tempore" who's "tone" was dominated not by the ecclesiastical year, but rather by the passage of war. Such ref erences can be found from this moment on almost stereotypically in all politically current music prints published during the Thirty Years' War. [14]



III. The First Peace Supplications

From the beginning of the war on, elaborate songs accompanied the events. In Breslau, close to the threatened kingdom of Bohemia [15], a Protestant school master from Neustadt, Samuel Besler, proved to be confessionally "multilingual". In the homage ceremony of 1611, he addressed the King of Bohemia and (future) Emperor Matthew in Latin ("In te magna tuis spes est"). In 1620 he extolled the Calvinist Winter King Frederick V of the Palatine with two German-French psalms by Ambrosius Lobwasser, also for eight parts. His younger brother Simon, a Protestant cantor at St. Margarethen, showed his sensitivity for the contemporary circumstances by composing a "Da pacem Domine" (1619). Three years later, Samuel had grounds for a "deeply felt sigh to God." But in addition to the four-part song "Ach Herr, ich seuf allein" ("Ah Lord, I sigh alone"), he also included the combative Lutheran "Feste Burg" ("A mighty fortress is our God"). He died when he was approximately fifty years old from the "pestilence", which Simon had predicted would be the second consequence (after starvation) of the "war times."

Simon's seven-stanza peace supplication - which begins "Wacht auf jhr wehrden Deutschen" ("Awake, beloved Germans") [16] - served as an "encouragement to penance and devotion" and belongs to the Lutheran songs critical of the times. With its high aspirations, this song was defined by Johann Walter, a musical collaborator of the reformers, as "a new Christian song / that admonishes Germany to penance." ("Wach auf, wach auf, du deutsches Land" - "Awake, awake, oh Germans", 1561). [17] The assertions in the songs are similar: instead of living in thanks according to the new genuine gospel, one gives in to sin. Besler named eight lapses, Walter twelve lapses as well as fashionable crazes, all which could elicit God's punishment. While Walter warned (also with four parts) as though it were the last moment before the end of time, Besler had in mind a vivid image of "starvation, war, and death" (st. 1). In both cases, poet and composer are probably the same.

As an alternative melody, Besler proposed "Hertzlich thut mich verlangen / nach einem seeligen End" ("My heart is filled with longing / for a blessed end") which was also the descant part from Hans Leo Haâler's "Mein Gmut ist mir verwirret" (1601) ("My lusty cheer is waning"). This piece had been coupled with the sacred text only six years earlier in Görlitz. Besler thereby settled on one of the most well-known strophic forms in German composition which had been sung in Hildebrand, Brother Veit, or Benzenauer notes. [18] As was customary, Besler set the stanzas in four long lines rather than eight short lines. The verse cadences each consist of duration and pause (= male endings). Besler marked the three cadential occurrences of the G B mode (about G minor) with D, B, and G. That he chose a high key (with the altus as fundamental part) underscores the implication of the title: "Vnd vmb der Studierenden Jugend willen vierstimmig vbergesetzet" ("And for the sake of the learning youth, translated into four parts"). Bass singers were absent.

In contrast to Walter's evenly full tenor melody bound within the octave, Besler's cantus primus melody remains captive to the quinton D'' for a noticeably long period (especially at the beginning of the Abgesang): the result of an "Italian" chord declamation aimed at text clarity. With even more impact, the last half of the concluding verse ("vnd auch bekehren recht" ) is forcefully underscored by the melisma. For the author, reclamation was the highest matter of importance.



IV. Dilliger's Text Elucidation

The work of the Thuringian-Franconian musician and theologian Johann Dilliger (1593-1647) is, in more than one respect, well-suited for this topic. Sacred song was central in his work. As a "homo musico-literatus," he knew how to express with words alone the needs of his generation, needs which also preoccupied him as prospective pastor. [19] Sensitive to the point of a hypochondriac, he responded to the terrible events in Coburg and surroundings. Indeed, his voice was one of considerable importance, as his school friend Johann Matthäus Meyfart revealed. [20] That Dilliger's musical works have hardly been disclosed, despite two dissertations [21] and the archived films in Cassel [22] is tied to the puzzlingly high number of his compositions during - of all times - this era of need.

Compiling several single printings of his "occasionals" (each large sheet = four pages), Dilliger created the opus collections "Musica oratoria" and "Musica poenitaria." Later, he probably had the alphabetical inventory of the sheets stamped on each title page and the collections bound with their new title-sheets. In the first collection mentioned (with the German subtitle "Bet vnd Lob Musica," 1630), two examples with analogous themes but contrasting compositional arrangements are evident. A commitment to the song as well as the flexibility of the model are also apparent. Both of the pieces in question, F and P [23], were birthday presents for respected citizens of Coburg, both identify the authors of the text (in this case, Dilliger was not responsible for the wording), and both refer to the composer's "long-time physical weakness" - his "quartan ague."

Print P, entitled "Grewel der verwüstung jetziger Welt" (1629) ("Horrors of the devastation / of our present world") [24], and composed for the tax assessor Nicolaus Schwartzlose [25],represents the classical form of a Thuringian song in cantional setting. The text "Ach wie elend ist die Zeit" ("Oh, how miserable is this time") by the teacher and pastor Wilhelm Alardus (1605-1636) [26] from Krempe in Schleswig-Holstein portrays the decay of morality, including worldly pleasure (st. 2), expulsion of the true teachers (st. 7), egoism, covetousness, falsehood, and dissolution of friendship and family ties. (st. 11 and 13) "Emperor and King" succumb to the "Whore of Babylon." (st. 8) As a result, the "war cry" is sounded and "peace is endangered." (st. 12) In his instructions on the art of dying, the author's difficulty in translating his wordy accusations into stanzas with six lines (8 8 7 8 8 7) in plain iambic form is apparent. Vowel elisions had to provide assistance.

Dilliger's composition, a high-keyed aeolian (around A minor) underscores simplicity by metric shifting between a (quasi) three-two time and a six-four time. [27] Thus, the melody part acquires a terseness which counters individual word interpretation. A two-part symmetry sculptures itself around the seven-syllabled third verse. The key is "modulated" to (quasi) C major. The sixth verse is similarly constructed and ends augmented (with increased note values) in the principal key. The music "vibrates" and despite the sombre text, lends itself "to a wish of happiness and joy."

In contrast is Print F, entitled "Horribile spectaculum horum temporum" (1630), composed for the court procurator Dr. jur. Philipp Döbner. After his tranquil studies in the canton of Basle (1620/1621) [28], Döbner seems to have been particularly sensitive to the catastrophe of the German war. His wife supposedly died of the plague in 1633 which induced Meyfart to write moving verse. [29] For the text, Dilliger chose the fifteen stanza alexandrine poem "Ach was schrecklich Gesicht" ("Oh, what a dreadful face") by the teacher Josua Stegmann (1588-1632) from Rinteln in Westphalia. (Stegmann evidently only half-heartedly made use of Opitz' guidelines. [30]) Dilliger arranged four alexandrine lines into eight-lined strophes; he split the verse (= line fermatas) so that each unevenly-numbered short verse appears detached. Through the enjambment, each stanza appears to be set throughout. Since it is not the quarter note, but instead the half note which is declaimed, the music seems profuse (35 "beats" in contrast to 20 in the "Grewel" song and 16 in Besler's). The alternating rhythms wane to mere episodes ("Was wolt jhr hier doch thun").

Stegmann's imagery is rooted in the prophecies of the Old Testament and the eschatological visions of the Revelation of St. John. However, his representations also have theatrical qualities. These would later become even more evident in the work of his pupil Johann Rist in, for example, the poem "Das Friedewünschende Teutschland" (1647/1649). Stegmann's plagues appear in the order of war, pestilence, and starvation. Death, which is added by Rist, could appear as a silent "person" or be left out altogether. [31] The allegories of the older poet Stegmann lack all playfulness. Between the antagonistic forces, the friendly and the "cross" sister (Rist calls these "Love" / "Hope" and "Justice"), Stegmann places his confidence in the first, choosing "Mercy". His simple closing supplication (st. 15) is intended to be a true "Herzensseufzer," a genuine heart-felt sigh.

Although the "Horribile spectaculum" consequently infers a way to avoid fate, Dilliger turns to rather unusual means in composing the song in cantional setting: "With four voices in a rather sad modus, as determined by the text." Modus does not mean simply "mode" in this case (= phrygian mode, about E minor), but rather the way in which both sound and voice behave. "Something sad" is expressed not only through the solemn and slow-moving pace, but also in the melismata in the second verse. Here the phrygian cadence, instead of carrying (as one would expect) from the suspended major seventh F E to the major sixth F D, carries into an augmented sixth F D sharp, while the appropriate bass tone F sharp is delayed: a true textural monster. The second notable irregularity is found in the seventh verse with the soprano G sharp' carrying to bass C. The augmented twelfth portrays the plagues, the servants of Satan. The song acquires a madrigal-like manner.



V. Relation, Relation!

In 1626, Johann Hermann Schein, cantor of the Thomas School in Leipzig, published a collection of three-part songs in concerted style ("auff Italian-Villanellischen Invention"), the "Musica boscareccia" or "Waldliederlein". The fourth song in the second part of the collection was one of the most well-known. [32] A slightly "improved" version of this song (it had been adapted for secular use and parodied) was also included in a collection of secular texts called "Zeit-Vertreiber" (no year, n. 182). The song's success can be explained by its origin as both a news-conveying song and a love song. Its ostentatious character provided an especially effective "invitation to listen." [33] The verse form itself - six iambic lines as in Dilliger's "Alardus" composition - served as "one of the most popular tail rhyme strophes" since the political song of the fifteenth-century. [34] King Gustavus Adolphus' 1631 battle song "Verzage nicht, o Häuflein klein" ("Falter not, oh little band") by Johann Fabricius with melody by Michael Altenburg, also features this structure. Schein even imitates the news-conveying character of the song: the first four bars survive the sound of the major third above G. The first soprano as the carrier of melody excitedly declaims in D'' and ends its "psalmody" in a comma leap to the minor third, whereupon the actual composition begins.

Of the approximately forty songs about the battle near Breitenfeld, close to Leipzig, on September 7/17, 1631 [35], one can clearly be identified as composed by Schein. An otherwise unknown theology student was the author of the text. [36] The call "Relation, Relation" which was originally meant only for the first verse, opens all of the twenty stanzas of this "Triumphus Sueco-Saxonicus." The song becomes a sacred song in the last three stanzas, where prayer and supplication are addressed and Luther's "Feste Burg" is suggested (st. 19).

The poetic imitation of Schein's "Liebeskampf" is limited here to the proposed music (the "tone"), the strophic form, and the call. Johann Röder, the priest and poet in Buttstädt near Weimar more decidedly nears the poetic model in his "Dancklied für den erlangten edlen Frieden" (1648) ("Thanksgiving song for the achieved noble peace"). [37] In this piece, the number of stanzas is maintained (= six), the call sounds only at the beginning, and references to the text resound. In the second stanza, for example, the entire first verse is adopted ("Diâ ist gegangen also zu"). The first and the fourth stanzas bear strong resemblance to traditional composition. From Cupid, the god of love, comes Mars, the god of war; from the bride Filli come the fields which the farmer can finally prepare - thanks to the help of God. III's

In order to make the new composition easy to sing for the simple believer, Röder dispenses with Schein's music and for this strophic form, demands the almost obligatory melody, the old baptismal song "Kommt her zu mir, spricht Gottes Sohn." [38] This melody (sung as a Lindenschmied note [39]) seems to have had an inherently "communicative" character and was perhaps already in Schein's mind when he wrote his "Waldliedlein." [40]