The end of the baroque age brought a final decision upon a struggle that the historian of church music must assume to have been inborn, as it were, in the nature and spirit of the time. The decision was disastrous to church music. During the baroque, Italy gave vent to an almost excessively secular spirit that seems to have been the very guide of man in the age. Italy set the tone in the music of the period. But all Italian baroque musicians who composed sacred works made themselves difficult to be understood: if they wrote works of religious nature, they wrote in the style of the Palestrina School, obsolete and vastly outdated; if they wrote compositions in keeping with their own time, they chose the operatic style, with complete disregard of the religious character. Either religious and antiquated, or contemporaneous and non-religious: this alternative all baroque musicians faced. You may start with Monteverdi and proceed to Alessandro Scarlatti or even to Durante, who still composed a Missa à la Palestrina, and you will always find this double-faced church music, the two features wholly incompatible with one another. Even at the beginning of the classic epoch a composer such as Michael Haydn is by no means free from the conflict. We all know that during the baroque period it is Bach who became its most tragic victim, the conflict being related in Germany partly to the lack of institutions appropriate for the style of the epoch. There was scarcely anyone to understand the religious implications of his work, which to us have absolute rather than historically relative values. The procedure of the administration at St. Thomas should have been a sinister warning that, if heeded, would have saved Bach from many an affliction. Although acting according to the severe admonition that the cantor elected to St. Thomas should never venture to introduce operatic mannerisms into the church, the municipal council knowingly turned first to composers who made famous names for themselves as operatic musicians.

No wonder, then, that the continual predominance of the secular spirit as well as of profane expressions in the arts during the baroque epoch did not allow church music to enter a phase of being reconsidered in all its needs and characteristics. No matter how deep our veneration of Bach may be, historically he was a musician most tragic in isolation, unique—not only because of the incomparable scope of his genius, but because of the religious aim indigenous to his work. And by 1750, the approximate end of the baroque music, anti-religious feelings, or, more correctly, religious indifference had its way. The epoch of classic music began with such an indifference in matters of religious quantities in music, and even the conflict that marked all activities along that line during the baroque now lost its edge. A reconsideration of church music and its style lay entirely beside the interests of the classic musician. His attitude toward it was individualistic. Church music on the whole did not contain any problem to him who established the foundation of classic music in other media. A reform of church music was to him no matter of concern.

We have to be aware of this situation fully to understand [Johann Gottfried] Herder’s (1744–1803) importance as well as the impact his ideas had had on the discussion of church music. For Herder fathered a new movement in church music which the spark of profound ideas set in motion to effect the most far-reaching consequences in idealistic thoughts, well-considered reform, and practical realization.

In his Maximen und Reflexionen über Kunst Goethe once said that "the two pivots around which all true music centers are the sacredness of church music on the one side, the gaiety of folk melodies on the other." It is as though Goethe had made this statement under the influence of Herder. For Herder’s work rests indeed on these two pillars in so far as it is related to music.

Historians of literature know of the unrivaled importance Herder has had as an innovator of all the concepts that concern the nature of folk music. Very little is known about the significance of Herder in the category of church music. A particularly essential discovery Herder made is to be derived from his profound search into the nature of the folk song; it casts light upon his view of music in general, his view of church music in particular. Music as a living force of human culture must not be valued exclusively under purely artistic, aesthetic aspects. On the contrary, aestheticism as a medium by which to assess music as an art may lead to a complete neglect of the primary, original elements of music. In other words, we must learn how to take musical forms as immediate expressions of man’s activities in his daily life. There was not much in the musical art of his time that would have allowed Herder to take such a view. He found many artistic achievements to be far remote from being expressive of acts in man’s life. In fact, it was the folk song alone whose various categories showed the making of music, the singing, as an outburst of man in relation to what he was doing and feeling.

The same, or a similar, but not as clear an aspect was held by Herder for church music. Inasmuch as he himself as a youth in his home had come to understand the singing of hymns, of sacred songs, to be part of his daily activities, so he wanted the larger issues of church music to be taken as acts of the religious life and not as phenomena of pure art.

We now may have no difficulty in recognizing the soundness of Herder’s statement; yet in his own time it must have come as an extraordinary utterance.

Together with the assumption that sacred music must maintain something apart from, or beyond, purely artistic aestheticism, Herder was well on the way to discover liturgy as the very source of all church music. This second discovery made his views still more extraordinary in his time. It had far-reaching implications. It meant nothing less than the thesis that music should not aim at being an art for its own sake. The goal should lie outside its own self. Herder struggled to find a new definition of music, a new end, consciously opposed to all that his immediate predecessors, the rationalists of the Enlightenment, had asserted. With his definition Herder offered the foundation of a new view of music to a generation to come after him, to the Romanticists. As an anti-rationalist Herder assumed that music reached beyond its own self, had a divine origin; according to its origin and nature it had the inner tendency to return to the source of its origin, to the divine. Music should, therefore, have the same object as religion itself: the eternal, which belief and contemplation aim to grasp. In the service of religion the music should become free from individuality, or better, from expressions of the individual. Thus Herder laid not only the ground for new metaphysics in music which the Romanticists with their keen sense for the irrational were eager to accept, to expand, and even to transform, Herder made—first theoretically—the juncture of liturgy and music possible again. That is to say: he put up the most important demand that any church music, or any style of church music, must be the result of the liturgy. Within the scope of the demand Herder established again a new end for church music. The answer to the fundamental question which end sacred music is to serve is as pure and simple as it always was when genuine church music has been created: the praise of the Lord. The attitude sacred music assumes for itself is derived from the end, and again the answer is simple and direct: Devotion must be the character of the music. And what must be the form of church music? It must show calm solemnity of motion, dignity, and purity of harmonies, avoidance of extraordinary, individualistic, expressive details; it must abide by impersonal laws.

We have anticipated these all-important, though general and abstract, definitions. We shall discover more of their peculiar significance when following the process of Herder’s arguments closely.

Herder had been concerned with the nature of church music from the time of his earliest years of study. In fact, his great teacher, Hamann in Königsberg, called the great Magus, or wise man, of the North, who had inspired him to search into the nature of folk music under the influence of the English, had in all likelihood laid a certain ground for the concepts of church music also. And when Herder, after his stay at Riga and Bückeburg, finally came to Weimar and entered the discussion of the subject in 1770 with a young and very gifted theologian, J. G. Müller of Gottingen, the ideas took on definite shape. Herder presented them in Briefe das Studium der Theologie betreffend (1780/1), the immediate results of the conversations with Müller. The ideas recur in Herder’s famous work Vom Geist der Hebräischen Poesie (1783), which has an additional treatise on music by Matthias Claudius, where for the first time Palestrina appears as the ideal of the renewal. They are further expanded in the essay on St. Cecilia (1793), which already contains the results of studies Herder had carried out in Italy. In addition to many individual essays we need not mention here, there are Adrastea and Kalligone, the most important treatises on art aestheticism, wherein Herder included the problems of church music. Taking all these works into account, we arrive at a clear picture of what Herder set forth as indispensable needs of church music. Many of the values Herder rediscovered have been drawn from history as the very source of knowledge. And the highest of these values is the unbreakable link between liturgy and music; or unbreakable it was in all periods when sacred music played the role of greatness. Basic in Herder’s concept is the truly Lutheran idea that the congregation forms the liturgy; the congregation to him is "a community, one and all-embracing, united by one spirit." And again, true to Luther, the congregation is taken to be the symbol of the liturgy. Hence all devotion has a significance above the individual. To quote from Kalligone: "It is devotion that raises man and the congregation beyond the expression through words and gestures; for to give vent to their feelings there remains nothing but the tones. True devotion is unconcerned with the individual person who sings; its tones come from heaven; devotion sings in man’s heart; the heart itself sings and plays." We should think we were reading a passage of Augustine, who in describing the power of religious music tells of man’s outburst into tones when words become insufficient. And we have no doubt that inasmuch as Augustine has derived this character of music from the singing of hymns and psalms, so Herder again recognized the original nature of the hymn. From these principal aspects Herder gathered the suggestions that involved a complete reform of Protestant liturgy, a movement that started with him, to be continued up to the time of Liliencron. What Herder had to say about church music is but a logical conclusion from anticipated principles, is a consequence in logical thought, yet deducted from historical reality.

Herder makes the plain and realistic statement: "The time of Christian church music has gone"; and he asks immediately in his position as a reformer: "What character must true church music have?" In keeping with the approach of a reformer, Herder tries to uncover the reasons for the disappearance of true church music. "Where is the decline? When did it start?" The answer is historical, but simple and short: Decline began together with the rise of individualism. Musically speaking, the individualism has manifested itself, first, by way of dramatic effects in conjunction with the opera, second, in the category of the Kirchenlied. The stylus a cappella, the stylus ecclesiasticus, bound to the choral motet of the sixteenth century gave way to the dramatic cantata of profane connotations. The choral motet, expressive of a group, of a community, was replaced by the individualistic cantata. The dramatic cantata, however, did not lead the listener to the contemplation of the meaning of the sacred text; it challenged him to admire art, sound, and passion. The human side, identical with the dramatic, intruded and pushed itself into the foreground. The individual solo voice in the stile concertante destroyed the choral community. The counterpoint as a medium of an idea had an end with Bach. The new musicians created forms expressive of the natural feelings of the individual; they made the composition to be "the confessions of their own hearts." That was the end. And in the category of the modern Kirchenlied a similar process took place. Once vigorous and majestic, an utterance of a united congregation, the Kirchenlied had now become a song full of feeble, individualistic sentimentalities. "I believe," says Herder, "that especially a well-known pious school in Germany is responsible for having started to emasculate and corrupt the Kirchenlied. That school toned it down to some sort of a musica camera [secular] with charming but sweetish melodies, full of tender sentiments and trifles; hence the Kirchengesang lost all its majesty that once controlled the entire congregation; instead, it became a toyish weakling."

In view of this characterization of a historical process, related to the secular music of opera and cantata and to the congregational song, Herder took as clear a stand as anyone can wish who concerns himself with matters of liturgy and music. But how is Herder to fit his views into the picture of baroque music? Are there not latent contradictions in his thesis? Indeed there are. They will be mentioned in due course.

If the concept of the liturgy is based on the congregation, and if sacred music must always be a direct outgrowth of the liturgy, any reform Herder will suggest must needs center around the relationship between music and congregation. The profound studies of the psalms and lyrics of the Old Testament as well as the literature of the hymns of the early Christian Church enabled him to recognize the musical nature of psalm and hymn and their importance to the congregation. Hence his categoric demand that "the song of praise, the hymn, must at all times be the basis of all sacred music." For the singing of the hymn is entirely identical with the manifestation of the community. And since Herder the theologian and historian of religion had come to realize that all decline was due to the predominance of individualism, the reform must aim at new activities of the congregation. Hence "the basis of all sacred music is the choir." With truly Lutheran understanding, Herder states with the words of the Scriptures: "A congregation must sing; and when two or three people come together, they form a congregation, together with all Christendom on earth." This argument is of special importance. For in so far as three people symbolize Christendom as a whole in the sense of the congregation, so the feelings expressed by the choir must stand for the feelings of all mankind Christian. Never should an individual person speak of himself. All feelings should always be generalized to a degree that all men have a share in them. The choir is capable of presenting all shades of such general feelings, as psalm and hymn are expressive of all and every situation man may ever encounter. Arias, duets, terzets, all allowing individualism, can never attain to primary rank in church music. The choir stands high above these soloistic forms, because it is a symbol of the congregation. Arias are used only for the sake of change. To quote Herder: "It lies in the nature of the matter that the choir hymns are interrupted by arias," for sacred music needs this kind of change. The arias are contemplative in the relation to the message of the choir; they are passive in contrast to the active confession of the choir; or they are even a challenge by which to call forth a new active part of the choir.

The next demand concerns the recitative. Herder finds the justification for it according to the tradition. "The recitatives in church music can never take any other place than that of the lessons." The musical nature lies in the declamatory prose of the Gospel. It should be maintained for the recitative of sacred music. But a few words selected from the lessons should be sufficient, since the congregation is familiar with the Biblical story; a few words, mere indications, and no complete and coherent narration. Above all, the recitative should avoid being descriptive, painting, realistic. No recitative, however picturesque the text, can ever be successful in painting or picturing the story. But music is capable of being fully expressive by taking a few suggestive words or passages as starting point, as stimuli. Herder put down an extraordinary idea. He strove after a new regulation between word and tone in church music. Since he assumed that the nature of music allowed only general, not specific, human expressions, he was opposed to all descriptive music. And any text whose character was based on realistic images would therefore be unfit for music. The text must be adapted to the music. A text designed to be put into music must be formed from the outset according to the general capacities of music.

From this thesis, to which we shall return, Herder drew certain conclusions as to the further characteristics of church music. "Sacred music should by no means be dramatic; it fails of its own purpose if the composer endeavored to make it so." Dramatized Biblical stories do not belong in the church; they can be used for private performances as devout cantatas. No individual—it may be Peter, John, or Mary—has the right to expression by gestures in front of the congregation. Their words should be the singing of all, allgemeiner Gesang. Every aria, duet, or terzet stands out from the whole; every syllable chosen by the poet or artist to show himself is detrimental to the effect of church music. Dramatic music and religious music exclude each other.

And then the final demand that church music should be "a unity, an entity from beginning to end of a service or feast, a unity inspired by one idea from the first tone to the last."

Some additional characterizations are to be found in Herder’s "Oratorio and Cantata," which he included in Adrastea of 1802. Here, Herder takes the oratorio to be genuine church music. To him the oratorio is entirely separated from the opera; for one significant reason: "The pure Grecian choir or the psalm and the hymn are the very model of the oratorio." The opera always needs action on the stage together with the tones. Where, however, poetry and music alone exercise their power, there the oratorio and the cantata originate.

And Herder places all expectations of a renewal on these two forms. Both the oratorio and the cantata occupied his mind throughout his life. In his earlier years he was attracted to the aspects and needs of church music in general. Before formulating all his ideas about the matter to a complete plan of reform, he immediately started out to provide the material for a church music to be reorganized. In his turn to the cantata as a musical category, he clearly thought in terms of the baroque age rather than of his own to become the classic epoch. From the very start Herder was retrospective with regard to this musical category or, better, conservative in his strong feeling for history and tradition. When he came to Riga, his ideas undoubtedly were encouraged by a man whose work was largely related to the past. The man was the composer Johann G. Müthel, one of the better among the last pupils of Johann Sebastian Bach. He became Herder’s composer in Riga. There Herder wrote the Pentecost cantata, poetically not quite in keeping with his ideas on the character of a text as we just have interpreted. For Herder used here—especially for the recitative—a descriptive form which he later rejected, full of the realism in images that had been a typical mark of the baroque style. He revised his poetry immediately. And none of the Bückeburg works show features of this kind. In them Herder made himself a poet for music. His language is so unusual that it is worth explaining. What we discover in his prose, particularly where he speaks about music, psalms, and hymns, can be found equally in his musical poetry. Herder indeed endeavored to form a musical language of his own, a high-pitched, tense, vigorous tone that is altogether characteristic of his style. He has the style of a missionary; whatever he speaks sounds like a sermon; it has an emotionally excited quality, somewhat exaggerative perhaps—permissible when spoken, less convincing when silently read. The style puts the words in a manner repetitive, stammering, abrupt. This occurs indeed in the recitatives: incomplete sentences, isolated words, uttered abruptly, often senseless if viewed under aspects of logical structure, but strongly suggestive if viewed merely as media for music. The composer who followed Herder closely as author of Die Kindheit Jesu and Die Auferstehung Lazarus’ was Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, the so-called Bückeburg Bach.

But, above all, Herder maintained the liturgical connection for the cantata. In this he became the true relative of Johann Sebastian Bach. The indispensable liturgical quality of the cantata was based upon the texts of the Bible; that is, the text of the poet should be drawn from the Bible and the sermon, and thus become a de Tempore composition; second, it should give the choir the rank of dominance to stand for the congregation; third, and most important, the chorale should again be the symbol of the congregation.

Whether Herder formulated these ideas under the influence of Friedrich Bach acting as an intermediary to make Herder acquainted with Johann Sebastian Bach, or whether he arrived independently at Bach’s form of the cantata on the strength of his own liturgical considerations, is open to question. I believe that Herder was rather original in his aspects.

The oratorio appeared to Herder as genuinely sacred music because of the Biblical text as well as the significance of choral composition. He turned out to be an enthusiast of Handel’s work, whose Messiah he translated and brought to performance in Weimar. Of course, the oratorio could never become a religious composition in any liturgical sense. Yet Herder found it to be an adequate medium for religious feelings.

The third form of church music should again be the motet, with a liturgical implication in that it was to be a de Tempore composition. And for this Herder did not have the encouragement of his own time or of the period of Johann Sebastian Bach. For Bach’s motets were occasional works, and during Bach’s time the motet as de Tempore composition was an antiquated appearance, as, for instance, in Leipzig the Florilegium Portense provided the motets needed for the service.

Herder made two discoveries. The first involved the character of church music in general: it should have a slow, solemn tone; it should be the vehicle of polyphony in contrapuntal style. The solemnity of style was found by Herder in Palestrina’s work and the entire school around and after Palestrina. Herder became the champion for the revival of Palestrina, wherein the Romanticists were to follow him. We always attributed to the Romanticists proper what came to be a revival of the sixteenth-century vocal music. Herder seems to have been the originator, the spiritus rector, responsible for what became a regular movement, chiefly as a result of his initiative.

Herder arrived at his concepts of church music first of all by linking all musical activities to the liturgy. The Lutheran liturgy controlled all his musical views. And by his profound knowledge of the very nature of liturgy he made his discoveries and definitions of church music. Second, it was the history that gave Herder the impulse. One thing is hardly to be separated from the other. He went to Italy to study church music. It was a journey historians of literature are said to have difficulties in explaining. We may interpret it as research in church music, which in fact he carried out mainly in Rome; thus the journey could have meaning.

But Herder—like nearly all the Romanticists after him—came in touch with only one side of church music: the age of Palestrina and those phases of baroque church music in which composers imitated, or tried to imitate, the style of the sixteenth-century choral music. Herder hardly knew the other side of church music in the baroque that appeared with all the features of theatrical, operatic composition. Since this rift cut through the work of nearly every individual composer, it was possible to determine the character of their compositions to be predominantly in the manner of the sixteenth century polyphony, if the observer was—for one reason or another—not aware of the existence of the operatic style in religious works of the same composer. This is exactly what occurred to Herder. He knew merely the works written in the style of Palestrina. When once, in St. Cecilia (1793), he exclaimed: "Saint Cecilia, what wonderful and hearty tones did you give to your favorites: Leo, Durante, Palestrina, Marcello, Pergolesi," he had in mind their choral music of conservative nature. And, accordingly, Herder characterized the style of church music to be solemn, dignified, slow, impersonal, and non-individualistic. Drawn from the choral music of the sixteenth century, these characteristics were taken to be indicative of "old" music. The term "old" became identical with religious. This the Romanticists took over from Herder, to maintain it for the entire movement of revival. And here we come to the far-reaching influences Herder’s concepts of church music have exercised: the beginning of Romanticism and its return to historical music. While we have often been made to believe that Romanticism, on account of its general relation to the Middle Ages, had suddenly discovered old music, it is Herder who fathered the relation—because of his understanding of liturgy.

Shortly after Herder had published some of his prominent works that contained the discussion of church music, his influence made itself felt on the side of literature and of practical organization as well. The literary influences can clearly be singled out, since often the writers themselves admit their indebtedness to Herder. In the way of spreading Herder’s ideas abroad much had been done by Reichardt, who carried Herder’s mission further in church music and in the field of folk songs. Even a novelist such as Heine, through and through sensualist in his approach to art, drew many a characterization of church music from Herder, especially in his novel Hildegard von Hohenthal (1795). And in his Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst, Schubart referred to Herder as well as to Reichardt. The Romanticists seized most eagerly upon Herder’s work and carried his ideas into the aesthetics as a branch of philosophy, as August Wilhelm Schlegel had done in his Vorlesungen of 1801; or they presented them in form of poetical, novelistic subjects, as Tieck had done in his Phantasus; or they took them as a basis of historical studies, as Forkel had shown in his musical history of 1801; or they accepted them as an element of primary importance for the formulation of the general ideas on the nature of music, as especially Wackenroder had demonstrated. Wackenroder became the discoverer of romantic, medieval Nuremberg and Albrecht Dürer; so in the field of church music he became— under the influence of Herder—the advocate of the Palestrina School. Abbé Vogler, whose romantic organ contributed much to the loss of sacred music in the sense of Herder, nevertheless appeared to be a spokesman for Herder’s ideas. In 1786 he praised the music of the Palestrina School as the only possible form of church music. The same man who introduced the romantically colored orchestral organ said in 1786: "The effervescent orchestra, the impassionate tempo in performance, the abrupt character in our instrumental music have become too familiar with us; together with these modern features, the essential nature of church music gets lost; so does the faculty to compose for voices." In truly Herder fashion he admonished the modern composers not to use instruments when they compose church music; they should take Palestrina and the old musicians as models. Their works "do not grow old; they will be the same a hundred years from now what they were two hundred years past." This contradiction in Vogler gives evidence of the power the idea of church music which Herder conveyed to his contemporaries has had.

Herder wrote his famous essay on St. Cecilia in 1793; she was presented as the personification of old church music. So Kleist wrote his short story with the knowledge of Herder’s essay. And Kleist, in his turn, exercised his influences on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s brilliant story Sanctus.

An effect of great importance is noticeable in Leipzig. There the Thomaskantor Hiller published a very significant essay with the programmatic title "What Is True Church Music?" (1789.) And at the same time he founded at St. Thomas a small group of singers, a revival of the Kantorei to a degree, devoted exclusively to the performance of old music in the church: a foundation that has lived on ever since under the name of the "Motet." Rochlitz brought his essay on Palestrina in 1810 and published his collection of prominent vocal compositions to provide the material needed for choral singing. We know of the enormous effect this movement had on historical research: Thibaut’s On the Purity of the Muscial Art of 1825; Proske, Fux, Kiesewetter, von Winterfeld, and many other scholars of great distinction. One of the finest works on the question of church music directly influenced by Herder must still be mentioned: E. T. A. Hoffmann’s magnificent essay "Alte und Neue Kirchenmusik" of 1814. Though Protestant, like Herder, Hoffmann places Palestrina, the "father of all music," in the center of church music. "The sublime, simple style of Palestrina is the truly dignified expression of a mind inspired by the most intense devotion; the church is its true and sole home." An interesting, but also important turn. For Hoffmann denies that the concert hall or any private institution is the right place where to perform the music. The concert hall undermines the very purpose of church music and admits an aspect of purely aesthetical nature which is wholly opposite to church music: the aspect of l’art pour l’art. Church music must, therefore, be made in church, and there only, Protestant and Catholic alike; for church music must always be the outgrowth of the cult, of the liturgy. Hoffmann goes even so far as to suggest that the rehearsals should also take place in a sacred, not profane location, lest the profanity of the surroundings affect the performance and falsify the work. Hoffmann showed extreme interest in the history of music and pleaded vigorously for historical studies, himself a student of the treasures in the Dresden Library. New editions of old compositions should be circulated among the public to arouse concern with church music. He also made brilliant and profound comparisons between works of the Palestrina School and the baroque age on the one side, the classic period of Haydn and Mozart on the other. But Hoffmann was a skeptical and relentless mind. He is fully aware that the style or manner of writing is only a secondary matter. The very cause of the modern decline lies considerably deeper. In fact, the frivolously rationalistic Enlightenment had deprived man of his capacity to believe; faith being destroyed, church music became an impossibility. No true sacred music, he asserts, was ever composed without religious faith. What can one do in a time that shows at best religious indifference? What should one say to a young composer who wants to compose church music? The only possible and sincere advice lies in history. Let him study works great in the history of church music; let him study the true medium of church music: counterpoint; let him delve into those works that should convey to him what is rightly religious in musical terms; and let him hope for the best that, together with the discoveries he makes, the basis, faith, will be re-established.

One who had absorbed the spirit of both Herder and Hoffmann should be mentioned last: Richard Wagner. There is an outline Wagner had drawn up in Dresden for the renewal of Catholic church music at the Court Chapel. What does he—the Protestant—propose?

First: Palestrina’s works and those of his pupils represent the epoch of highest standards and greatest perfection of church music. Second: The quality of church music depends on the vocal choir and the organ. Third: Historical research should unearth older music to make it known through new editions. Fourth: A school of choral music should be founded. Fifth: This would probably lead to the revival and to what Wagner called the "restitution of a truly sublime religious church music." Even women and Protestants should be admitted, Wagner added in his Memorandum for the Catholic court.

And the list of facts, altogether results of Herder’s ideas, is here by no means complete. The activities were so numerous and so lively that they cannot all be enumerated; they affected research as well as performance. But let us review the significance of Herder:

The ideas, born in Herder, involved church music and liturgy simultaneously; Herder spoke as theologian, historian, reformer, and musician. His ideas caused a movement and were carried far into the public through the media of literature, poetry, and philosophy. This gave his ideas a breadth they would otherwise not have achieved. Therefore they caused a general awareness of needs and problems concerning the nature of church music. Since Herder’s own time had no acceptable church music, the past had to provide it—not for the sake of knowing the old music, but to relate it anew to the service. Research came into play, again not for its own sake. Herder made his successors conscious of the relation between music and service. With his plea, there came the immediate demand for practical organizations. Since the choral music was declared to be the true Protestant church music and since the current style had abolished the choral organizations, new foundations were in immediate need. From the "Motet" in Leipzig to the Singakademie in Berlin, from the Institute of Church and School Music to the Berlin Domchor (1842), there is a growing expansion of choral institutions. Since Herder, also the question of a reform of the liturgy through music has been kept alive: alive with the Romanticists, alive in the Berlin movement in which Frederick William IV had a share, alive down to Rochus von Liliencron. The revival of church music in the Lutheran Church throughout the nineteenth century has been a matter of the liturgy. It is, in fact, a movement that was intended to produce a reform of the Protestant liturgy by means of music.

We must ask ourselves whether or not the most important movement of church music in not so remote a past holds principles and precepts valuable to us. The question presents itself. For church music has still not produced a genuine style of composition that can be regarded as a direct outgrowth of the Lutheran liturgy. We do not have the music, we do not have works that are of ourselves and of the Lutheran Church as well. The compositions that embody the Lutheran spirit are still those of the past. Hence the problem Herder has posed still holds true today. I believe that the situation today is precisely the same as the one that made Herder speak of the nature of church music. The movement he caused held failure and success. The study of his ideas has, I trust, decisive bearing on what we now do and think.

From The Musical Heritage of the Church, Volume II (Valparaiso, Ind.: Valparaiso University, 1946). Reprinted by permission of Valparaiso University.

For personal use only.