This volume marks the tenth anniversary of the Church Music Seminar of Valparaiso University. Begun in 1944 under the scholarly leadership of Professor Theo. Hoelty-Nickel, this annual gathering of leaders in the music of the Church has made lastingly significant contributions to an understanding of the magnificent musical heritage of the Lutheran Church. Nor has it neglected other strains of melody in the history of Christendom. Consistently it has sought and found and glorified the good, the true, the beautiful in the musical response of man to the fact of his redemption and the hope of his heaven.

Surely few activities are more relevant in our dissonant time. A singing man—singing of faith and God and love—will probably be a believing man. His heart will know what the melodies say and, soon or late, that knowledge will be translated into life.

Our colleagues in the Department of Music at Valparaiso University and their co-workers are therefore engaged in an important work. It is doubtful that any Church can argue its way out of the heresy and shoddiness and sentimentality of the twentieth century. Perhaps God will give us a day when we can sing and play our way out of the swampland of our time—returning by way of worship and song to the great truth of our redemption and the eternal verities of the living God. For such a day our musical and liturgical scholars are preparing. More power to them!

O. P. Kretzmann
The Feast of the Epiphany, 1954

From The Musical Heritage of the Church, Volume IV (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1954). Copyright Concordia Publishing House. Printed by permission. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Concordia Publishing House.