Good and trusted friends, well versed in the ways of the world, have often told me that to undertake a long and expensive journey one should have more than just one reason.

Well, by the standards of these friends I am doing fine, for to accept Dr. Hoelty-Nickel’s kind invitation to attend this seminar I even had more than two reasons. First of all, the invitation meant a welcome opportunity to revisit Valparaiso University, where in the past decade I have had several teaching assignments, and which is also my alma mater, since it was at this campus that I received my honorary doctor’s degree. Secondly, this time I was to be permitted to bring along my choir, the Utrecht Motet Society, which on numerous past occasions when I was staying here wished it could drop in to verify my alibi for not attending rehearsals. And thirdly—though this may sound more like an excuse than like a bona fide reason—this visit would offer an opportunity to do something in the way of promoting the idea of international or interdenominational cooperation in the field of music—a matter which for the past 12 years has been not a mere hobby but rather a heartfelt concern of mine, stemming straight from my conviction formed in numerous fact-finding trips throughout Europe and the United States that international cooperation among church musicians simply has to come about. And looking back on all my experience in this country, I find that I have every reason to believe that this present meeting will provide a most fertile ground for promoting this ideal of mine.

To begin with: this seminar is organized as an international seminar for church music, attended not only by numerous Americans but also by quite a few Europeans. And furthermore: the very topic to which this seminar is dedicated is suggestive of the benefits to be derived from discussions on an international level, for this aptly chosen and highly significant topic rightly characterizes Lutheran church music—such as we know it, serve it, and love it—as a turbulent heritage from the Reformation. In other words, as something wholly opposed to what many people expect church music to be or believe that it should be—and also as the exact opposite of what Roman Catholic church music used to be until the Second Vatican Council. For Catholic church music in its traditional form as governed by its traditional intention actually gloried in constituting a unique species of music, an isolated musica sacra, a musical style all by itself, distinctly shaped by a variety of ecclesiastical laws and principles and therefore recognizable all over the world. Incidentally, Catholic church musicians nevertheless have been internationally organized for a long time already, for the simple reason that the Catholic Church is an international institution itself.

Now before going into the problems and aspects, the advantages and the necessity of organized international cooperation, let us first examine the question whether the turbulent development of Lutheran church music was an effect of Luther’s attitude toward music and its place in church and liturgy, that is, of his theological views on the nature and essence of music, or whether it was brought about through the liberation, in the wake of the Reformation, of church music from control by the church, its councils, pastors, and congregations, so that its turbulent development would have to be ascribed to incompetence on the part of turbulent musicians. It is of vital importance that this question be conclusively settled before we embark on international cooperation or on establishing ecumenical contacts with other churches, After all, if the latter possibility I mentioned were the correct one, hence if the turbulent church music heritage of the Lutheran Church were the result of an uncontrolled or erroneous development, then those other churches would be perfectly right in suggesting—as they undoubtd1y would—that we first clean up our own mess.

I don’t think, however that I need to assure you at length that the turbulent church music heritage of the Lutheran Church in both past and present is not the result of a wild development nor the product of anyone’s freebooting but rather the purposeful consequence of Luther’s Reformation, which not only in doctrine and liturgy but also in music was theologically oriented. To put it in the outstanding words of Dr. Oskar Söhngen, who many years ago was my teacher in liturgy at the Berlin School for Church Music:

Although Luther was anything but a reactionary in church life, anything but a ruthless renewer of the church, his discovery of the real treasure of the church, namely the holy Gospel, nevertheless caused him to change or even upset many a traditional matter or custom. Thus he replaced a dead language, Latin, by the living language of the simple believers, and instead of a restrained type of singing—Gregorian chant, which in itself he liked very much—he introduced the exuberant folk song, the congregational hymn, as the means for the people to give expression to their faith and adoration. And it was this radical change of the chief musical language of the church which tipped the scales. Replacing musica ecclesiastica by musica vulgara proved to be a fundamental and historic decision. This, as we know, did not become apparent right away—think, for example, of what Musculus wrote 400 years ago—yet it revealed itself slowly but surely as time progressed. And the secret of this transformation is, at bottom, no secret at all: whereas Gregorian chant, introverted as it was, shunned polyphony, knowing that it could only lose by it, the new hymn of the Reformation, being more striking and rhythmical in nature, actively sought it, realizing that it could only win by it.

And so it happened that the congregational hymns of the Reformation, after first having strengthened the people in giving expression to their faith, eventually even destroyed the traditional structure of the Mass, rapidly becoming the cantus firmus of a great many motets, the axis of a variety of still newer forms and styles, and in the end even the backbone of major compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach and numerous other masters, including contemporary ones.

Of course, as we all know, Luther did not drop plainchant altogether, just as he did not abolish the Latin language completely. But this does not alter the main point: the basic trend of Luther’s work, the fundamental result of his reform efforts in church music, was that he gave music a fresh start and provided it with a new means of expression. And we only need to look at the great history of Lutheran church music to realize that this restoration of musical freedom, this reinstatement of music in its proper rights, including the right of assimilation and adaptation, meant nothing less than reopening the door of church music to the wide world of music as a whole and conferring upon church music the power of wide variety—a variety stretching from Walther and Ducis to Buxtehude and Bach, from Schütz and Schein to Pepping and Distler, from the motet to the cantata, from the chorale prelude to the concerto, and also (it should by no means be overlooked) from the German to the Italian style, from the old Dutch forms to the English chant, and from Swedish to American church music.

In short, then, we find that church music as it has been created by the cantors and composers of the various Lutheran churches, as it has been preserved for us throughout a turbulent yet rich history, and as it continues to be written to this very day by contemporary composers is anything but a stylistically limited or nationally circumscribed phenomenon. On the contrary, it is nothing less than a worldwide, nearly boundless form of activity, a thoroughly and perfectly international phenomenon which keeps innumerable musicians all over the world busy, introducing various types of liturgy into worship and enriching the lives of millions of people in search of truth and consolation.

Here we are approaching another point, another aspect of Lutheran church music and a first reason why international discussions among church musicians are both desirable and necessary. For all its international variety, Lutheran church music, precisely because it is church music, has always manifested and must continue to manifest a surprising degree of homogeneity, thus introducing a remarkable degree of unity into its basic variety. This unity lies in what constitutes its very heart, in an attribute which we might call its nature, its real essence, something which cannot be discovered through conventional musical analysis (just as nobody can prove by mere biological analysis the existence of man’s soul) but which nevertheless constitutes its determinant factor, its deepest substance, its third dimension, the quality which actually makes church music out of music and which elevates the best music existing to the dignity of music of the church.

Everybody here will understand what I mean. In his music, Heinrich Schütz, “the composer of the Bible,” employs all the musical styles of his epoch, even assimilating the latest Italian forms, while his Christian mind functioned in all of this as a melting pot, thus enabling him to fill those new forms with the outflow of his own will and heart and thus create music capable of giving comfort to his bereaved contemporaries, music which to this very day is recognized as a Christian profession of faith expressed in musical terms. Or to use another famous example, we all know what is meant by the third dimension, the soul of Lutheran church music, when we are listening to Bach, who in his church cantatas used the da capo aria, in his organ works (including his organ chorales) the sarabande and other French forms, and in his Passion According to St. Matthew even the dramatic style of the Italian opera, yet knowing in each and every one of these assimilations how to preserve his own message. For in the deepest strata of his music there glows a spark which even today electrifies every person with a fine ear for music and with a receptive heart in which questions of life and death, of belief and unbelief are vital questions.

Now it is this feature of Lutheran church music, its mystery, which unites its various forms and internationally different styles and which therefore should also unite church musicians, coordinating their thinking about these matters and merging their efforts to penetrate into this mystery.

One thing is certain even now: this specific detail of church music, its unique “plus” which escapes the criteria of music theory, cannot be assessed by aesthetic standards either, nor can it even be approximated by mere philosophical reasoning, for—as was aptly recognized by Thomas Mann—it is “a thoroughly theological matter” (eine hochtheologische Angelegenheit). And this brings us back to Luther, his Reformation of 450 years ago and his theology, in which there was room for music because music was an integral part of it.

If we were to list this important matter: the study of the relationship between theology and music, among the objectives to be pursued by church musicians through well-organized and regular international cooperation, this would mean that we church musicians would undertake an important job—a most important job of worldwide significance, since at this very moment there are new developments under way in music all over the world which tend to set music farther and farther apart from any other phenomenon and from any other engagement, thus making it revert to the atmosphere of l'art pour l'art and to a status of absolute autonomy. Although lack of time prevents me from going further into the various aspects of this problem and this trend, it is my firm belief—a belief which a great many friends of mine in various countries have been sharing for a quite some time—that we as church musicians, as Christian creative artists living in a confused world, yet realizing our position and our tasks among our fellowmen and therefore playing an active part in the Lutheran Church in which we can watch the effects of good, “engaged” music, are under a solemn obligation to raise our voices in concert and to declare publicly and jointly that present-day humanity just cannot go on living with music devoid of any tendency, of spiritual contents, and of a message able to fill people with courage, joy, strength, and consolation.

Now please don’t get me wrong. I am by no means agitating against modern music, of which I have always been a convinced advocate. Nor am I agitating against experimenting in music, against new forms of twelve-tone music, electronic music, or anything along those lines. On the contrary, I am convinced that experimenting in music is something we need, something which must undoubtedly go on—but only go on, I believe, inside the studies of composers (or, at best, among circles of experts), at least as long as the experiments have not yet yielded artistic profits in the form of a truly good and useful new musical style. Speaking as a church musician, I am also sure that a sterilization of music, its disengagement from all other ideas, in particular from the Biblical message, which always was its principal source of inspiration, would mean a fundamental impoverishment of music, would make it lifeless and soulless, and would cause a great rift to spring up again between new music and church music. And this is the very thing which we, all of us together, could prevent by publicly calling attention to the existing danger, both to music as a whole and to church music.

In mentioning international action of this nature, I do not, by the way, mean to say that this is what I consider the most important, let alone the most urgent, task to be solved by organized international cooperation. What is needed first is a thorough discussion on an international level of all aspects of this problem.

Even if this discussion were initially limited to the main problems existing in our professional field, it would still cover a wide variety of subjects. One of these subjects I raised earlier in my essay when I spoke of the heart of Lutheran church music, its third dimension, the quality which is in the focus of today’s theology. Now what does the recognition of the presence of such a third dimension in existing compositions mean to the present-day composer anxious to write new church music? To what extent would it be possible for him to put some Christian or missionary substance into his score? What kind of musical elements could he use for it?

I am aware that formulating the question in this way means oversimplifying it grossly. However, I feel it would be a good idea for us as church musicians to approach the important problems involved in this question from a direction opposite that used by the theologians, for the simple reason that music is a matter close to our heart, a matter over whose artistic soundness we have to watch, much as we are interested in theology’s confrontation with music. In history we have on the one hand the most exciting examples of church music with a Christian message impressively wrapped up in a pure artistic package. Just remember Heinrich Schütz and his astonishing handling of decisive words in the Biblical text of his compositions. Or take Johann Sebastian Bach and his famous so-called “tone symbolism” (Tonsymbolik) or—to cite a more recent example too—the often surprising and significant quotations from hymns in the works of Max Reger. But on the other hand we have also the most terrible examples from the music of the 19th century, when church music deteriorated into a kind of “religious music” as a result of the efforts of numerous second- and third-rate composers to camouflage their artistic impotence behind an abundance of “pious feelings” expressed in pathetic sounds which can no longer (if ever they could) help or convert one single sinner and which can only disgust serious church musicians.

A discussion on an international level of church music in all its aspects, spiritual as well as, shall we say, material-musical, would at long last make it clear to all concerned that church music can only then be full-fledged church music (hence possess an evangelical, missionary core) if it is at the same time full-fledged music, and if our churches allow it to be and want to have it as music in the real and full sense of the word.

The reason for my saying this is that after all there is a real need for an international pronouncement on such an international matter as church music. Also, the quality level of church music should not only be the personal, individual concern of each one of us but also our joint concern, the object of international deliberations through which we jointly seek to raise the standards of church music within the church, to set a high ideal in all our churches, and also to raise the consideration given to, and the prestige enjoyed by, church music all over the world, so that it will be recognized again as a serious form, indeed one of the most serious forms of music.

Now, I know full well that so far I have only enumerated “lofty” topics for future international discussions. Too lofty, perhaps, in the opinion of those who share my familiarity with the actual situation and the standards currently existing in various countries. Wouldn’t it be better for a project of international cooperation to deal first with a few simpler and more practical things? Shouldn’t it begin at the bottom and only later decide just what it can and cannot handle?

Now we are getting to the point. For this is precisely what I think myself, and for a very good reason. Indeed, though I believe—and always will believe—that subjects of the type I just enumerated should be the main topics for any international discussion, its basic and principal starting points, the dome as it were, under which all other, lesser problems will find their ordered places, I also believe, in fact I have even become thoroughly convinced in many years of experience, both disappointing and rewarding, that this international discussion will have to start in a wholly different and far simpler way.

Please permit me to explain. I am sure that some of you can still recall another, earlier attempt at bringing about a certain measure of international cooperation, ecumenical Lutheran cooperation, in the field of church music. Although this happened some time ago, some of you may be familiar to some extent with the way this worked out.

This first attempt was undertaken in 1957, when the Lutheran Church in Holland celebrated the introduction of a new liturgy and a new hymn book, and when my friend, the Reverend Hofmann, chairman of the large Bavarian Society of Lutheran Church Choirs, and I conceived the idea of using this occasion to organize an international meeting of Lutheran church musicians in Amsterdam, where the celebrations were to take place. Our idea was to find out whether the fruitful, binational German-Dutch cooperation we had instituted and which had already been functioning satisfactorily for several years might now be expanded on a truly international scale, since we had discovered that questions we were worrying about were of topical interest in many other churches and countries as well. So we sent out invitations to just about all the world, arranged for some lecture recitals, church music performances and panel discussions, and solicited reports on the situation and development of church music in various countries and churches.

The results we obtained were nothing less than surprising and most encouraging. Though our invitations had been sent out at rather short notice, this first ecumenical Lutheran conference on church music was attended by church musicians and representatives from 11 different countries: such European countries as Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Holland, Iceland, Italy, Norway, and Sweden, while in addition we had the very great pleasure of being able to welcome one participant from the USA. This, of course, was Dr. Theodore Hoelty-Nickel, who soon became our partner and who, incidentally, was the man who often admonished me to think up at least two reasons—or excuses—for embarking on a long and expensive journey. No doubt his own trip at the time was in keeping with this principle. The meeting became a big success, even acquiring particular significance (by our standards of that time) by the presence of an official observer of the Lutheran World Federation.

After the meeting, which continued for several days and culminated in a well-attended church service in an ancient Lutheran church in Amsterdam with festive music sub communione, a committee was set up and instructed to go ahead with the project by working out basic outlines for continued cooperation. The committee, composed of Dr. Nickel, the Reverend Hofmann, and myself, did indeed go ahead: it met several times at different places and it worked out the basic outlines in consultation even with non-members of the committee who had taken a great interest in the project. After a few years a second congress was held in Oslo, Norway; the outlines were drafted, printed, and put into circulation, and everything seemed to be set and ready for the long-awaited foundation of the Lutheran World Conference for Church Music.

But believe it or not, all of a sudden all sorts of trouble arose. It turned out that we were using identical names for different concepts, and in the end the whole carefully constructed edifice collapsed like a house of cards.

I am not going to tire you here with all the details of this breakdown, what actually caused it, who was at fault, who made the principal mistakes, or who did what wrong.

Undoubtedly one of the major errors was our decision—a regretable one, alas—to make the Lutheran World Federation a party to our plans. For, to begin with, the LWF, already afflicted with enough headaches in other new movements and in formulating its reactions in various countries with different church systems, was in no position whatsoever to assume this additional burden. Again—as we discovered to our regret—the Lutheran World Federation had in mind an organization in which the ideals and problems of the church musicians would be discussed, taken in hand, and acted on not by the church musicians themselves but rather—as is normal within the LWF—by church officialdom, that is, by the council presidents, bishops, and even archbishops, regardless of whether they are music-minded or not, regardless even of whether they know a single thing about music or not.

What was not a mistake, by the way, was our working out and publishing the outlines I mentioned for well-considered cooperation in the field of church music. These outlines were partly taken over by the Lutheran Society for Worship, Music and the Arts in America in the preamble to its own statutes. I still remember the historical day in the fall of 1957 when I had the honor of being present as the only foreign participant at the founding meeting of this society at the University of Chicago, and I am proud of the fact that to that extent I may count myself among the founders of this successful organization.

Since the breakdown occurred, we have learned a great deal. Disappointed though we were, we have learned that we are not above making mistakes. And in spite of everything, we kept our eyes fixed on our goal, and we continued to believe that this great goal well justified the undertaking of efforts to rally the Lutheran church musicians, those musicians who have so many identical interests and so many things in common, the same theology of music, the same liturgy, the same great past of Lutheran church music—to rally them, I say, into a powerful movement dedicated to the defense and promotion of Lutheran church music as a joyful kind of music and a missionary power in the world. And so, after the untimely funeral of the Lutheran World Conference for Church Music, Dr. Hoelty-Nickel, Dekan Friedrich Hofmann, and I went right on organizing congresses and conferences, meetings and seminars in Europe as well as America, in Valparaiso and Herford, in the Hague and in Stuttgart—and we do not regret having done so, for this time we began with a mutual exchange of information. Now we discovered how much we could learn from one another. We learned that we were moving in the right direction. We learned, too, that we needed some help. We decided to become what we actually already were: a committee for church music, and it is our intention to expand this committee today and to make plans for our continued advance in the years to come.

From The Musical Heritage of the Church, Volume VII (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1970). 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.