Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications

by Robin A. Leaver

Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2007. 499 pp. $32.00. ISBN 978-0-8128-3221-4.

BECAUSE MORE HAS BEEN written about Martin Luther than about any other historical figure except Jesus Christ, it is doubly difficult to write a new book about him. First, one must find a part of Luther’s thinking which is under-explored or under-explained and say something rather new. Second, one must be fairly familiar with the mass of writing—beginning with Luther’s own huge output—in order to sit on the shoulders of giants rather than simply to trace their footsteps one more time. On both of these fronts, Robin Leaver succeeds admirably.
Leaver is clearly familiar with much of the literature of the field, to which he has contributed no small part. The daunting mass of his forebears’ scholarship, however, is discernible only in the extensive footnotes and bibliography (over 120 pages). His knowledge of secondary material encompasses more than the last hundred years, and is particularly impressive in its inclusion of German sources. One wonders, however, if these topics are as unexplored by Scandinavian and Japanese scholars as it seems. Further, since much of the best (and even most revolutionary) of recent Luther scholarship is being done in Finland, the absence of work on this important subject by these scholars is distressing, if true.
But even in German and English, much has been written about Luther’s hymns and his liturgical work; a little less, but still quite a bit, about his theology of music. Leaver, however, notices that his predecessors have not taken seriously enough the range and rationale of Luther’s use of music in worship, nor the context of worship (especially given the peculiar understandings of it by Luther and early Lutherans) as the matrix for hymns and other liturgical music. This book, therefore, studies not only Luther’s hymns and the use of instrumental and choral music, but also chanting by presider, lector, choir, and congregation in Luther’s communion services. It presents Luther’s use of music in worship as primarily proclamation and therefore aimed at catechetical formation of the assembly, rather than as expression of the spiritual experiences of individual members. It presents Luther’s theological understanding of music in general, dismissing the notion that Luther was a dilettante as a musician. But it also presents Luther’s treatment of music in worship as sophisticated and coherent, banishing the notion that Luther was inept and inconsistent as a liturgical reformer. In reference to all these topics (and many more subsidiary ones), Leaver has new things to say and fresh ways to say them.
The chapters in Luther’s Liturgical Music began life as articles in the Lutheran Quarterly Journal. It is a testament to Leaver’s planning or his editorial work that the book is not simply a series of discrete essays. Rather, there is a consistent argument running through the whole book. Music, for Luther, is a gift of God that finds its highest purpose in the formative context of evangelical worship. After presenting the sophistication of Luther’s knowledge about music and his theological understanding of it, he goes on to describe the catechetical purpose and use of his hymns. He also addresses the pedagogical intention and power of music in general and liturgical chant in particular, giving special attention to the chanting of lessons and the Words of Institution, as well as certain liturgical responses and the Benedictus and Magnificat. The musical interpretation of these last canticles—a particularly winning sort of typological exegesis— might be of special interest to readers of Interpretation. While there are occasional reminders of the original incarnations of these various chapters (such as the repetition of quotations), for the most part Leaver seamlessly presents these different topics as various elaborations of his central argument.
A general reader would need to skim several paragraphs in each chapter. To study this book fully one does not need to be a Luther scholar, but would need to be fairly familiar with music history and theory. Leaver assumes that the reader is familiar, for instance, with the various modes and tones of late Medieval and Renaissance music. However, if one knows that those tones reflected (and even inculcated) different emotions and meanings, one could easily let references to the “hypodorian” and “mixolydian” modes simply wash over one, without losing the train of Leaver’s argument.
That argument might be a particularly, even surprisingly, useful one to those interested in proclamation in the twenty-first century. There are any number of evocative and provocative points that a reflective reader might take away from Leaver’s presentation of Luther’s thought and practice. For instance, Leaver may be right when he asserts that we have not only gone beyond, but also abandoned Luther’s primary purpose in singing hymns—for proclamation of the gospel, not for expression of the singer’s spiritual experience. Luther’s hymns are primarily catechetical, even didactic, in presenting the teaching of the church, and most especially the doctrine of justification. Human response (including emotional response) is not absent from these hymns, but it is a minor part of them—they embody, reflect, and nurture a theocentric understanding of worship. Worship, for Luther, is not primarily a human response to God’s work, but is itself first and foremost God’s work. These hymns let the Word of God come out of peoples’ mouths, and by constant use insert it under their skins. Leaver sees this aspect of hymnody as one that is almost completely ignored in the contemporary church. A preacher might well ask if a constant diet of overwhelmingly subjective hymns might embody, reflect, and nurture a consumerist approach not only to worship, but also to the whole life of faith. Leaver’s predecessor at Westminster Choir College once explained Calvin’s approach to hymnody by saying that the Genevan reformer looked down the corridor of the ages, saw “The Old Rugged Cross” approaching, and did everything he could to prevent it. Such is true in spades of Luther.
For instance, a preacher might well learn from Leaver’s Luther the importance of crafting the forms which bear the gospel. In his consideration of Luther’s recommendations for liturgical chant, rather than hymnody, Leaver describes the care and sophistication with which those recommendations are made. In his earlier writing, Luther had criticized the practice of whispering the Words of Institution; when the time came for him to compose service orders, he made sure that these texts would be heard. The presider was instructed not simply to speak them audibly, but to chant them, so that they might be heard all the better. And Luther even chose the tones to which the text would be chanted. In the Latin Formula Missae, the presider would use the music traditionally connected with the Lord’s Prayer—another example of Jesus’ words put in human mouths. In the later German Mass, the Verba (Words of Institution) were to be chanted to the same music as the Gospel reading, and the music for the Gospel reading was itself to be made more dramatic and accessible. Traditionally, the Gospel on Palm Sunday and Good Friday (the passion stories from Matthew and John, respectively) was arranged so that the words of the evangelist, of Jesus, and of all other characters would use different music. Luther recommended making this practice standard every Sunday, so that the passage is more interesting and understandable. In addition, the tones were chosen with an eye to their effect on the affects— the words of Jesus, for instance, are set to a tone that is supposed to be comforting and healing rather than mournful. Those planning worship would be well advised to exercise similar insight and imagination in arranging not only for musical accompaniment, but also for other artistic means of delivering the gospel. We know now, for instance, that color and texture, let alone rhetorical devices, can affect peoples’ emotional state and ability to receive messages.
This leads to a final example. Luther famously considered music second only to theology in the classical curriculum. But Leaver allows Luther to explain why: music “alone produces what otherwise only theology can do, namely, a calm and joyful disposition” (p. 65). Music, even apart from its service in proclaiming the gospel, provides comfort, peace, and good character. Therefore, not only should seminarians be required to learn music, but civil government should be constantly urged to support it with performance and education. Luther’s attitude does not seem to cover all styles of music available in the present; certainly there are styles whose raison d’être is to nurture and express only anger, lust, or detachment, rather than the full range of human experience. But Luther’s defense of music might well be applied to many styles, from Gregorian chant to the blues. And if you are one who made it through seminary without studying music, this book is a fine place for a theologian to start.

Mark W. Oldenburg
Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
    

back to top

True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary

edited by Brian K. Blount, Cain Hope Felder, Clarice J. Martin, and Emerson B. Powery

Fortress, Minneapolis, 2007. 566 pp. $29.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-8006-3421-6.

To call this an African American commentary on the NT is at once an accurate and a misleading description. True, it presents a series of articles in which African American scholars—men and women, and senior scholars as well as those newer to the professional guild—present critical studies of the books in the NT. Like other useful one-volume commentaries, this one presents those articles in their canonical order for easy access by any who want to consult them. The contributors comment—albeit briefly, as the genre of the volume demands—on the entire contents of each book. There, however, the similarity between this book and other one-volume commentaries comes to an end.
First, while the contributors employ a variety of the critical tools that characterize their discipline, they refract those tools through the prism of African American history and the lived experiences of the African American church. Second, the usual pattern of a single voice interpreting each biblical book is mitigated by the sensitivity of each author to the community of interpretation within which he or she works, and by the shaded boxes or “sidebars” in each article that contain quotations written by other scholars, poets, writers, or historical figures that address issues relevant to the biblical text. Third, the introductory section on “African American Biblical Interpretation” incorporates articles with the following titles that reflect the authors’ specific interpretive contexts and interests: “Slavery in the Early Church” (Mitzi J. Smith), “The Place and Role of Africa and African Imagery in the Bible” (Rodney S. Sadler, Jr.), “Paul and African American Interpretation” (Abraham Smith), “Womanist Biblical Interpretation” (Raquel St. Clair), “African American Preaching and the Bible” (Cleophus J. LaRue), “African American Art and Biblical Interpretation” (James A. Noel), and a groundbreaking article that sets an agenda for future work with the title “‘We Will Make Our Own Future Text’: An Alternate Orientation to Interpretation” (Vincent L. Wimbush). Finally, the book includes three “galleries” of color prints of art by African American artists, archaeological artifacts, and photos of moments in African American history that provide their own insights into the biblical traditions.
It would be impossible in a brief review to identify the specific strengths and insights in the various commentary articles. The rich variety of the confessional traditions and academic formation of those whose work is contained in the volume guarantees that readers will be led into their work with the biblical text by many different paths. The authors not only make accessible to their readers the insights of other NT scholars; they also weave into their studies commentaries through the lenses of historical events (in particular the period of slavery and its aftermath and the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century). They draw on hymns and spirituals, poetry and essays, paintings, drawings, quilts, and sculpture to explore the intersections of the biblical traditions and the African American community. While it is clear that the authors share a commitment to careful, critical exegesis, their specific voices and perspectives ring through their scholarship.
This volume holds an important place in the libraries of academic biblical study. It demonstrates both how and why biblical interpretation is always contextual. Just as the books of the Bible were all written from their specific contexts in the life of their communities, so also the Bible is always read from some specific social, historical, political, and economic location that informs and shapes the questions one brings to the text and the insights one can derive from it. The contributors’ embrace of that specificity and their exploitation of it demonstrate how a specific community engages and has been engaged by the NT. This book thus joins what is becoming a chorus of voices reading the Bible from various ethnic and international contexts, postcolonial perspectives, and women’s locations, in addition to the more traditionally characterized denominational or confessional positions.
Thus far in this review I have attempted to be descriptive of some of the many reasons why teachers, preachers, and persons seeking to grow in discipleship and faithfulness would find this book a useful companion in their journeys. I can remain measured in my response no longer. This book is a treasure! It is, first of all, a beautiful book. The editorial team and the staff at Fortress Press have created a visually splendid volume, with the full color prints, the incorporation of the side-bars, and the clear type and two-column layout of each page. This would qualify as a “coffee-table book,” if the content were not too valuable to allow it to rest in undisturbed splendor.
The physical beauty of the book makes it a fitting vehicle for the rich fare of its written content. There is no other book that gathers together the voices of so varied and important a cohort of scholars, or that presents the entire NT from the perspectives of African American biblical interpreters. That variety itself is a gift, for it demonstrates once and for all the level of maturity that the discipline of African American interpretation has reached. To remain with a metaphor from the arts, if one reads the volume in its entirety, one has the sense of listening to a Gospel choir whose soaring energy, deep harmony, and melodic beauty together carry the message of their faith in ways that cannot be denied.
True to Our Native Land should quickly become an indispensable tool for pastors and Chris-tian educators, and it demands a place in church libraries. Its specific content makes it valuable in opening the biblical text to contemporary readers, and the model it provides can spark significant reflections and conversations about the intersection of the Bible and our own communities. I will use this book as a core text in my introductory courses in NT at the seminary level, and its interdisciplinary approach would make it valuable in undergraduate courses as well. I recommend this book wholeheartedly!

Sharon H. Ringe
Wesley Theologyical Seminary
Washington, District of Columbia

back to top