CHAPTER 24

MUSIC IN THREE GERMAN CITIES: THE PROTESTANT-CATHOLIC

CONFRONTATION

During the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, German-speaking lands belonged to a loose confederation of two hundred principalities and city-states called the Holy Roman Empire. It included members of the Roman Catholic faith and, after the advent of Protestantism, the Lutheran and Calvinist faiths as well.

EMPEROR MAXIMILIAN I

• During the early years of the sixteenth century the spirit of the Renaissance belatedly arrived in German speaking lands during the rule of Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519). Maximilian effectively governed disparate lands that extended from the English Channel to Hungary, and he was a great patron of music.

Emperor Maximilian I stands in the music room of his court surrounded by musicians and musical

instruments

This woodcut by Hans Burgkmair the Elder was executed in about 1514.

INNSBRUCH, AUSTRIA

• The beautiful Alpine city of Innsbruch, along with Augsburg and Vienna, served as one of three centers of government from which Emperor Maximilian governed his far-flung lands. At Innsbruch Maximilian installed his Hofkapelle (German for “court chapel”).

• To Innsbruch Maximilian lured the illustrious composer Heinrich Isaac in 1496.

HEINRICH ISAAC AND THE TENORLIED

• Heinrich Isaac’s frequent travels to and from Innsbruch apparently caused him to set in polyphony the beautiful tune Innsbruch, ich muss dich lassen (Innsbruck, I must now leave you). Indeed he did so twice, once as a Tenorlied (a polyphonic song with a pre-existing tune in the tenor) and then again with the beloved tune in the cantus.

The beginning of Heinrich Isaac’s setting of Innsbruch, ich muss dich lassen with the tune in the tenor thereby forming a Tenorlied.

The beginning of Heinrich Isaac’s setting of Innsbruch, ich muss dich lassen with the tune in the cantus.

PAUL HOFHAIMER

• Also based in Innsbruck with the imperial court was organist Paul Hofhaimer (1459-1537). His arrangement of the antiphon Salve, Regina for organ makes use of alternatim technique—the verses of the text are alternately assigned to the organ to play polyphonically and then to voices to chant monophony.

The beginning of Paul Hofhaimer’s setting of the antiphon Salve, Regina with the chant set as a cantus firmus in the range of the tenor voice.

MUSIC IN AUGSBURG

• Situated two hundred miles to the north of Innsbruck, Austria, is Augsburg, Germany, a city-state that became predominantly Protestant. It was here that the Diet (or Reichstag; the imperial legislature) often met, and for this reason Emperor Maximilian I was frequently in residence in Augsburg.

Emperor Maximilian I hears Mass in his chapel at Augsburg around 1518

In the center right, Maximilian kneels in prayer; in the lower right, the singers of the Hofkappelle group before a large music manuscript; and to the left seated at the organ, is imperial court organist Paul Hofhaimer.

THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION

• The Protestant Reformation was led by Martin Luther (1483-1546). On October 31, 1517, Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses (objections to current church practices) to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Germany.

LUTHER OBJECTED TO THE FOLLOWING ASPECTS OF CATHOLICISM

• The selling of indulgences—a forgiveness of sin sold by the church with the promise that the buyer, and members of his family, might thereby spend less time in Purgatory after death

• The selling of church services (such as last rites and funeral services)

• The selling of church offices to the highest bidder• The excessive veneration of saints, which was seen as

idolatry• The growth of religious holidays, especially saints’ days, on

which commercial activity could not take place• The use of writings other than the Bible (medieval legends

of the saints, for example) as sources of religious truth• The insistence that leaders of the church remain celibate

(unmarried)• The existence of monks and nuns and thus monasteries

and convents

HOW LUTHER CHANGED THE LITURGY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH TO MAKE IT DISTINCTLY

LUTHERAN

• The Mass and the canonical hours were reduced to just the Mass and an evening service

• The vernacular language was allowed to replace Latin within the service

• The congregation, and not just the trained choir, was expected to sing during the service

• The Gloria of the Mass was omitted• Simple hymns replaced several parts of the

Proper of the Mass• Sermons were regularly preached at both

Mass and the evening service

THE CHORALE TUNE

• To provide a body of melodies to serve the worship of the new Protestant church, Martin Luther instituted the chorale, a monophonic spiritual melody, or religious folksong, what many Christian denominations today would call a “hymn.” Luther derived chorales from three sources:– 1) his own musical invention– 2) from popular tunes, substituting religious words

for the previously profane text– 3) from existing Gregorian chants, substituting

German texts for the older Latin ones.

• Transforming a secular tune into sacred one (or vice versa) is called making a contrafactum (pl. contrafacta).

Martin Luther’s newly composed chorale Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (A Mighty Fortress is

Our God)

THE TEXT OF LUTHER’S EIN FESTE BURG IST UNSER GOTT

Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott A A mighty fortress is our GodEin gute Wehr und Waffen. A bulwark never failing.Er hilft uns frei aus aller Not A Our helper he amid the floodDie uns jetzt hat betroffen. Our mortal ills prevailing.Der alte böse Feind B For still our ancient foeMit Ernst er’s jetzt meint, Does seek to work us woe,Gross Macht und viel List His craft and power are greatSein grausam Rüstig ist, And armed with cruel hate,Auf Erd’ ist nicht seins Gleichen On earth is not his equal.

JOHANN WALTER’S GEISTLICH GESANGBÜCHLEIN

• To spread the new music among the Protestants, Luther encouraged his colleague Johann Walter (1496-1570) to publish a hymnal with chorale tunes set in polyphony. In 1524 Walter issued his Geistliche Gesangbüchlein (Little Book of Spiritual Songs), a collection of thirty-eight Protestant hymns and five Latin motets, to which other hymn settings were added in subsequent editions.

MUSIC AT THE COURT OF MUNICH

• Innsbruck remained steadfastly Catholic; Augsburg became a stronghold of Lutheranism, while Munich, Germany, found itself somewhere in the middle, both in terms of religion and geography (see SLIDE 24.1). In the 1560s the leader of the Munich court chapel, Ludwig Daser, was a Protestant; its foremost composer, Orlande de Lassus, was a Catholic; and the leader of the court, Duke Albrecht V, vacillated between the two religions, ultimately siding with the Catholics.

ORLANDE DE LASSUS

• Orlande de Lassus (1532-1594) was the most famous composer of the sixteenth century—certainly more of his works were published in Europe than those of any other musician. Lasso was born in the Low Countries south of Brussels and in 1558 was recruited to serve in the chapel of Duke Albrecht of Bavaria, where he remained until his death. Lasso wrote over 2,000 works of every current genre, including more than 1,000 motets.

The banquet hall built by Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria

Lassus is seated at the harpsichord and behind and around him are the instrumentalists of the court and the chapel singers.

LASSUS’S PENITENTIAL PSALMS

• The Penitential Psalms were seven particular remorseful psalms that had been thought of as a unit for more than a thousand years in Lassus’s day. Yet Lassus was the first composer in the history of music to set all seven of the Penitential Psalms as a group.

LASSUS’S DE PROFUNDIS

• In the sixth of the seven Penitential Palms (Psalm 129) the anguished soul cries out to the Lord from its depths: De profundis clamavi ad te Domine: Domine, exaudi vocem meam (From the depths I cried to you, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice). Each of the ten verses of this psalm receives its own polyphonic setting, but they are unified because all make use of a single psalm tone.

The beginning of Lassus’s Penitential Psalm 129 (De profundis) with the psalm tone in the

tenor voice

Notice the bass line as it falls to the depths of that voice and then rises back up.

The soprano and bass parts of Lassus’s De profundis in a sumptuous manuscript produced for the Munich

court about 1560

The illustrations accompanying the music depict events in the lives of the heroes of the Christian biblical history. Lassus’s esoteric music preserved in this manuscript was kept as the private preserve of Duke Albrecht. Members of the Munich court called it musica reservata, text-sensitive music reserved for a small circle of connoisseurs.

THE GENEVA PSALTER

• Some extreme branches of Protestantism banned all music from the church. Protestant reformer John Calvin (1509-1564), founder of what is still called Calvinism, allowed music in the sanctuary, but limited it exclusively to psalm singing. Calvin published what is called The Geneva Psalter (1539 and revised 1551), named after the city in which the Frenchman Calvin had taken refuge. It contains a translation into rhyming French verse of all 150 psalms. Many of the psalms were supplied with simple melodies that might serve several different psalms.

A French psalm tune composed by Louis Bourgeois (c1510-c1560)

When the Geneva Psalter was translated two decades later into English to serve those of the Puritan faith Louis Bourgeois’s melody was used to accompany Psalm 100 and it is still known to the English-speaking world as “Old Hundreth” (All people that on earth do dwell).