The discussion so far has confirmed my diagnosis that the question cannot be answered with a brief summary. OK. I will try to limit my response, but no promises.
First, to oversimplify a bit, you have to consider the main strains of Protestantism, the Lutherans, the Calvinists and the Anglicans, which each have a different musical point of view. The Calvinists took the simplest approach, limiting the musical participation in services mainly to psalm singing, often without accompaniment, as mentioned earlier. Nevertheless, this led to the publication of the Geneva Psalter, which provided melodies for use in church and for devotions at home. Those melodies underlie a huge body of all sorts of more complex music composed from that time to the present. In the lute world, you have to look at the two books of sacred music published by Nicolaes Vallet (Een en twintich Psalmen Davids and Regia Pietas) as derived quite directly from that tradition. Adrian Le Roy published psalm settings in several collections, 21 in 1552 and 8 in 1574 (edition by CNRS, 1962) in addition to a full set of 150 in 1567. The Lutherans and the Anglicans retained much more of the formal structure of the Roman Catholic mass, including the singing of the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei, in addition to the hymns, at least in larger churches and especially on festivals. Martin Luther clearly had some experience playing the lute, in addition to composing at least a few simple hymn melodies. Lutheran churches of any size normally had (and have today) on staff a musical director, organist and/or choral conductor, who may be known as a cantor, and these musicians often have composed their own music to suit the needs of their positions. Yes Johann Sebastian Bach was a Lutheran and cantor/organist/composer in Leipzig, but he was just the pinnacle of a large body of composers starting from some of Luther's personal friends, like Georg Rhau, Johann Walther and Georg Forster who initiated the creation of the body of music, the Lutheran chorale tunes, that again forms the basis of an ongoing compositional tradition. Later sixteenth century figures such as Hans Leo Hassler, Johann Eccard and Erasmus Widmann began the elaboration. Well-known representatives from the seventeenth century include Michael Praetorius, Michael Altenburg, Heinrich Schütz, Johann Hermann Schein, Samuel Scheidt, Johann Pachelbel, Johann Crüger, Franz Tunder, Nicolas Bruhns, Dietrich Buxtehude.... In the world of the lute, there are many settings of Lutheran chorale melodies. In print they appear in the collections of Melchior Neusidler, where some settings are attributed to Conrad Neusidler. Matthaeus Reymann's Noctes Musicae includes a bunch of massive fantasies based on Lutheran chorale melodies. The Königsberg Ms includes simple settings of at least 20 Lutheran chorales, in addition to around 50 Psalms. Also in England, large Anglican congregations have always employed an organist/choirmaster/composer to provide for their musical needs. Early major composers in that tradition include Christopher Tye, Thomas Tomkins, Thomas Tallis, Thomas Weelkes, Orlando Gibbons and Adrian Batten. William Byrd did write a number of Anglican anthems in addition to his well-known body of music for the Roman Catholic rite. A very important composer of church music later in the 17th century was Henry Purcell. Sacred music for lute in tablature, in addition to the Allison Psalm collection mentioned earlier, includes Thomas Campion's First Booke of Ayres, printed in 1614, and Miserere My Maker in the "Turpyn Book", though these were pretty clearly not intended for use in formal church services. William Leighton's collection, The Tears or Lamentations of a sorrowful soul, 1613/14 includes sacred music in English by John Dowland, John Bull, Alphonso Ferrabosco and Coperario in addition to pieces he composed himself. For a modern collection for lute with very useful critical notes, see Catherine Liddell, Sacred Music for Lute, Volume 1, Renaissance Tuning, Fort Worth: Lyre Music Publications, 2000. Daniel Heiman -----Original Message----- From: lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu [mailto:lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu] On Behalf Of Markus Lutz Sent: 31 December, 2014 02:37 To: Ron Andrico; Herbert Ward; lute@cs.dartmouth.edu Subject: [LUTE] Re: Historical Protestant music. Hi Ron, it is much too simple and in fact wrong to say "the reformed religion" or even derogatively "reformed sects". In fact there had been two protestant churches that had a real different approach for music in services. The so called reformed protestants had been mainly influenced by the Swiss reformators Zwingli (who had been in fact a good lutenist and musician) and Calvin, who didn't want to disturb the service by music. In the reformed churches the singing of psalms was for a long time the only possibility to have music in the service. Nevertheless we have many good composers and musicians from this protestant branch. The lutheran church always celebrated the mess, but in a little simpler way. Martin Luther composed chorals for the service and music always had a high significance, which can be seen in Schütz, Händel, Bach, Telemann and other great German composers, that stem from that part of the protestant churches. There are never any simple answers to such questions, and you always have to see that fundamental difference, that in the 16th and 17th century was a real gap. Then a Lutheran would become easier catholic than reformed, for which we have some examples in the 17th century. Best regards Markus Am 31.12.2014 um 04:01 schrieb Ron Andrico: > You pose an interesting question. Since the reformed religion embraced > a deliberately simpler approach to celebrating the mass, one might > assume they were likely to be a bit stingy with their music budget. > The reformed religion, in most cases, deliberately limited music during > the service to congregational unaccompanied singing of psalms - at > church and as devotional practice in the home. Of course, we have to > consider that the elaborate church music of Sebastian Bach blossomed > from the seeds of the 16th-century Lutheran tradition. > The Roman Church continued to place a high degree of importance on > celebration of the mass via elaborate polyphonic settings performed > with and without added instrumentation, supporting some of the some of > the best composers ever. The reformed religion embraced a simpler > approach but did not successfully stamp out ongoing composition of > beautiful psalm settings by capable composers arranged for voices > alone, solo voice and lute, lute solo, and, of course for the > keyboard. Richard Allison went so far as to compose psalm settings for > mixed consort. > The simple answer to your question, and as pertains to the time period > you specify, is that the Roman Church and its cultured patrons very > likely continued to support music to a higher degree than the various > reformed sects. But composers of music for the reformed church found > ways to compose beautiful, effective, and ever-evolving and > increasingly elaborate church music. > A good source of information is in one or more of Dick Wursten's > publications or on one of his web pages, such as this one > [1]http://psalmen.wursten.be/pidoux_history_of_the_genevan_psalter.htm > RA > > Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 23:15:11 -0600 > > To: lute@cs.dartmouth.edu > > From: wa...@physics.utexas.edu > > Subject: [LUTE] Historical Protestant music. > > > > > > > > Can the question of Catholic vs Protestant > > support for the historical performance and > > composing of early music be summarized > > briefly? > > > > By way of supplying framework, > > Martin Luther began around 1520 and the > > Thirty Year's war lasted until 1648. > > > > > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > > -- > > References > > 1. > http://psalmen.wursten.be/pidoux_history_of_the_genevan_psalter.htm > -- Markus Lutz Schulstraße 11 88422 Bad Buchau Tel 0 75 82 / 92 62 89 Fax 0 75 82 / 92 62 90 Mail mar...@gmlutz.de
