secular songs. One with a particular resonance, and a particular irony, was Innsbruck, ich muss dich
lassen (“Innsbruck, I now must leave thee”), a song composed by Heinrich Isaac (ca. 1450–1517) during
his period of service to the “Kaiser” (Caesar), Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor, one of whose
capitals was the Austrian city of Innsbruck. Ex. 18-3 contains Isaac’s original setting, underlaid both with
the original text and with the clever Lutheran contrafactum, in which the sentiments of the very worldly
original words are, with only a few adjustments, “universalized” and assimilated to a typical expression
of Lutheran contempt for the (or rather “this”) world.
Finally, there were newly composed chorales, but composed as far as possible to resemble traditional
melodies. Many of the most famous tunes are attributed to Luther himself, probably as an honorific. The
most famous one of all, with an attribution to Luther that dates from within his lifetime and is therefore
possibly trustworthy, is Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott (famous in English as “A Mighty Fortress”), a
hearty Verkündigungslied (“faith-proclaiming song”) as Luther termed it, for which he adapted a text from
his own translation of Psalm 46 (“God is our refuge and strength” in the King James version). The
melody, it has been plausibly suggested, was adapted from the formula-stock of the Meistersingers—the
contemporaneous German guild-musicians (see chapter 4). Fig. 18-2 shows the famous hymn as it
appeared in its first published source, a book of “new, improved sacred songs” (Geistliche Lieder auffs
new gebessert) issued in 1533 by the printer Joseph Klug in Wittenberg, Luther’s own town. Like almost
all the newly composed chorales, it follows the “bar” form of the Hofweise.
EX. 18-2 Christ lag in Todesbanden compared with Victimae paschali and Christ ist erstanden