THE LUTHERAN CHORALE
The Tenorlied texture was not only distinctively German—although that was important enough in its own
right to emphasize at a time when a German national church was asserting itself against the supranational
authority of “Holy Rome” both as ecclesiastical and as temporal power. It was also ideally adaptable to
the musical needs of the emerging Lutheran Church. In keeping with the communitarian ideals of the
reform, the Lutheran Church at first advocated the use of full congregational singing in place of the
traditional service music—or any music, whether plainchant or “figural,” that required the use of a
professional choir and thus created a musical “hierarchy.” The lay congregation could thus become its
own choir even as the whole congregation of the faithful, not the minister’s ordained authority, now
constituted the priesthood. A service in which the minister’s preaching was answered by congregational
singing would be more than a mere sacramental ritual; it would become “evangelical”—an occasion for
actively and joyously proclaiming the Gospel anew, and affirming the bonds of Christian fellowship.
The unit of congregational singing, hence the distinctive musical genre of the Lutheran Church, was the
strophic unison German hymn known as Choral (“chorale” in English), a term that originally meant
“chant,” as in “gregorianischer Choral.” Chorales were meant to take the place of the Gregorian chant,
especially the Gradual (in conjunction with the Gospel) and the Sanctus/Agnus Dei pair in conjunction
with the Eucharist. Many of the earliest chorales were actually adapted from favorite chants, particularly
(but not only) hymns. Some were direct translations. The Latin Advent hymn Veni redemptor gentium
(“Come, redeemer of the Heathen”) became Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland; the Pentecost favorite, Veni
creator spiritus (Ex. 2-7c) became Komm, Gott Schöpfer, Heiliger Geist.
Others were freer adaptations. One of the most famous of all Lutheran chorales, the Easter hymn
Christ lag in Todesbanden (“Christ lay in Death’s bondage”), descended from Victimae paschali laudes,
the Latin Easter sequence, as mediated through an earlier German adaptation—a popular twelfth-century
Leise, sung mainly in street processions not in church—called Christ ist erstanden (“Christ is risen”).
Only the first line—the incipit or “tag,” as it were—of the Latin sequence is retained; it is immediately
balanced by an answering phrase in the complementary modal pentachord; and the melody thus created is
immediately repeated in conformity with the popular “Hofweise” or court-song model, the traditional bar
form (aab) that now survived only in Germany (Ex. 18-2).
In keeping with the “why should the Devil...” theory, many Lutheran chorales were adapted from