appeared, the work of Johann Walther (1496–1570), formerly a Saxon (East German) court singer, who
had become Luther’s main musical consultant and assistant. Essentially a collection of Protestant
Tenorlieder (though they were called motets) based on chorale melodies, Walther’s Geystliches gesangk
Buchleyn (“Little sacred songbook”), which boasted a preface by Luther himself, was chiefly intended for
use at religious boarding schools, so that “young people,” as Luther put it in the preface, “who should and
must be trained in music and other proper arts, would free themselves from love songs and other carnal
music and learn something wholesome instead.”^4 The book remained standard curricular fare for many
years and went through many editions.
FIG. 18-2 Luther’s Ein’ feste Burg (A Mighty Fortress) as printed by Joseph Klug (Geistliche Lieder, 1533).
The level of musical training at such schools was high, to judge by the sophistication of Walther’s
settings. His setting of Christ lag in Todesbanden (Ex. 18-4), for example, treats the tune to a point of
Vorimitation before the tenor enters; and the tenor, when it does come in, comes in as twins: up to the
double bar the setting is canonic, and remains pretty strictly imitative thereafter. But even at its most
elaborate, the Lutheran Liedsatz (polyphonic chorale setting) was clearly organized around the cantus
firmus and dominated by it. The accompanying parts, though provided with text, were often played on the
organ or by ensemble instruments; this set the precedent for the important instrumental genre called
“Chorale prelude” (Choralvorspiel) that kept the traditional art of cantus-firmus writing (and
improvising) alive among Lutheran composers into the eighteenth century.
EX. 18-4 Johann Walther, Christ lag in Todesbanden