On the excellent Lutheran Orthodoxy blog there is an interesting post containing a translation of Nicolaus Selnecker’s scheme for the chief hymn1 for every Sunday of the church year, from the prefatory epistle to the reader in his 1587 work Christliche Psalmen, Lieder und Kirchengesenge (“Psalms, Hymns, and Church-Songs”). Selnecker, co-author of the Formula of Concord and pastor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig2 at the time he authored this document, was not only a first-rate theologian intimately familiar with the teachings of Luther, his colleagues, and immediate successors, but he was also a talented musician, becoming the organist at the imperial chapel in Nuremberg at the tender age of 12 years old.3 He himself wrote about 150 hymns.4 He was well-acquainted with the nascent Lutheran chorale tradition, including how certain chorales had been used in the churches. This document is an important witness to how Lutherans in the early days of the era of Lutheran Orthodoxy confessed the faith in song. There are also hints of liturgical practice in those days—the Lutheran chorale, after all, was not merely an add-on to the mass retained and purified from papistic accretions; it was an integral part of the Gottesdienst, by which Christians comforted one another and spoke to themselves the Word of God.5 Selnecker takes great pride in the hymnody at the St. Thomas Church, boasting that “a better scheme for hymns may not easily be established.”
The chief hymn, as Selnecker notes earlier in his preface, should be suited to the Gospel of the Sunday or feast day. This principle has generally prevailed to the present day in our chief hymn lists. But Selnecker mentions another benefit of retaining the old chorales: that Christians “do not forget (as is otherwise easy to do) the old doctrine of comfort, thanksgiving, and praise”. These qualities were highly valued by the Reformers in their teaching, over and against the Roman doctrine that brought fear and terror of one’s final hour and the flames of purgatory. Concerning the category of comfort (Trost) in particular, Christopher Boyd Brown notes that it was absent from contemporary Roman competitors to the Lutheran hymnals, which dominated the sixteenth-century book market.6
Already we see the great concern that Selnecker and others had for the hymns sung by the congregations entrusted to their care. To them, every part of the worship service was essential to teach the people, not merely as a transmission of facts about Christ and His work, but also to comfort them and show them the right way to praise God at all times in their lives. Nothing retained in the Lutheran Gottesdienst was considered superfluous. Furthermore, nothing new was adopted too hastily; Selnecker writes that they "leave aside the other new hymns” in favor of the hymns from Luther’s hymnal.7
A glance at Selnecker’s list shows many repeat selections of chorales throughout the church year. For example, Luther’s hymn on justification and the Christian life, “Dear Christians, One and All, Rejoice”, is appointed four times: twice during Trinitytide (Trinity XVII and Trinity XVII as an alternate to “A Mighty Fortress”), once on Ascension, and—most surprisingly, perhaps—on Good Friday. The justification hymn of Paul Speratus, “Salvation unto Us Has Come”, also appears four times: Septuagesima and thrice during Trinitytide (Trinity VI, Trinity XIII, and as an alternate on Trinity XXI). Luther’s paraphrase of Psalm 130, “From Depths of Woe I Cry to Thee”, appears three times: once on Palm Sunday and twice during Trinitytide (as an alternate on Trinity XI and on Trinity XXII). Many more were appointed twice or three times. It was not for a lack of new hymns that these were repeated so often—indeed, Selnecker’s work to which this is a preface contains many hymns of his own composition—but rather, as above stated, a deliberate hesitation to adopt new hymns, rather preferring to commit to the hearts and minds of the people a few good chorales through repetition.
Note that the church order of Leipzig at the time, following Luther’s prescription in common with many other churches, placed the chief hymn before the Gospel reading. This may be seen from Selnecker’s document. Our modern notion of a “hymn of the day” actually grew out of Luther’s desire to supplement the Latin gradual with a German hymn. In his German Mass, Luther mentions “To God the Holy Spirit Let Us Pray”, long in existence as a folk hymn, as a hymn that can be sung after the Epistle. Though he does not mention other hymns by name, he leaves it as a matter of choice.8 Thus, a significant portion of the corpus of Lutheran chorales was written to fill this need, including hymns based on the Gospel readings for each Sunday of the year. Robin Leaver writes:
[H]ymns were to be sung in response to the Epistle and in preparation for the Gospel…. Thus the concept of the Gradual as the song of the choir was expanded to embrace the whole church, congregation and choir together. In Wittenberg this Graduallied [“Gradual-song”] became the primary hymn at the evangelical Mass. At the time that Luther wrote the Deutsche Messe the corpus of hymns was relatively small. Thus he named the epiclesis hymn Nun bitten wir den Heiligen Geist as a general Graduallied. But already there were seasonal hymns that were being sung as Graduallieder, such as Nun komm der Heiden Heiland [“Savior of the Nations, Come”] on the Sundays in Advent and Christ lag in Todesbanden [“Christ Jesus Lay in Death’s Strong Bands”] during the Easter season. Over the years the basic corpus of Graduallieder expanded to include appropriate hymns for all the Sundays and festivals of the church year. The primary examples of these Graduallieder, many of them written by Luther, figure prominently in Bach’s compositions for the church.9
Selnecker, of course, did not have available to him the work of some of the greatest Lutheran hymnists that would come after his time—Philipp Nicolai, Johann Heermann, and Paul Gerhardt, to name a few. Yet, not even every hymn by these great men is necessarily suitable for the chief hymn of the Divine Service; much of their work was devotional in nature and oriented toward use by the individual Christian. (How much less, then, the work of errorists and sectarians, those who had no confessional or liturgical frame of reference for the composition and use of their hymns?) There is plenty of room in the Lutheran chorale tradition for both kinds. It is a serious problem when the only place the Christian finds himself in song is in church.
S. D. G.
In modern LCMS terminology, the “Hymn of the Day”.
Later famous for its kantor, Johann Sebastian Bach.
https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Selnecker.htm. Selnecker’s example is certainly exceptional, but it should serve nonetheless as a reminder of Luther’s dictum in his liturgical works that the man studying for the ministry should be able to sing.
https://studiumjournal.com/author/selnecker-bio. Most well-known of these among Lutherans today are “Lord Jesus Christ, With Us Abide” (LSB 585; a translation and expansion of a Melanchthon Latin original) and “Let Me Be Thine Forever” (LSB 689).
See Robin Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017).
Christopher Boyd Brown, Singing the Gospel: Lutheran Hymns and the Success of the Reformation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 23–24.
The Babst Gesangbuch, published the year before Luther’s death and with a preface by him, considered to be the definitive edition of Lutheran hymns published during his lifetime, is likely what is meant here.
Martin Luther, “The German Mass and Order of Service” (1526): vol. 53, p. 74, in Luther’s Works, American Edition, vols. 1–30, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia, 1955–76); vols. 31–55, ed. Helmut Lehmann (Philadelphia/Minneapolis: Muhlenberg/Fortress, 1957–86); vols. 56–82, ed. Christopher Boyd Brown and Benjamin T. G. Mayes (St. Louis: Concordia, 2009–).
Leaver, Luther’s Liturgical Music, 302, brackets added.
It's interesting that "Nun bitten wir" came to be used as a hymn of invocation at the beginning of the service rather than retaining its initial role being sung after the gradual.