Christianity, Culture, Vocation
October 31st, 2008 | Art, Holidays, Music, Reformation
Here is a multi-media Reformation celebration, with “A Mighty Fortress is Our God” accompanied by the art of the Reformation, with lots of Lucas Cranach.
HT: Scott Sullivan via Wittenberg Trail
Gene Edward Veith is the Provost and Professor of Literature at Patrick Henry College, the Director of the Cranach Institute at Concordia Theological Seminary, a columnist for World Magazine and TableTalk, and the author of 18 books on different facets of Christianity & Culture.
Lucas Cranach was the great artist of the Reformation. He was a close friend of Martin Luther. He was a businessman, who first printed Luther's translation of the Bible; a politician, who served on the Wittenberg town council and served the city as its mayor; a chemist, who operated a pharmacy; a teacher, who trained a host of apprentice artists; a family-man, who helped arrange Luther's marriage with the two men serving as the godfathers of each other's children; and an active layman in his church, who gave his pastors important personal and material support.
As a Christian who lived out his faith in his many different callings, Cranach thus embodies the Reformation doctrine of vocation, using the gifts God had given him in service to Christ and his neighbor in the church, the family, the workplace, and the culture.
In the spirit of Lucas Cranach, this blog will discuss wide-ranging issues of Christianity and culture with a Lutheran twist.
Books by Gene Edward Veith at cph.org! |
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© Cranach: The Blog of Veith — Copyblogger theme design by Chris Pearson
12 comments ↓
[…] has the battle hymn of the Reformation and lots […]
Good start to the day.
And amen.
Note how that arrangement appeased both factions of the hymn itself: the rhythmic-preferring faction and the isorhythmic-preferring faction. (Now, there’s your grounds for a religious war…within a single congregation)
Wonderful music and art!
BTW, the title, “Battle Hymn…” reminds me of some members who are enamored with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and would like it used in the Divine Service. Does anyone know of a critique of that hymn that might put the kibosh on its use by Christians? Thanks!
Funny, Susan. By the way do you really have organshoes? And do you prefer a version? I do. Unfortunately its the version my congregation is most unfamiliar with, so I usually let them sing the one they like. Oh well.
Dear Bryan: Actually, we rotate the versions. Not very precise rotations, but we try to ‘be fair.’
I have no preference really. One is Luther, one is Bach. We can probably thank Bach for rescuing the tune from likely obscurity, and for dressing it in Bachian loveliness. It’s not as if it really changed anything–not like doing the liturgy in Klingon or anything like that. (One of the rare times, maybe, that ‘modernization’ or contemporization really did rescue and *retain* the relevance of ancient truth!)
Yeah, I have organshoes. And they ain’t made for walkin’–except to the communion rail and back to the bench.
8>)
The Battle Hymn of the Republic is political and used to be the American national anthem, between Chester and Star-Spangled Banner, historically. I like it a lot, but I wouldn’t use it in the Divine Service. I’d use on the 4th of July in public, though.
My congregation (blue hymnal) sings a version where the words themselves are different. I have the other version half-memorized. It can be confusing.
Organ shoes are rad! Thanks, Susan.
I’d always thought the more interesting “syncopated” rhythmic version was the original one written by Luther. It’s too bad this isn’t the version sung in most churches today–it is far more interesting.
Is it correct, Susan, that Luther’s original was this rhythmic one that shows up half-way through the video?
Yes, Booklover. The iso-rhythmic is Bach’s.
Can’t help but wonder what all happened to the tune between, possibly, the 16th and 18th centuries.
Dr. Arthur Just discussed this very hymn on Issues, Etc. on Friday, Reformation Day.
http://www.issuesetc.org/podcast/Show90103108H3.mp3
Among other things, Dr. Just says scholars have dated the hymn’s composition at perhaps 1527 or 1528.
Organshoes:
Whoa whoa whoa. Forgive a musically ignorant man, but are you saying that the less singable version of the tune as found in the old TLH is Bach, whereas the melody as usually sung in reform/protestant hymnals is the one Luther wrote? (Not that I’m doubting you, but I never really heard the more traditionally Lutheran version till I became a Lutheran.) It would seem a little ironic if the version we sang in the Congregational church was the tune Luther used.
My bigger pet peeve is the translation of the lyrics. I could be mistaken, but I think the old TLH lyrics tried to translate as literally as possible, while the lyrics of the other version tried more to capture the essence of the German without translating word for word (or even phrase for phrase, sometimes)
Even our new traditional version has a change from the old TLH version. In the last verse, the TLH version says:
“…And take they our life,
goods, fame, child and wife.
Let these all be gone.
They yet have nothing won.
The kingdom ours remaineth.”
Lutheran Worship and now the Lutheran Service Book have changed the phrase “They yet have nothing won” to “Our victory has been won”. But I’m not sure why. I asked a friend of mine who speaks German to translate that line, and she said the words mean, “they have gained nothing”, so the old TLH translation is much more accurate than the new one. Did the statement “they yet have nothing won”, in reference to the loss of life or family members, sound too harsh for today’s Lutherans? I hope not, because the words were written when losing your family for your faith was a real possibility, and I am sure that Luther didn’t write them lightly.
You have me backwards, I think, kerner, though such phrases as ‘less singable’ and ‘the melody as usually sung’ leave me a little in the dark.
The Bach version is the fully harmonized one, with a more defined meter (657 in LSB–also known as isorhythmic). I only knew that one until I came into the Lutheran church in the late 1980s.
The more rhythmic (but un-metered) one is Luther’s (656, LSB). The melody, not the harmony, and the rhythm are dominant. But Luther accompanied himself on a lute, not on a pipe organ with multiple keyboards and voices.
The Luther version would be more popular, I posit, if organists were to play it (present it to their congregations for singing, that is) as if they were playing something other than a mighty organ; if they kept it lighter, the rhythms crisper, and forgot about harmonizing every note of the melody. If, in other words, they let the word rule the day, and not the harmony (which isn’t there, after all). The two versions are practically two different hymns–of two natures, though not of two spirits.
As for TLH and what other Protestants ‘normally’ use, I hardly know. When I became a Lutheran, TLH was a relic. I’ve barely cracked one open, except to find a hymn, a text, or a harmonization that Lutherans have regrettably abandoned. Modern hymnals are certainly easier to read than TLH, and easier to follow, but my how we have to coddled into singing hymns anymore.
Your observation on the different words is interesting. On Issues, Etc. last week, the winning Soundbite of the Week was Rev. Don Matzat’s, froma Reformation sermon, where he said that, were the Reformation to be held today, no one would come. Who would feel any outrage over indulgences being sold for the remission of sins, because who is so troubled by his sin (as opposed to the sins of those around him) and fearful of God’s judgment, that he’d even think indulgence-buying and selling might be a fine idea.
We’re more concerned with who goes to the Super Bowl, he said, than our own going to Heaven.
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