Did Luther Approve all Music for Worship?-part 1

Did Luther Approve all Music for Worship?-part 1

            “It is commonly acknowledged by scholars that Luther’s theology of the arts, and of music in particular, is quite accepting and open ended.  His attitude was that if Scripture did not approve it, then it was acceptable (and redeemable) for use by the church in the worship of God. Mark Sooy, Essays on Martin Luther’s Theology of Music, Blur Maroon, 2006, p. 17.   This statement leaves the reader believing that perhaps Martin Luther had no boundaries or standards for church music.  However, Soy quotes Charles Garside as saying, “Luther…placed few, if any, such limitations either on text or music.  So long as musicians and poets, separately or together, were enriching the liturgy to a ‘pious use,’ their imaginative faculties were unrestricted.” (ibid. p.17)  “Pious use” and “enriching the liturgy” seems to me to be restrictions for both poets and musicians.  In this century I am convinced that Luther, based on the nature of his own music, would not consider the imaginative use or license taken by many church musicians to either ‘pious’ or ‘enriching’.

            The fact that Luther did not have to place many restrictions on music or poetry was simply because that during his lifetime there was little if any contradistinctions in music part of sacred and secular music.  As a matter of fact there were no shocking musical differences between the stile antique and the stile moderno. That certainly is not the case of the music composed in the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

Thought for the Day

Christian musicians need to be careful about supposing that the writings of theologians like Luther give approval for musicing in styles that were unheard of at the time these works were written.