Read Online Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch - Free Book Online
Authors: Diarmaid MacCulloch
Tags: Religión, General, History, Christianity, Church History, Christianity - History - General, Religion - Church History
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along with Miss Cox's English. The words 'God' and 'Good' ring through the original like a mantra, although the English turns them all into 'God':
Sei Lob und Ehr' dem hochsten Gut,
Dem Vater aller Gute,
Dem Gott, der alle Wunder tut,
Dem Gott, der mein Gemute
Mit seinem reichen Trost erfullt,
Dem Gott, der allen Jammer stillt.
Gebt unserm Gott die Ehre!
Sing praise to God who reigns above,
the God of all creation,
the God of power, the God of love,
the God of our salvation;
with healing balm my soul he fills,
and every faithless murmur stills:
to God all praise and glory.
As the hymn progresses, its mood changes to speak of trouble and sorrow, but then Schutz brings back his same God as intimate, even maternal, a personal, private comfort to those crowding in from the streets of the city:
Der Herr ist noch und nimmer nicht
Von seinem Volk geschieden,
Er bleibet ihre Zuversicht,
Ihr Segen, Heil und Frieden.
Mit Mutterhanden leitet er
Die Seinen stetig hin und her.
Gebt unserm Gott die Ehre!
The Lord is never far away,
but through all grief distressing,
an ever present help and stay,
our peace and joy and blessing.
As with a mother's tender hand,
God gently leads the chosen band:
To God all praise and glory.
And all ends again in praise: ' Gebt unserm Gott die Ehre! ' - 'Give our God the honour!'
Pietists who loved such hymns were generally not sympathetic to the continuing splendour and musical elaboration of well-financed Lutheran liturgy. Their preference for informality and the extrovert expression of emotion in worship contributed to a gradual abandoning of the continuing use of Latin in the Lutheran Mass and the jettisoning of much traditional ceremony in German and Scandinavian Lutheran worship. It was predictable, therefore, that Lutheranism's greatest musician, Johann Sebastian Bach, experienced a complicated relationship with the Pietist movement which spanned his career. Undoubtedly influenced in his own passionate Christian commitment by Pietist themes and by Pietist books in his own extensive library, Bach was a man whose strenuous temperament was certainly conducive to spiritual struggle. Yet he eventually felt compelled to leave his post directing church music in the city of Muhlhausen, uneasy with the restrictions that its Pietist pastor placed on him (although also with an eye on a better-paid job at a ducal court). 46 Later, based at the richly endowed parish church of St Thomas in Leipzig for the last quarter-century of his life, Bach found a conservative Latin-based liturgy which he was very ready not to supplant but to enhance, with an innovative outpouring of musical composition for organ, choir and orchestra. His cantatas - orchestral and choral commentaries in German on the preaching and liturgical themes set for the day, incorporating some of the great German hymns of the Reformation - are one of Lutheranism's greatest creative contributions to the Western cultural tradition. It is questionable whether many contemporary Pietists would have been enthusiastic for them.
Bach was never an easy man to employ or to live with, and the St Thomas congregation did not altogether appreciate what they were being offered in his barrage of musical composition - which in the end included five complete yearly cycles of cantatas (see Plate 36). When his St Matthew Passion was performed for the first time, influential members of the congregation became steadily more bewildered by the way that the music branched out from the chorales that they knew, and one elderly widow cried, 'God help us! 'tis surely an opera-comedy!' 47 In one sense, she was right: Bach had poured his choral creativity into his cantatas and, mysteriously, was the only major composer of his time never to write an opera. In later years he concentrated more and more of his talent on solo works for keyboard and other instruments, which had little to do with his official church duties, and that may reflect his growing impatience at the
Sei Lob und Ehr' dem hochsten Gut,
Dem Vater aller Gute,
Dem Gott, der alle Wunder tut,
Dem Gott, der mein Gemute
Mit seinem reichen Trost erfullt,
Dem Gott, der allen Jammer stillt.
Gebt unserm Gott die Ehre!
Sing praise to God who reigns above,
the God of all creation,
the God of power, the God of love,
the God of our salvation;
with healing balm my soul he fills,
and every faithless murmur stills:
to God all praise and glory.
As the hymn progresses, its mood changes to speak of trouble and sorrow, but then Schutz brings back his same God as intimate, even maternal, a personal, private comfort to those crowding in from the streets of the city:
Der Herr ist noch und nimmer nicht
Von seinem Volk geschieden,
Er bleibet ihre Zuversicht,
Ihr Segen, Heil und Frieden.
Mit Mutterhanden leitet er
Die Seinen stetig hin und her.
Gebt unserm Gott die Ehre!
The Lord is never far away,
but through all grief distressing,
an ever present help and stay,
our peace and joy and blessing.
As with a mother's tender hand,
God gently leads the chosen band:
To God all praise and glory.
And all ends again in praise: ' Gebt unserm Gott die Ehre! ' - 'Give our God the honour!'
Pietists who loved such hymns were generally not sympathetic to the continuing splendour and musical elaboration of well-financed Lutheran liturgy. Their preference for informality and the extrovert expression of emotion in worship contributed to a gradual abandoning of the continuing use of Latin in the Lutheran Mass and the jettisoning of much traditional ceremony in German and Scandinavian Lutheran worship. It was predictable, therefore, that Lutheranism's greatest musician, Johann Sebastian Bach, experienced a complicated relationship with the Pietist movement which spanned his career. Undoubtedly influenced in his own passionate Christian commitment by Pietist themes and by Pietist books in his own extensive library, Bach was a man whose strenuous temperament was certainly conducive to spiritual struggle. Yet he eventually felt compelled to leave his post directing church music in the city of Muhlhausen, uneasy with the restrictions that its Pietist pastor placed on him (although also with an eye on a better-paid job at a ducal court). 46 Later, based at the richly endowed parish church of St Thomas in Leipzig for the last quarter-century of his life, Bach found a conservative Latin-based liturgy which he was very ready not to supplant but to enhance, with an innovative outpouring of musical composition for organ, choir and orchestra. His cantatas - orchestral and choral commentaries in German on the preaching and liturgical themes set for the day, incorporating some of the great German hymns of the Reformation - are one of Lutheranism's greatest creative contributions to the Western cultural tradition. It is questionable whether many contemporary Pietists would have been enthusiastic for them.
Bach was never an easy man to employ or to live with, and the St Thomas congregation did not altogether appreciate what they were being offered in his barrage of musical composition - which in the end included five complete yearly cycles of cantatas (see Plate 36). When his St Matthew Passion was performed for the first time, influential members of the congregation became steadily more bewildered by the way that the music branched out from the chorales that they knew, and one elderly widow cried, 'God help us! 'tis surely an opera-comedy!' 47 In one sense, she was right: Bach had poured his choral creativity into his cantatas and, mysteriously, was the only major composer of his time never to write an opera. In later years he concentrated more and more of his talent on solo works for keyboard and other instruments, which had little to do with his official church duties, and that may reflect his growing impatience at the
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