The history of German Protestant church music in the seventeenth century and onward is the record of a transformation not less striking and significant than that which the music of the Catholic Church experienced in the same period. In both instances forms of musical art which were sanctioned by tradition and associated with ancient and rigorous conceptions of devotional expression were overcome by the superior powers of a style which was in its origin purely secular. The revolution in the Protestant church music was, however, less sudden and far less complete. It is somewhat remarkable that the influences that prevailed in the music of the Protestant Church—the Church of discontent and change—were on the whole more cautious and conservative than those that were active in the music of the Catholic Church. The latter readily gave up the old music for the sake of the new, and so swiftly readjusted its boundaries that the ancient landmarks were almost everywhere obliterated. The Protestant music advanced by careful evolutionary methods, and in the final product nothing that was valuable in the successive stages through which it passed was lost. In both cases—Lutheran and Catholic—the motive was the same. Church music, [269] like secular, demanded a more comprehensive and a more individual style of expression. The Catholic musicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were very clear in their minds as to what they wanted and how to get it. The brilliant Italian aria was right at hand in all its glory, and its languishing strains seemed admirably suited to the appeals which the aggressive Church was about to make to the heart and the senses. The powers that ruled in German Protestant worship conceived their aims, consciously or unconsciously, in a somewhat different spirit. The new musical movement in German church music was less self-confident, it was uncertain of its final direction, at times restrained by reverence for the ancient forms and ideals, again wantonly breaking with tradition and throwing itself into the arms of the alluring Italian culture.

The German school entered the seventeenth century with three strong and pregnant forms to its credit, viz., the choral, the motet (essentially a counterpart of the Latin sixteenth-century motet), and organ music. Over against these stood the Italian recitative and aria, associated with new principles of tonality, harmony, and structure. The former were the stern embodiment of the abstract, objective, liturgic conception of worship music; the latter, of the subjective, impassioned, and individualistic. Should these ideals be kept apart, or should they be in some way united? One group of German musicians would make the Italian dramatic forms the sole basis of a new religious art, recognizing the claims of the personal, the varied, and the brilliant, in ecclesiastical music as in secular. Another group [270] clung tenaciously to the choral and motet, resisting every influence that might soften that austere rigor which to their minds was demanded by historic association and liturgic fitness. A third group was the party of compromise. Basing their culture upon the old German choir chorus, organ music, and people’s hymn-tune, they grafted upon this sturdy stock the Italian melody. It was in the hands of this school that the future of German church music lay. They saw that the opportunities for a more varied and characteristic expression could not be kept out of the Church, for they were based on the reasonable cravings of human nature. Neither could they throw away those grand hereditary types of devotional utterance which had become sanctified to German memory in the period of the Reformation’s storm and stress. They adopted what was soundest and most suitable for these ends in the art of both countries, and built up a form of music which strove to preserve the high traditions of national liturgic song, while at the same time it was competent to gratify the tastes which had been stimulated by the recent rapid advance in musical invention. Out of this movement grew the Passion music and the cantata of the eighteenth century, embellished with all the expressive resources of the Italian vocal solo and the orchestral accompaniment, solidified by a contrapuntal treatment derived from organ music, and held unswervingly to the very heart of the liturgy by means of those choral tunes which had become identified with special days and occasions in the church year.
 
The nature of the change of motive in modern church music, which broke the exclusive domination of the chorus by the introduction of solo singing, has been set forth in the chapter on the later mass. The most obvious fact in the history of this modification of church music in Germany is that the neglect in many quarters of the strong old music of choral and motet in favor of a showy concert style seemed to coincide with that melancholy lapse into formalism and dogmatic intolerance which, in the German Church of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, succeeded to the enthusiasms of the Reformation era. But it does not follow, as often assumed, that we have here a case of cause and effect. It is worth frequent reiteration that no style of music is in itself religious. There is no sacredness, says Ruskin, in round arches or in pointed, in pinnacles or buttresses; and we may say with equal pertinence that there is nothing sacred per se in sixteenth-century counterpoint, Lutheran choral, or Calvinist psalm-tune. The adoption of the new style by so many German congregations was certainly not due to a spirit of levity, but to the belief that the novel sensation which their aesthetic instincts craved was also an element in moral edification. From the point of view of our more mature experience, however, there was doubtless a deprivation of something very precious when the German people began to lose their love for the solemn patriotic hymns of their faith, and when choirs neglected those celestial harmonies with which men like Eccard and Hasler lent these melodies the added charm of artistic decoration. There would seem to be no real compensation in those buoyant songs, with their thin accompaniment, which [272] Italy offered as a substitute for a style grown cold and obsolete. But out of this decadence, if we call it such, came the cantatas and Passions of J. S. Bach, in which a reflective age like ours, trained to settle points of fitness in matters of art, finds the most heart-searching and heart-revealing strains that devotional feeling has ever inspired. These glorious works could never have existed if the Church had not sanctioned the new methods in music which Germany was so gladly receiving from Italy. Constructed to a large extent out of secular material, these works grew to full stature under liturgic auspices, and at last, transcending the boundaries of ritual, they became a connecting bond between the organized life of the Church and the larger religious intuitions which no ecclesiastical system has ever been able to monopolize.

Such was the gift to the world of German Protestantism, stimulated by those later impulses of the Renaissance movement which went forth in music after their mission had been accomplished in plastic art. In the Middle Age, we are told, religion and art lived together in brotherly union; Protestantism threw away art and kept religion, Renaissance rationalism threw away religion and retained art. In painting and sculpture this is very nearly the truth; in music it is very far from being true. It is the glory of the art of music, that she has almost always been able to resist the drift toward sensuousness and levity, and where she has apparently yielded, her recovery has been speedy and sure. So susceptible is her very nature to the finest touches of religious feeling, that every revival of the pure spirit of devotion has always found her prepared to adapt herself to new spiritual demands, and out of apparent decline to develop forms of religious expression more beautiful and sublime even than the old.
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Conspicuous among the forms with which the new movement endowed the German Church was the cantata. This form of music may be traced back to Italy, where the monodic style first employed in the opera about 1600 was soon adopted into the music of the salon. The cantata was at first a musical recitation by a single person, without action, accompanied by a few plain chords struck upon a single instrument. This simple design was expanded in the first half of the seventeenth century into a work in several movements and in many parts or voices. Religious texts were soon employed and the church cantata was born. The cantata was eagerly taken up by the musicians of the German Protestant Church and became a prominent feature in the regular order of worship. In the seventeenth century the German Church cantata consisted usually of an instrumental introduction, a chorus singing a Bible text, a “spiritual aria” (a strophe song, sometimes for one, sometimes for a number of voices), one or two vocal solos, and a choral. This immature form (known as “spiritual concerto,” “spiritual dialogue” or “spiritual act of devotion”), consisting of an alternation of Biblical passages and church or devotional hymns, flourished greatly in the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries. In its complete development in the eighteenth century it also incorporated the recitative and the Italian aria form, and carried to [274] their full power the chorus, especially the chorus based on the choral melody, and the organ accompaniment. By means of the prominent employment of themes taken from choral tunes appointed for particular days in the church calendar, especially those days consecrated to the contemplation of events in the life of our Lord, the cantata became the most effective medium for the expression of those emotions called forth in the congregation by their imagined participation in the scenes which the ritual commemorated. The stanzas of the hymns which appear in the cantata illustrate the Biblical texts, applying and commenting upon them in the light of Protestant conceptions. The words refer to some single phase of religious feeling made conspicuous in the order for the clay. A cantata is, therefore, quite analogous to the anthem of the Church of England, although on a larger scale. Unlike an oratorio, it is neither epic nor dramatic, but renders some mood, more or less general, of prayer or praise.

We have seen that the Lutheran Church borrowed many features from the musical practice of the Catholic Church, such as portions of the Mass, the habit of chanting, and ancient hymns and tunes. Another inheritance was the custom of singing the story of Christ’s Passion, with musical additions, in Holy Week. This usage, which may be traced back to a remote period in the Middle Age, must be distinguished from the method, prevalent as early as the thirteenth century, of actually representing the events of Christ’s last days in visible action upon the stage. The Passion play, which still survives in Oberammergau in Bavaria, and in other more [275] obscure parts of Europe, was one of a great number of ecclesiastical dramas, classed as Miracle Plays, Mysteries, and Moralities, which were performed under the auspices of the Church for the purpose of impressing the people in the most vivid way with the reality of the Old and New Testament stories, and the binding force of doctrines and moral principles.

The observance out of which the German Passion music of the eighteenth century grew was a............