Die Lieder by Martin Luther (review)

The hymns of Martin Luther are foundational not only for Lutherans but also for other Protestant traditions created by the Reformations of the sixteenth century, and notwithstanding Luther's views on the Catholicism of his day, Roman Catholics in subsequent generations have also taken to singing at least some of his hymns. It is Luther who promoted the vernacular singing of the congregation, a concept and practice that quickly developed and spread geographically and chronologically from Wittenberg in the early sixteenth century. Their associated melodies have become the backbone of a great deal of other music, from the homophony of Lucas Osiander to the polychoralism of Michael Praetorius, from the cantatas and organ preludes of Johann Sebastian Bach to the motets and organ pieces of Hugo Distler, from Felix Mendelssohn's exploration of Luther's Ein feste Burgin his Reformation Symphony to Igor Stravinsky's somewhat sparse reworking of the same melody in his L'histoire du soldat, among other examples. Thus especially from early in the nineteenth century there have been a succession of editions of Luther's texts and melodies, some more scholarly, others more popular, notably those edited by August Jakob Rambach ( Ueber D. Martin Luthers Verdienst um den Kirchengesang[Hamburg: Bohnische Buchhandlung, 1813; reprint, Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1972]), by Carl von Winterfeld ( Martin Luthers Deutsche geistliche Lieder[Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1840; reprint, G. Olms, 1966]), and by Philipp Wackernagel ( Martin Luthers geistliche Lieder: Mit den zu seinen Lebzeiten gebräuchlichen Singweisen[Stuttgart: S. G. Liesching, 1848; reprint, G. Olms, 1976]). The foundational modern critical edition of the texts and melodies was published as volume 35 of D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe(often referred to as the "Weimarer Ausgabe," hereinafter WA, 136 volumes) edited by Wilhelm Lucke, Otto Albrecht, and Hans Joachim Moser (Weimar: Hermann Böhlau, 1923), which provided the scholarly background for more popular editions, such as those edited by Hans Preuss and Ernst Schmidt ( Luthers Lieder[Leipzig: G. Schloessmann, 1931]), and, more recently, by Johannes Heimrath and Michael Korth ( Ein feste Burg: Luthers Kirchenlieder nach der Ausgabe letzter Hand von 1545[Munich: Artemis, 1983]). With the passage of time, the discovery of new sources, and the development of new ideas about Luther, in the 1980s a series of supplementary volumes to WA was begun: Archiv zur Weimarer Ausgabe der Werke Martin Luthers: Texte und Untersuchungen. The fourth volume is Luthers geistliche Lieder und Kirchengesänge: Vollständige Neuedition in Ergänzung zu Band 35 der Weimarer Ausgabe, edited by Markus Jenny (Cologne: Böhlau, 1985, here-inafter AWA 4).

The volume under review, jointly issued by Reclam and Carus, is therefore one of the latest in a long succession of editions, some of which were published in or around 2017. The primary reason for this phenomenon is that 2017 marked the 500th anniversary of the beginning of Luther's Reformation in 1517, and for many people their most tangible contact with Luther's protest in the early sixteenth century is in their familiarity with his hymns. But these new publications have been able to draw on recent significant German hymnological publications in which Luther's hymns are prominent. These include: the critical edition of published melodies associated with German hymns from the beginnings until 1570 ( Die Melodien bis 1570, vol. 1 in the series Das deutsche Kirchenlied: Kritische Gesamtausgabe der Melodien, Abteilung III, Melodien aus gedruckente Quellen bis 1680, ed. Joachim Stalmann, et al. [Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1993-98]; see my reviews in Notes54, no. 4 [June 1998]: 907-11; 56, no. 2 [December 1999]: 388-91; and 59, no. 3 [March 2003]: 664-67]); and the detailed commentaries on each of the hymns in the common hymnal Evangelisches Gesangbuch(published in various editions for each regional church in Germany, 1993-96)—the replacement of the Evangelische Kirchen-gesangbuch...