One striking aspect of the recent “Federal Vision” conflict in the various conservative micro-Reformed groups is a debate over what older theologians really meant and said. Examining the credentials of various people who speak with great assurance on these matters one sees repeatedly degrees in church/theology history studies. In fact, in Reformed circles, it seems that about the only advanced degrees offered are in historical studies.
I should like to offer what I regard as a considerable caveat. I do not believe that men who sing pop choruses or plodding Trinity Hymnal songs on Sunday can get very far into Luther or Calvin, or for that matter Turretin. Men whose personal opinion is that society can be left to the devil cannot really get into the outlook of the Reformers.
I submit that it is important to have some feel for what people were singing and how they were singing it at various times in history. Is it a coincidence that “Reformed scholasticism” began to develop at the same time that the fiery dance-like chorales and psalms of the Reformation began to die down into slow, plodding, even-note mush? It is a coincidence that the “Puritans” had problems with assurance of salvation, given their destruction of enthusiastic singing? I don’t think so. People who sing the psalms as real war chants, as war dances that precede battle, don’t have problems with assurance and don’t have time for scholasticism. Neither do people with strong, fully-sung liturgies.
Obviously, much can be understood by reading the writings left by various historical personages. But without understanding the songs they sang, from the inside, we will not have the Spirit that they had, and our understanding will be incomplete and flawed.
Biblical Horizons 
Is there some place on the internet where I can hear any examples of what would qualify as well-sung psalms and chorales?
It’s a note that I hear pretty consistently, this overwhelming contempt for the music of the contemporary church, and I’m curious about what I’m missing out on.
I know of no place where you can hear either done with enthusiasm. Our attempts to revive such Biblical singing have not proceeded anywhere near that far.
I’ve read this a couple of times and still keep missing the point of this sentence, “Men whose personal opinion is that society can be left to the devil cannot really get into the outlook of the Reformers.”
I think you are trying to say that christianity should engage society, as opposed to withdrawing from it…but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing a connection you were trying to make between the dismissal of society, reformed scholasticism, and church liturgy.
Ben, I’m partial to the music/liturgy of the Lutheran Church. There is some good stuff out there on cd, including a four-part entitled Wittenberg. I loaded it on i-tunes and promptly misplaced the CD, so I can’t give you more detail. This website may be of some use: http://www.lutheran-hymnal.com/
A shame too. I’m not convinced that we can’t sing other songs but it is lamentable that most churches never sing Psalms when at the very least they should be the staple diet, and sung powerfully.
And there especially won’t be any at this year’s BH conference.
What makes you say that, Steven?
I’m just giving JBJ a hard time for his pulling the plug on the liturgy. I’d raved about it all year long, promising to show it to hundreds of my friends. But now that they’ve heard it isn’t going to happen, well, they all dropped out…
What books or studies do you recommend that give a church historical study of music?
#3 Yes, I meant that apart from a view of ChristenDOM that sees transforming society under King Jesus, one cannot understand the Reformers and their followers over the next century. The attempt to strip the political-theology context from historic theology results in distortion.
#5 I favor other hymns also, but psalms must have pride of place. And, I think we need to be careful about hymns, since many popular ones contain things that contradict the Bible. (E.g., saints casting down their crowns, which is not in the Bible. Angels give up their crowns to the saints in the book of Revelation.)
We’ll still be singing lots of psalms and hymns at the BH conference. We just won’t have a formal Vespers service as such.
Let me give an illustration. The warsong of the Reformed churches was Genevan 68. This is sung very fast, without pretty harmonizations. (You can go even faster in French than you can in English.) It’s got stuff in it like “your dogs will enjoy licking up the blood of your enemies.” The Catholic government in France outlawed singing this psalm, and then had to outlaw whistling it. Now, people doing theology in this context are about a galaxy away from people doing “historical theology” in the Reformed and Presbyterian world today. And I submit that these modern repristinators of the past are as often as not distorting it (as we’ve seen in the so-called Federal Vision discussion), precisely because they are far, far away from the mindset of the Reformation.
I believe Bach Collegium Japan’s Masaaki Suzuki is interested in turning his attention to the early French and Dutch Reformed composers once he finishes recording all of Bach’s vocal works. He has passed the halfway point in his ongoing Bach project but it will be a while yet.
If you hunt around there are three (and possibly more) CDs of the Netherlands Chamber Choir singing Sweelinck that are quite good. Conductors are Koopman, Christie, Phillips, Herreweghe, van Nevel, etc.
Also recommended is L’Estocart’s Octonaires De La Vanite Du Monde recorded by Ensemble Clement Janequin. Those are just a few of the Octonaires that were originally written, and L’Estocart is not the only one to have set them to music, but that’s the only recording I know of that’s worth listening to.
I don’t know of any single-volume work on music that I can recommend as a sufficient introduction to music for Christians, but off the top of my head I strongly recommend the Norton anthology edited by Taruskin and Weiss, and I also strongly recommend Music and Language: the Rise of Western Music as Exemplified in Settings of the Mass, by Georgiades.
The most important thing is to sing and play music in the home, and to have music — especially music in the context of enjoying God, music received as a gift from God, and music offered up to God — recognized as an indispensable, integral part of the Christian’s life. Music isn’t everything, but it is worth devoting a lot of time and money to it, especially in the education of our children.
Playing the violin (or any fretless string instrument) and singing are great ways for kids to develop their ears, and once a significant number of such people are growing up in our churches it will begin to be possible to start doing some really interesting things with harmony.
It is good for kids to be exposed to vocal music that is really well done. It’s not “reformed” but you can hardly go wrong listening to Suzuki’s recordings of Bach’s vocal works, and just about everything recorded by the Cardinall’s Musick under the direction of Andrew Carwood is first-rate. Stuff by Jeremy Summerly is also very good, and since most of it is on the Naxos label it is quite reasonably priced. I really like the sound of English choirs — Tallis Scholars, The Sixteen, etc.
If you like instruments with your voices, look also at what Robert King has recorded on the Hyperion label. (All of Vivaldi’s vocal works, all of Purcell’s vocal works, etc.) All of it is quite good and if Robin Blaze and/or Carolyn Sampson appear on the label you are in for a treat.
Here are few others I just remembered:
Handel’s Chandos Anthems, by The Sixteen (Harry Christophers)
Handel’s Coronation Anthems, by the Academy of Ancient Music (Stephen Cleobury)
CPE Bach’s Gellert Oden, sung by Dorothee Mields on the CPO label. Really nice Geistliche Oden und Lieder from the mid-18th century.
Christopher,
Thanks for the info!
Christopher,
Thanks for the info, but…
James,
The information provided from Christopher appears to be great music and well worth time and investment, but I wanted to check with you and see you and Christopher aren’t barking up two different trees. Your comment at #11 above seems to be at odds with the harmony and orchestration apparent in Christopher’s #12 and #13.
Certainly there is a time and place for both.
#15. Yes. I’m talking about vigorous congregational song. I love all the stuff Christopher wrote about, and have sung it all my life in various groups. But that music is “beautiful” rather than “martial.” Or, it has a different kind of beauty.
Allow me to add that I don’t recommend listening to all the stuff I referred to above because I think we ought to be singing that in our church worship services — rather, I think we should listen to it because it is beautiful and beauty is pedagogically advantageous. If anyone knows of beautiful recordings of the sort of stuff that we ought to be singing in our church worship services, I hope you’ll let me know! So far I have only found a few recordings that are unpleasant to listen to . . .
I’ve long thought that every meeting of a course in church history ought to open and close with a hymn from the period under study. That would include (just to offer a sampler) the Te Deum for the early church, the Dies Irae for the medieval church, the right version of “A Mighty Fortress” for Reformation, and, oh, I don’t know what for the modern age.