German Hymnology [pp. 574-602]

German Hymnology.
berg were employed, to adjust the music. The perversions of worldly song and of superstition only gave an
edge to reforming zeal, and so good John Walters, in the
preface to the Wittenberg hymn-book of 1537, says: "4 But in
order that the beautiful art be not altogether abolished, I have,
blessed be God, in despite of the devil and all his contempt,
set the spiritual songs, heretofore printed at Wittenberg,
mostly with correction, and augmented with certain little
pieces for five or six voices."
It would be interesting to trace the connection between the
hymnology of the ancient Bohemian Brethren and that of the
Lutherans. This is alluded to in a collection by John Varnier,
Ulm,1538. In the rhyming address to the reader, mention is
made of the grace shown to the churches of Bohemia and
Moravia.t
The excellent -Mathesius of Joachimsthal, the biographer of
Luther, united with the musician IHerman in a volume of
sacred music and poetry, which has a preface by the latter,
containing many things illustrative of the popular condition in
regard to this subject. "When I look back, (says the old
Cantor, as Herman calls himself), and consider how it was in
my youth, fifty years and more ago, in churches and schools,
and w-vhat sort of teaching there was therein, my hair stands
on end, and my flesh shudders, nor can I refrain from sighs
and lamentation; and it were to be wished that the young
people and scholars of our time knew but the half of what
those poor school urchins endured, of toil, misery, frost, and
hunger. In the common schools there were such barbarism and
inaccuracy in learning, that many were twenty years old before they learned their grammar, or could speak a little Latin,
which, when they got it, sounded in comparison with our Latin
like an old rattle-pipe or rebeck beside the noblest and best
tuned organ. The poor children [Luther had been one of
them,] who went about serving as waits, were no better than
martyrs. If they were tortured in school and frozen, they
t Inn Behem vnd Merrher landt,
Wo ich Gottes sinn hliab erkannt,
Von leiiten die man bisper veracht,
Vnd verfolgt hat mit voller macht.
[OCTOB]Elt
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