This book draws on hundreds of liturgical documents, contemporary accounts of services, books on church music, and other sources, and rewrites the history of music and congregational song in German Lutheran churches. In the popular imagination, Martin Luther is the father of congregational singing in the modern western church. In fact, the picture is much more complex, and a choral liturgy was dominant in Lutheran churches for many decades after Luther’s death. In some cities, congregations were urged to sing, and the congregation’s song developed more quickly there than in other places. But c ... More

This book draws on hundreds of liturgical documents, contemporary accounts of services, books on church music, and other sources, and rewrites the history of music and congregational song in German Lutheran churches. In the popular imagination, Martin Luther is the father of congregational singing in the modern western church. In fact, the picture is much more complex, and a choral liturgy was dominant in Lutheran churches for many decades after Luther’s death. In some cities, congregations were urged to sing, and the congregation’s song developed more quickly there than in other places. But contemporary reports indicate that in many places the people sang poorly or not at all. It was only gradually over the next two centuries that a congregational liturgy replaced the choral mass. Along the way, congregational hymnals and organ accompaniment of hymns were introduced, and the liturgy eventually came to resemble what is familiar today. Choral and congregational liturgies did not always coexist peacefully, resulting in the “worship wars” of the book’s title. The book traces the history of these worship wars and the arguments over the appropriateness of different kinds of music and musical styles in Lutheran churches through about 1780.