CHAPTER I: HISTORY OF ENGLISH HYMNODY AND THE GERMAN INFLUENCE UPON ENGLISH HYMN

HISTORY OF ENGLISH HYMNODY AND THE GERMAN INFLUENCE UPON ENGLISH HYMN WRITING FROM THE EARLY XVITH THROUGH THE XIXTH CENTURY. [110]

Any direct traces of literary intercourse between Germany and England before the XVIth century are hard to find; however, with the invention of printing, the establishment of the universities, the Renaissance and the Reformation the literary relations were increased and became important.

In the wide region of satire which was at that time serious and often steeped in theological ideas Germany's works left enduring traces. Brant's "Narrenschiff" translated in the first years of the century helped essentially in accelerating the development of this type of literature in England: reprinted there after an interval of sixty years it was still an inexhaustible model of satire. Another source of dramatic effect destined to have great success on the English stage was found in some hero endowed with supernatural powers, such as Faustus. Thus by introducing a new class of situations into English drama the unusually gifted Germany of the sixteenth century was of great moment for its neighbor, England. Not a little of the quality of the Minnelied, too, reappears in much of the verse of the English lyric writers of this century, when the rose, the nightingale and daisy serve as interpretations of the play of love. In the Mystery Plays there existed doubtless germs of the Meistersänger school: the occasional strophic passages in the Towneley plays resembled to a great extent the normal Meistergesang. This germ, however, did not develop markedly because in England the cultivation of poetry never became a serious occupation. These literary influences from Germany in satire, in Minnelied and in Meistergesang had direct effect upon English intellectual life, and continued uninterrupted through the centuries. The record, on the other hand, of German influence in History, Lyrics and Hymns was more broken and disconnected.

In order to get the story of the development of the hymn we must go back a little. Church music in the mediaeval times belonged to the choir, not to the congregation. The choral hymns in England, as in Germany, were in Latin and many of them were exceedingly beautiful. Although the early English Church received from the continent the most of the Latin hymns used in its service, nevertheless there were a few English authors of Latin hymns. Among this number were Bede, commonly called Venerable Bede (673-735?) who wrote "Adeste, Christi, vocibus," and Anselm of Canterbury, a great architect and theologian, and Thomas à Becket. While psalms and hymns have been used by the Christian Church since its beginning, the particular form of psalms and hymns now in use originated with the Reformation. A wonderful development of this religious lyric poetry sprang up in England and Germany at the beginning of the XVIth century. The reformers in both countries were chiefly concerned in simplifying religious worship, and in giving to the laity a more active participation in it; the choir and anthem, the old liturgic hymn and antiphonal chant gave way to a great extent to hymns in the vernacular, set to the simplest music and sung by the whole congregation. This change was first made by Luther and eagerly copied in England.

When Miles Coverdale in his ungifted way translated Luther's hymns into English his unpoetical and lumbering versions were ill received and were soon proscribed by the Crown. Sternhold and Hopkins who were translators of the psalms became more noticed, but their versions too seem to have been deficient in taste and feeling of lyric poetry. The criticism of the poet Campbell seems to be justified when he says of the authors that "with the best intentions and the worst taste they degraded the spirit of Hebrew Psalmody by flat and homely phraseology; and mistaking vulgarity for simplicity turned into bathos what they found sublime." Although these bleak translations were read in England for a time, they soon disappeared leaving only small traces which were picked up by [76]Wesley more than two centuries later.

So with the royal proscription of Coverdale's work [111] , the dying out of Sternhold and Hopkins' and other similar attempts at translation, the imaginative poetry of German Protestantism which had been caught up in England with such momentary enthusiasm was as rapidly forgotten. Church music was again sung by the choir. The first effort, therefore, in the early XVth century to introduce Lutheran hymnody into the English world contributed little. __________________________________________________________________

Domination of the Psalter in English Hymnody

This disappearance in England of the work of the Reformers in church music was due not only to the lack of great translators but also to many other causes. Early in the Renaissance England came to think of the Reformation as her own movement, and therefore casting aside all suggestions from other countries wished to study history and hymns of English sources only. The few men at this time who recognized Germany as the mother country of the Reformation and a seat of literary accomplishments had no wide influence in England. All German residents in England belonged exclusively to the commercial class and brought no literary influence with them; also a reason for the literary alienation at this time was the fact that Germany did not enter the religious wars in which Englishmen were so deeply interested. To men like Jonson and Fletcher Germany was famous only as a land of magicians and conjurers such as Paracelsus and Dr. Faustus. In short, for nearly two centuries England knew little of Germany except what booksellers found it to their profit to advertise on their sign directories as the "wonderful strange Newes from Germany," and the satires of Brant, Dedekind, and Fischart. [112]

Another most vital cause of the retardation of the development of hymnody in Great Britain so soon after the Reformation was the example and influence of Geneva. Calvin was organizing his ecclesiastical system at Geneva, and introduced into it Marot's Psalter [113] which was then very fashionable. This example produced in England the translation commonly known as the Old Version of the Psalms begun in the reign of Henry VIII (1509-1547). In this collection are eleven metrical versions of the "Te Deum" and "Da pacem, Domine," two original hymns of praise, two penitential and a hymn of faith. The tunes which accompanied the words were German. [114] Therefore, although the religious influence of the Reformation was always strong in England from the beginning of the movement, the influence of Luther from a literary standpoint early in the Renaissance ceased to exist in England and was replaced by Calvin's stern rule. These narrower canons admitting nothing but paraphrases of scripture and even of scripture little outside the Psalms became the firm fashion of English hymnody for the next century and a half. __________________________________________________________________

[112] For a good account of contemporary German drama and satire in England, cf. Herford: The Literary Relations of England and Germany in the XVIth. Century. Ch. IV-VII.

[113] Clement Marot, valet de chambre to Francis I of France, collaborated with Theodore Beza on a metrical translation of the Old Testament Psalms. The work appeared about 1540.

[114] Cf. Barney: History of Music. __________________________________________________________________

The Eighteenth Century

In spite of the fact that Luther had little influence on English literature in the early Reformation his hymns came to their own in England in the middle of the XVIIIth century. In the meantime, although the English people used the stern canons of Calvin, they began to feel the want of a more lyric hymn. While German Protestantism had developed at once a rich hymnody there was actually no English hymnody until the XVIIIth century. [77]Isaac Watts, a representative of the English Independents, may be justly considered the real founder of modern English hymnody. He was the first to understand the nature of the want, and by the publication of his [78]Hymns in 1707-1709 and [79]Psalms (hymns founded on psalms) he led the way in providing for this want. His immediate followers were Simon Browne and Doddridge; and later in the century Grigg, Miss Steele, [80]Beddome and Swain succeeded them. Of these writers Watts and Doddridge are certainly preeminent, the hymns of the former are of unusual fervor and strong simplicity, and those of Doddridge while perhaps more artificial in general than those of his predecessor Watts are nevertheless distinguished by their graceful style.

About 1738 came the "Methodist" movement which afterward became divided into three sects, the Arminian under [81]John Wesley, those who adhered to the Moravians, [115] and the Calvinists of whom Whitfield was the leader. Each of these factions had its own hymn writers, some of whom did, and others did not, secede from the Church of England. These are the years when a renewed strong current of influence from Germany is felt. The translation movement first sprang up in the middle of this century when Count Zinzendorf and A. G. Spangenberg came to England
[116] and established a branch of the Moravian Church there. The Gesangbuch, the first of the hymn books for the congregation at Herrnhut, had been published in 1735 by Count Zinzendorf. The Moravians in England began to translate many of the hymns contained in the German Moravian Hymn Book. [117] These translations, however, were for the most part poor, mere doggerel, but in later editions they were somewhat improved, especially in the one revised in the XlXth century by
[82]James Montgomery, the well known hymn writer, who was for a long time a member of the English Moravian Church. Among these many English hymn writers at this time whether writing entirely from English sources, or influenced by German ideas and philosophily or merely translators of the German hymn, the Wesley brothers are deserving of the first place.

After determining upon missionary lives [83]John and [84]Charles Wesley embarked on October 14, 1735, for the new colony of Georgia. Among their fellow passengers were twenty-six Moravian colonists, who in all the changes of weather, especially during storms, made a great deal of hymn singing. John Wesley was much impressed with the fervor and piety of these hymns and with their spiritual possibilities. One of the German sources which had great influence upon Wesleyan hymnody was Freylinghausen's Geist-reiches Gesang-Buch (Halle 1704 and 1714). John Wesley introduced hymn singing into the "companies" formed in Georgia and his first hymn book appeared as a Collection of Psalms and Hymns. Charles-Town 1737, without his name. Of the seventy lyrics in the book, one half are from Watts, fifteen of the remainder are hymns of the Wesleys, five of which were translated from the German by John Wesley. In his third collection printed in England in 1750 the immediate impression the hymns produce is that of foreignness because of the many lengthy stanzas and the unusual metres. The reason for this is the fact that the authorities insisted that the melodies sung at Herrnhut be kept, irrespective of the language in which they might be sung. Although Charles Wesley knew no German, and therefore derived his impressions of the Moravian hymnody indirectly, nevertheless he caught much of its tone and manner and its atmosphere of confiding love. In all he wrote about 6500 hymns, through a large portion of which may be traced this Moravian influence.

Of great value to English hymnody are the contributions of the Calvinistic Methodists, and few writers of hymns have had higher gifts than A. M. Toplady, the author of "Rock of Ages." His hymns have the same warmth, richness and spirituality as German hymns, and are meditations after the German manner, owing direct obligation to German originals. During the first quarter of the nineteenth century came the practice of hymnodists of altering without scruple the compositions of other men, notably Latin and German hymn writers, to suit their own doctrines and tastes, with the result all too often of spoiling the originals thus altered, though English hymnody was undoubtedly enriched by this process of adaptation. __________________________________________________________________

[115] The Moravians were a vigorous religious cult established in Herrnhut, Saxony.

[116] In 1737 and 1741, respectively.

[117] Cf. p. 11. __________________________________________________________________

The Nineteenth Century

Two publications in 1827, Bishop Heber's Hymns and Keble's
[85]Christian Year introduced a new epoch into English hymnody, destroying the barrier which had previously existed between the different theological schools of the Church of England. This movement received a great additional impulse from the publication in 1833 of Bunsen's Gesangbuch. From this time hymns and hymn writers multiplied not only in the Church of England, but in Scotland and America also. With such influences as we have mentioned the more recent collections have evidenced an improved standard of taste, and there has been a larger and more liberal admission of good hymns from the German. In this XIXth century when the study of the German language and literature became so much more common than before it is natural that an impulse be given also to translation of German hymns.

Beside the improvement in the standard of taste, additional interest in hymnody had been aroused by the prominence given to congregational singing in English churches. "To love hymns in eighteenth century Scotland was to be accused of heresy: in England, it was to be convicted of that worse thing, 'enthusiasm.'" Since the days of Luther Germany had given her hymns general esteem, but in England it was the middle of the nineteenth century before hymns won anything like popular favor. The congregational hymn in England is the direct although exceedingly slow outgrowth of the German Reformation but it must be borne in mind that the foundations of congregational singing were laid even before Luther. When the Hussites in Bohemia created this hymnody in the vernacular their hymns were designed for worshippers rather than for the choir. [118] While German Protestantism developed at once a rich hymnody there was actually no English hymnody until the XVIIIth century.

German hymns and chorals had a place in the Church Psalter and Hymn Book of William Mercer of Sheffield (1854). One who took much interest in its preparation was [86]James Montgomery of whom mention has already been made. [119] This was the most successful of all the books of the decade for the reason that it aided in placing the hymnody back in the people's hands and making it congregational. Thus we see that the success of congregational singing of the better type required a return to the Reformation practice of including the tunes, as well as words, in the people's hymn books.

If general congregational singing after the manner that prevailed in Germany for so long has been an incentive to the development of English hymnody, the interest in German hymnody has at the same time been quickened by the good work done in [87]Frances E. Cox's Sacred Hymns from the German (1841) and [88]Henry J. Buckoll's Hymns translated from the German (1842). This also found expression in the Psalms and Hymns, partly original, partly selected (Cambridge 1851) of [89]Arthur T. Russell, in which the German hymns played a very large part, the Latin a very small one; even the arrangement of the hymns is based on an old Lutheran hymn book. In 1854 appeared [90]Richard Massie's Martin Luther's Spiritual Songs, and the first of four parts (1854-1862) of Hymns from the Land of Luther by [91]Jane Borthwick and her sister
[92]Mrs. Findlater. In 1855 and 1858 [93]Catherine Winkworth published the [94]first and [95]second series of her Lyra Germanica, following them in 1863 with the [96]Chorale Book for England, and [97]Christian Singers of Germany (1869). The work of this group of translators which has secured so firm a place in English hymnody for a number of German hymns and more particularly those of Paul Gerhardt will be discussed in the following chapter. __________________________________________________________________

[118] The earliest extant hymn book is that in the Bohemian Museum at Prague, and bears the date Jan. 13, 1501, but this hymn book is, singularly, never mentioned among the works of the Brethren (Moravians).

[119] Cf. p. 31. For Gerhardt's influence on Montgomery cf. p. 139. __________________________________________________________________

ABBREVIATIONS AND EXPLANATIONS.

Bachmann = Bachmann: Gerhardts Geistliche Lieder, 1866.

C.B. = [98]Chorale Book for England, by [99]Catherine Winkworth, 1863.

C.P.&H.Bk. = Mercer's Church Psalter and Hymn Book, 1854 etc.

Crü.Praxis = Crüger's Praxis pietatis melica, Berlin and Frankfurt a/M. 1648 etc.

Crü.--Runge = Runge's edition of the above.

Ebeling = P. Gerhardi Geistliche Andachten, 1667 etc. (The numbers following the date refer to the "dozen" in which the poem appeared. Cf.
[100]p. 15 and note 6 [elec. ed. note 2].)

G.B. = Gesangbuch.
G.L.S. = Geistlicher Liederschatz, 1832.

Goed. = Goedeke: Gedichte von Paulus Gerhardt, 1877. (In this thesis the poems are numbered according to the page on which they begin in this Goedeke text.)

H.L.L. = Hymns from the Land of Luther, by [101]Mrs. Findlater and [102]Miss Jane Borthwick, 1854 etc.

H.Bk. = Hymn Book.

Kelly = [103]J. Kelly: Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs, 1867.

Lib.R.P. = Library of Religious Poetry, 1881.

Lyra Ger. = [104]Lyra Germanica, by [105]Miss Winkworth, 1855 etc.

Songs of G. and G. = Songs of Grace and Glory, by Charles B. Snepp, 1872.

st. = stanza.

Unv.L.S. = Unverfälschter Liedersegen, Berlin, 1851.

Wackernagel = Wackernagel: Gerhardts Geistliche Lieder, 1843.

When merely the translator's name is given, the complete title of the work is usually to be found in the respective biographical note in the Appendix, [106]pp. 144 ff.

The citation of hymn books is by no means exhaustive. Selections from Gerhardt's hymns are to be found in nearly all modern hymnals. The aim has been to give mainly those which first included versions of his hymns.

As a rule, the German stanzas are indicated by the Roman numerals I, II, III, etc., the English stanzas by the Arabic 1, 2, 3, etc. __________________________________________________________________

[110] Inasmuch as Gerhardt's influence was not fully felt in England till the middle of the XIXth Century, this chapter deals with the development of the English hymn up to that period.

[111] It must be remembered, however, that although Coverdale's writings had little influence upon the people of his own time, they have been appreciated by later generations and are among the most sincere monuments to Luther in the English language. Cf. A. Mitchell: The Wedderburns, Edinb., 1868. An example will show the nature and degree of Coverdale's imitation. Here is the first stanza of his version of "Ein' feste Burg": "Oure God is a defence and towre A good armour and good weapen, He hath ben ever oure helpe and sucoure In all the troubles that we have ben in. Therefore wyl we never drede For any wonderous dede By water or by londe In hilles or the sea-sonde. Our God hath them al i his hond." __________________________________________________________________