Music in the Lutheran Church before and at the time of J. S. Bach

Extract

Those who had once experienced the power and blessedness of the Gospel as revealed by Luther felt that he had restored to them a lost treasure greater than all worldly riches. So it is in the work of Luther that we find the roots of Lutheran church music. The story of carrying over the old in music and tracing its influence in the new era is an unending maze of facts and conjectures, none the less interesting, however. This new church body would become distinctive in its music. It would substitute for the ritualistic and even pantomimical where every feature of the architecture, of the altar, and environment, as well as the liturgie services, symbolized religion, a new vitality, direct interest, and instructiveness. This would mean a breaking away from that form of church services where reverence is voiced by every appeal to eye and ear, where one would feel himself verily to be in the House of Prayer and before the throne of the Holy One.