The Trinity and Liturgy: Music

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

See, for example, Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress), #151 and #194.

Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach, The Learned Musician (New York: Norton, 2000), 173.

As Georg Neumark says in stanza 4 (of the original seven) in “Wer nur den lieben Gott last walten” (“If You But Trust in God to Guide You”), which Mendelssohn uses in the third movement of his cantata on that hymn. Mendelssohn skillfully gets to the key of the phrase, “God comes before we know,” before the musical form itself should get there, namely, at the previous phrase which says, “when there is nothing not confessed” because our faith is “most steady.” By this musical means, he makes the theological point that God is already active for us when we may mistakenly think we are getting into God's presence by our confessing.

There are examples of Trinitarian references by means of numbers of measures or numbers of notes. You cannot hear these, and some claims are fanciful. But they are too plentiful to be accidental. In Cantata 129, Gelobet sei der Herr, for example, it is hard to deny that Bach signs in with his baptism under the Trinitarian name.

The Bach Werke-Verzeichnis is the index to J. S. Bach's works. It is abbreviated BWV, followed by the index number.

One could additionally consider three-ness in the created order and in music (as in “since all musick is but three parts vied,” George Herbert, “Easter,” The Poems of George Herbert [London: Oxford University Press, 1961], 35), but that is beyond the scope of this assignment.

Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology, vol. 1: The Triune God (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 234.

Ibid., 235.

Ibid., 236.

In Latin, circumincessio (or by similarity of sound “circuminsessio”). See “Circumincession,” The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F. L. Cross (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 292.

Evangelical Lutheran Worship, # 412.

Jenson, 226.

In some of the following I am quoting and paraphrasing things I wrote in “Prophetic Implications of the Cantor's Vocation,” Word & World 33, no. 3 (Summer 2013): 257–65.

Oskar Soehngen, “Fundamental Considerations for a Theology of Music,” The Musical Heritage of the Church, ed. Theodore Hoelty-Nickel (St. Louis: Concordia, 1963), 6:9.

For a detailed study see Jeremie Begbie, Theology, Music and Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

See Igor Stravinsky, An Autobiography (New York: Norton, 1936), 54.

See my Rise, O Church: Reflections on the Church, Its Music, and Empire (St. Louis: MorningStar, 2008), 22ff.

Note that the liturgy presumes the live sound of human voices, not what is recorded. What is recorded has its value as a frozen artifact, but it is always old the instant after it is made. The sound of the church at worship is like all live music—always new, never sounded before as it sounds in this place in this way with this group of people in a very specific succession of moments that move through time. Robert Hausman gives the context well when he references Luther, who, in his lectures on Genesis 26:24, 25, says God speaks to us in time in the light of eternity (Luther's Works, eds. Jaroslav Pelikan and Walter A Hansen [Saint Louis: Concordia, 1968], 5:76). Hausman suggests we may say that “we are such creatures with whom God wishes to sing in eternity and for all time,” and one might add, through all time. It should be further noted that this live sound is acoustic, not amplified. Amplification accedes to our temptation to make us bigger than we are by the pretension that the artificial larger-than-life sound is our voice.

John Mason Neale's translation with the Latin is given in Erik Routley, edited and expanded by Paul A. Richardson, A Panorama of Christian Hymnody (Chicago: GIA, 2005), #152.

Walter Brueggemann, Israel's Praise: Doxology against Idolatry and Ideology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), 86.

Nairobi Statement on Worship and Culture (Lutheran World Federation, 1996), http://www.worr.org/images/File/Nairobi%20Statement.pdf.

The definition of heresy is to emphasize one truth at the expense of all the rest.

Frederick J. Gaiser, “Songs in the Story” (Dissertation, University of Heidelberg, 1984), 177.

Ibid., 6.

Ibid., 2 and 7.

Paul Westermeyer, “To Be Human Is to Sing,” The Luther Northwestern Story (Winter 1990): 76–84.

Martin Luther, “Preface to Georg Rhau's Symphoniae iucundae,” Luther's Works: Liturgy and Hymns, vol. 53 (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1965), 324.

R. Vaughan Williams, “Preface,” The English Hymnal with Tunes (London: Oxford University Press, 1906), ix.

Quoted from Augustine, City of God 2.21, 72, from Scipio's De republica 2.42f., in Albert Blackwell, The Sacred in Music (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1999), 189.

Quoted from Jonathan Edwards’ Miscellany # 188, The “Miscellanies,” 331, in Blackwell, 189 (see n. 29).

See my Let Justice Sing: Hymnody and Justice (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press), 76.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (London: Fontana Books, 1952), 136ff.

Ibid., 140.

“The Day You Gave Us, Lord, Has Ended,” Evangelical Lutheran Worship, # 569.

Mirella Klomp, The Sound of Worship: Liturgical Performance by Surinamese Lutherans and Ghanaian Methodists in Amsterdam (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), 32. This is true even in deaf communities where vibration and movement, more than high decibels, stand in for sound that cannot be heard. (There is a further matter to be considered here if one assumes that the Gospel comes by hearing. And the body with its movement in worship—for everyone, deaf or not—is also at issue, though beyond the scope of this assignment.)

See Klomp for more detail (see n. 35).

Irenaeus, “Selections from the Work Against Heresies,” Early Christian Fathers, ed. and trans. Cyril Richardson (London: Westminster Press, 1953), 361.

See Robin A. Leaver and James H. Litton, eds., Duty and Delight: Routley Remembered (Carol Stream: Hope, 1985).

With thanks to Timothy Bernard, Andrew Bruhn, Susan Palo Cherwien, Robert Hausman, Zebulon Highben, Melinda Quivik, Kristin Rongstad, Robert Scholz, and Brian Wentzel for critical reading, proofing, insights, and suggestions.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul Westermeyer

Paul Westermeyer is Emeritus Professor of Church Music, Cantor, Master of Sacred Music Director with St. Olaf College, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota.