From his doctrines of salvation by faith, the right of private judgment, and the universal priesthood of believers, Luther deduced radical conclusions regarding public worship, including special emphasis on congregational participation in the service in the vernacular language (instead of Latin). Although holding closely to the outlines of the Roman service, he undertook to reduce some features that he held objectionable and to make the people's part conspicuous. He seized upon common song as indispensable, and in 1523 and 1526, with the aid of Walther and others, issued orders of service with this element emphasized. The hymns provided were as a rule specially written in metrical form. For them melodies were either borrowed from favorite folk-songs or part-songs or were newly written in similar style, thus linking the new style with forms already universally popular. These melodies were later called 'chorales.'
Though at first the musical treatment of chorales was more or less
contrapuntal, with the melody in the tenor, before 1600 the style advanced
to a definitely harmonic form, with a solid progression of chords,
the melody in the treble and the lines sharply defined by cadences and
controlled by a coherent tonality.
The chorale became the nucleus of Protestant church music
generally, and it is of historic importance because its wide acceptance
hastened and popularized the new tendency to base
composition on harmony rather than counterpoint, and because
from its extensive literature German organ music later derived
an inexhaustible fund of suggestion. What the treasures of
Plain-Song had been to Catholic music, the new treasures of the
chorale style became to Protestant music. This innovation,
then, contained the germ of great subsequent developments.
Luther's strong interest in congregational music involved no hostility
to choir music. He himself knew and loved a wide range of mass and
motet music, and he advocated the free use of whatever was excellent, believing
that, with slight exceptions, there was no distinction between
Catholic and Protestant standards. Thus much of the rich polyphonic accumulation,
so far as accessible in northern Germany, passed over at once
into Protestant usage. With it came not a little Plain-Song.
It is a curious fact that presently the Catholic world lost the power of further advance in the style of which Palestrina was master, while in Protestant Germany contrapuntal theory and practice were cultivated to such purpose that in the 18th century a second culmination was possible. It is idle to speculate whether this transfer of artistic vitality was due to religious or racial causes.
