The ends justify the means

 When it comes to music, I’m with Luther: the ends justify the means.

It is interesting to compare the attitude of Calvin, Zwingli and Luther to using secular music styles in church. Calvin (1509–1564) refused to use either catholic styles of music, or the secular styles of his day (which he said were ‘lascivious, injurious, alluring’¹). He was afraid that ‘venom and corruption’ might reach ‘the depths of the heart’.² In a similar vein, Ulrich Zwingli held that ‘spirit and flesh contradict each other’.³ He was dubious about singing, preferring to sing ‘not with our voices, like the Jewish singers, but with our hearts’.⁴ In the summer of 1524 his followers smashed all the organs they could find, hoping to bring things back to pure worship.⁵

So against his reformation buddies, Martin Luther (1483-46) stands out. He was prepared to use any style of music that would help people engage with God: ‘For their sake [simple laymen] we must read, sing, preach, write and compose, and if it would help the matter along, I would have all the bells pealing, and all the organs playing, and let everything chime that has a clapper’.⁶ Rumour has it he used pub tunes – this is not quite right, but he certainly used folk music to drive the gospel messages home. (Incidentally, it is no accident that J.S. Bach composed his amazing Cantatas while working at Leipzig Luthern church). The key values were education, scriptural words, and communion between the church here and the church in heaven. Whatever would serve these goals would be employed in church.

1 Charles Garside, The Origins of Calvin's Theology of Music: 1536–1543 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1979), 28.

2 Paul Westermeyer, Te Deum: The Church and Music (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 156.

3 Paul Westermeyer, Te Deum: The Church and Music (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 151.

4 Ulrich Zwingli, ‘Conclusion 45’ in Charles Garside, Zwingli and the Arts (New Haven: Yale, 1966), 45.

5 Paul Westermeyer, Te Deum: The Church and Music (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 150.

6 Flynn, ‘Liturgical Music’, 780