Martin Luther and the Gift of Music, Part 1

Martin Luther had a deep love of music and was one of the greatest proponents of congregational music within the church during the Protestant Reformation. Luther believed that music was a unique and powerful instrument for preaching the Gospel because theology could easily be communicated (and remembered) through sung text. He saw music as a vital ingredient of the Christ Follower's life and encouraged congregations to actively participate in the music of the services.

Luther also thought music was a "beautiful and glorious gift of God and second only to theology." Recently, I was reminded of a quote of his regarding the gift of music when I read the Between Two Worlds blog. Below is an extended version of the quote.

I truly desire that all Christians would love and regard as worthy the lovely gift of music, which is a precious, worthy, and costly treasure given to mankind by God...

This precious gift has been given to man alone that he might thereby remind himself that God has created man for the express purpose of praising and extolling God.

However, when man's natural musical ability is whetted and polished to the extent that it becomes an art, then do we note with great surprise the great and perfect wisdom of God in music, which is, after all, His product and His gift; we marvel when we hear music in which one voice sings a simple melody, while three, four, or five other voices play and trip lustily around the voice that sings its simple melody and adorn this simple melody wonderfully with artistic musical effects, thus reminding us of a heavenly dance, where all meet in a spirit of friendliness, caress and embrace. A person who gives this some thought and yet does not regard music as a marvelous creation of God, must be a clodhopper indeed and does not deserve to be called a human being; he should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of hogs.

(Martin Luther, 1538, in his foreword to a collection of chorale motets)