Today, Tuesday, September 7, 2021, we talked a little about the Protestant Reformation and its impact on music, as well as mainly focusing on metrical Psalms. We started out with the Protestant Reformation and some of the main points such as the justification by grace through faith, the scripture as the ultimate authority, and its impact on music. The impact it had on music was more congregational singing, Martin Luther’s songwriting and translation, and lastly metrical psalters. We began to look at common meter and certain melody’s that can be used to sing songs with a common meter. The most famous example of a common meter is the song “Amazing Grace.” As we began to sing certain Psalms to different melodies, it became interesting to sing some of the Psalms to different songs melodies that are very common and well known. It also was very easy to sing the Psalms to some of these melodies because they are easy to remember and easy to pick up and join in as they are very common melodies. It takes the words and begins to make them easier to remember over time the more and more you sing them to the melody of “Amazing Grace”, or “House of the Rising Sun” for example. Another could be to the melody of “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” but just feels wrong singing some of the Psalms to that melody. Then, as you begin to sing different Psalms to different melodies you begin to think of what melodies best suit certain Psalms and others that do not quite express the emotion or meaning of certain Psalms. You begin to question if this is even right to do and whether or not you should use the upbeat melody of “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” to sing to the Psalm of suffering. The answer is probably not. As we kept singing Psalms to different melodies I was very surprised and interested in how many different melodies we were able to use in singing different Psalms.
We also at the beginning of class lightly touched on the translation of the Bible to vernacular languages as well as the printing press. The printing press was possibly one of the world’s greatest inventions as it allowed for the mass-producing of books and anything that could be printed. This also meant more and more Bibles would be produced and more and more people would be able to get their hands on a Bible. While this is great, it can also lead to challenges as the Bible is not always the easiest thing to understand and certain verses can mean different things. If more and more people start to try to interpret it themselves then you have a bunch of people with completely different ideas some right, but others wrong. So, when reading the Bible it is best to have someone or something to guide you along the way to help you understand what the text means.