Kirchenlied

Kirchenlied, a hymn to be sung in church. In the Middle Ages hymns were chiefly in Latin, but it is widely held that German translations of Latin hymns, although not a part of the liturgy itself, were interpolated, particularly on special occasions. Examples have been quoted at Aachen (11th c.), Seckau (1345), and Breslau (1417), and in 1482 the vernacular hymn ‘Christ ist erstanden’ was prescribed by the bishop as an introduction to the Office for Easter Day. Goethe uses the opening line in his pastiche of the hymn in Faust, Pt. I, Nacht, in motivating Faust's sudden abstention from suicide. These forerunners of the later Kirchenlied were mostly translations of Sequentiae (see Sequenz, Mariensequenz von St. Lambrecht, Mariensequenz von Muri, and Melker Marienlied).

The ecclesiastical hymn (in German always Kirchenlied or geistliches Lied, not Hymne) is primarily a product of the Reformation and the continuing Protestant tradition of worship in the vernacular. The principal German hymn writers, in roughly chronological order, are: 16th c.: Luther, P. Speratus, M. Weiße, P. Nicolai, B. Ringwaldt, N. Selnecker; 17th c.: M. Rinkhart, P. Fleming, J. Heermann, P. Gerhardt (perhaps the most outstanding of all), S. Dach, A. Gryphius, Angelus Silesius, G. Arnold, E. Neumeister, J. Neander, S. Tersteegen; 18th c.: C. F. Gellert, M. Claudius, Novalis; 19th c.: E. M. Arndt, M. von Schen-kendorf. Many of these writers include translations from the Latin among their hymns. In Lutheran use the term Choral is virtually synonymous with Kirchenlied. In England it is best known through the often elaborately harmonized hymn verses which are found in many of the cantatas etc. of J. S. Bach and his contemporaries. A number of German hymns have passed into English hymnals, notably through translations furnished in the mid-19th c. by Catherine Winkworth and R. Massie (Martin Luther's Spiritual Songs, 1854).