beatrice_otter | (Reply)

The LCMS tends to keep hymns with unaltered melodies. By which I mean, German music of the 16th-17th century had some rhythms and harmonies that are quite ... odd to modern ears. They'd put offbeats in places we think are weird, for example, and which consistently throw off people not used to singing those types of rhythms. Also, their melodic and cadence patterns didn't fall into the same ones that our ears are trained to expect. To hear what I mean about the chord structure, watch the Pachelbel Rant on Youtube where a musical comedian complains how he Pachelbel's Canon in D is following him everywhere because most music has the same chord structure. It is both funny and beautifully demonstrates the underlying patterns our ears are trained to expect. We'll listen to all kinds of different music, and because the melodies are different we don't realize the chord structures mostly follow a few common patterns. Well, 16th Century German music had different underlying chord structures, so it sounds weird (and mostly dour) to us, unless you're used to it.

As Lutheran groups came to this country, they started out worshiping in their native language (a German or Scandinavian language). Gradually they began worshiping in English and mixing more with the larger American community. They added American hymns and adapted their old ones. Sometimes they translated the words and left everything else the same. Sometimes they altered the rhythm or melody to better fit in with 19th Century American music norms. (An example of this in ELCA hymnals, both the green LBW and the new cranberry/red ELW have two versions of "A Mighty Fortress," one with the old German melody and one with the Americanized version that most ELCA congregations use. Having them side-by-side really points out how different they are.) Sometimes they took the translated words and set them to American hymn melodies.

The LCMS (virtually all ethnic Germans) added fewer American hymns and were a lot less likely to Americanize the musical elements of the hymns. And, yeah, in the late seventies they participated in the creation of the Lutheran Book of Worship, the "green book" which replaced the old red Service Book and Hymnal that the ALC and LCA had been using since the 1950s and whatever the LCMS had at the time. Now, this was the late 70s--the LCMS was still firmly under Preus' thumb and working merrily to root out dangerous liberals and moderates, and steadily pulling further and further away from other denominations every year, pulling out of agreements, not participating in ecumenical events they had before, etc., etc. The ELCA hadn't formed yet, but the AELC had approached both the LCA and ALC about merging together (out of which process the ELCA would emerge a decade later).

Whoever thought that working together with the LCMS--which has always been less willing to connect on matters of worship than any other area--to do a joint hymnal was a good idea must have been on something. By all accounts, the LCMS contributors held everything hostage. No LCMS congregation would buy it unless they got their way on several key issues. So the whole thing came out heavily weighted to LCMS worship and music and less to ALC and LCA styles. And then, once things had been largely locked down and it was too late for major changes, they announced that the LCMS was in the process of producing its own hymnal, so of course no LCMS congregations were going to buy it anyway, they'd wait a year or two for their own version. So the ALC and LCA were stuck with this new hymnal that didn't please anybody. The traditionalists grumped that it was different, which you'd have anyway. But there were people who didn't like the idea of the then-theoretical merger to form the ELCA and pointed to the problems of the hymnal as Proof that closer cooperation Was Not Good. Or who fought the hymnal tooth and nail but what they were really fighting was the idea of the merger. In some places, it got ugly. There are actually a fair number of congregations in Pennsylvania that flat-out refused to switch over, and kept using the old red SBH long after it was out of print. Some of them eventually broke down and got the LBW as their hymnals wore out; some got other hymnals; some held out until the new hymnal, Evangelical Lutheran Worship came out, and switched to that because it was even more different from the SBH than the LBW had been but it was still acceptable in ways the LBW WOULD NEVER BE. And there are a few that are still using the SBH.

The LBW caused such a fight that they really dragged their heels on coming out with a new hymnal to replace it because they didn't want to have a fight. The ELCA published or endorsed some "supplemental" hymnals to fill the gap. The SBH came out in 1958 and the LBW came out in 1978--a twenty year gap, pretty standard. (Obviously you don't want to replace hymnals too often, but you can't go too long, either, because then you're not keeping up with developments in hymns and worship styles.) The ELW came out in 2006, almost thirty years after the LBW.