The beacon

One of the readers of last month’s column raised the question of “when did the organ begin to be used within the Presbyterian Church?”   This followed from my last statement that when John Knox brought Calvinism to Scotland it was with an unaccompanied hymnody—for the most part settings of the Psalms of David.

 

John Knox (1514-1572) had come in contact with John Calvin (1509-1564) in the mid-16^th century when he had left England under the reign of Mary Tudor (“Bloody Mary”) and went to Geneva, not returning until Elizabeth I took the throne.   It was Calvinism he brought into England and Scotland.  Calvinist services did not typically include organ playing due to the belief in what is now called the Regulative Principle,  which restricted the elements of worship to only that which was commanded in the New Testament—an apostolic simplicity of worship.  

                             There is a view                              that John Cal                             vin’s position                             against the use                             of instruments                             had resulted                             from his antipa                            thy towards the                              idolatrous                                  practices of the                              Roman Church.                              While clearly Rome had transgressed the second commandment, one cannot help but wonder if in his zeal for doctrinal and ecclesiastical purity the Reformer did not throw out the preverbal baby with the bathwater when he eliminated instruments as well as images from the worship in the churches under his care.

 

For two centuries simple, unaccompanied psalmody formed the entire repertoire of music for the reformed church in the British Isles, and this practice is maintained by some parts of the church even to this day.

 

In the Dutch Reformed Church (which had also flowed out of Calvinism) it took a period of less than 100 years from the iconoclasm of the 1560’s to the general acceptance of the organ by 1640.  This was to a large extent due to church buildings and their organs becoming property of

municipal governments who had taken them from the Catholic Church.   During the period of transition, we find that organists were being appointed and paid by the City to play the organs but the use of organs within worship was not approved by the church nor were they used in worship for some time.

 

Another branch of Protestantism, the Lutheran Church, held musical instruments, including the organ, in higher regard.  Martin Luther (1483-1546) could only see music as the gift of God and not a creation of man.  While Luther was aware of the role of iconography in the false teachings of the  Roman Catholic Church, this did not keep him from recognizing the role of arts and particularly music in worship.

 

Luther was accomplished at the lute and the flute, and was known to have a powerful tenor voice. He was so committed to the high place of music in the life of the Church that men had to demonstrate competency in music before they could be accepted for ministerial training. He both composed hymns (some 36 survive to this day), and adapted Latin texts and psalm tunes.  There is no evidence that Luther made use of

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