Sunday, December 27, 2009

Lutheran Hymns


I received a copy of Martin Luther: Hymns, Ballads, Chants, Truth and Heirs of the Reformation as gifts recently. Both are 4-CD sets. The first is a collection of all the hymns, ballads, and chants written by Martin Luther. The second is a collection of hymns written after the time of Luther. You could get a good theological education just by listening to these CDs. The singing is beautiful as is the musical accompaniment. Unfortunately, some of the lyrics are hard to make out. I think this problem could be solved by not using organ settings that are so close in their predominant frequency to the human voice that is singing. Frequency slotting could also be used but this might give the organ or voices an unnatural sound. There is a booklet provided for each of these sets with all the lyrics. The Martin Luther album is my favorite of the two but has some distracting voice over quotes of Martin Luther about music. I think it would have been better to just print these quotes in the booklet. The hymns on both albums stand in sharp contrast to most modern hymns. There's just so much depth and they're so Biblical.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I received the "Martin Luther: Hymns, Ballads, Chants, Truth" set as a gift about a year ago and it is simply wonderful! Enjoy, brother!

-Jacob Atkisson