Worship Wars in Early Lutheranism: Choir, Congregation and Three Centuries of Conflict

How important was music to Martin Luther? Drawing on hundreds of liturgical documents, contemporary accounts of services, books on church music, and other sources, Joseph Herl rewrites the history of music and congregational song in German Lutheran churches. Herl traces the path of music and congregational song in the Lutheran church from the Reformation to 1800, to show how it acquired its reputation as the "singing church."

In the centuries after its founding, in a debate that was to have...