Gesang-Buch der Evangelisch-Lutherischen Gemeine im Haag zum Gottesdienstlichen Gebrauch gewidmet

compiled by Franz Georg Christoph Rütz

The Hague: Johan Sigismund Dornseiffen, 1790

VI, 130, 334, [4], 99, [1] p. | 8vo | *^4(-*4) A-H^8 I1(=*4?); A-U^8 X^8(-X8); chi^2 A-F^8 G^2 | 192 x 120 mm

A thick hymnal published for Lutheran congregations in The Hague, with the compiler’s autograph on the title verso assuring us it’s not some shameless piracy. It had long been standard practice to publish hymns and psalms without musical notation, as the tunes were commonly known or simple enough to pick up by ear. The publisher has indicated the appropriate tune for many of these, which should have been enough for most. Relatively few were able to read music anyway. “Notation, never commanded by congregations,” at least in early America, “was the property of the smaller, more musically committed group which sang in harmony” (Crawford and Krummel). ¶ The book offers 416 numbered hymns. Hymn numbers displayed during service would likely have been mapped to those in the present text, a clear benefit of having a standardized text for everyone in a given community (like all Lutherans in The Hague). It’s a substantial collection that benefited from generations of tradition and accretion. “Hymn-books offered an enormous range of ‘joyous’ or comforting songs, which even pious servants and labourers would pick up from their mistresses and masters at work. They were sung in fields, during long journeys on foot or in coaches. The repertoire of these hymns changed and expanded with time,” reflected in these thick hymnals of the late 18th century (Rublack). In contrast to Catholic Mass, the congregational hymn became a defining element of the Lutheran service, really an extension of its theology. "The song both symbolized and realized the principle of the direct access of the believer to the Father” (Schoenbohm). ¶ Combined with the supplementary sections following the hymnal proper—a selection of gospel readings, a life of Christ, several prayers, and formulaic aids for certain elements of Mass—the whole thing would have a functioned nicely as a Lutheran’s complete vade mecum. ¶ We find no copies in North America.

PROVENANCE: The book has nearly doubled in bulk from extensive interleaving, each printed leaf of the hymnal accompanied by a leaf lined in red for musical notation—but not the psalter, perhaps underscoring just how common those tunes were. More than 60 pages of the interleaving contain manuscript notation, these rather evenly split between two annotators. We suspect the earlier group, in ink and presumably by the person for whom the book was interleaved, belong to an organist working in the early 19th century. This person’s notation almost invariably uses a grand staff, with bracketed treble and bass clefs. Considering the European tradition and how few instruments allowed a musician to play two staves at once, the music must be for keyboard or harp. Given the liturgical context, the church organ emerges as the likeliest contender. The instrument was central to the Lutheran service. Once the role of liturgical singing moved from the choir to the congregation, a transition that occurred around 1600, “the organ took the place of the trained singers in accompanying the unison song of the people” (Schoenbohm). While some organ scores do use a third staff for the pedal, required pedal use was rare in The Netherlands, at least in the 17th century. That said, we suspect the brief annotation Ped. beside a note in the music facing Hymn 103 refers to pedal use. ¶ This individual’s handwritten music provides actual notation for tunes identified only by abbreviated title in the printed text. Facing Hymn 124, for example, our scribe has provided music for Jesus, meine Zuversicht. The music facing Hymn 72 contains a small von G.W. Röhner, attributing authorship to Dutch organist Georg Wilhelm Röhner (1783-1844). This annotator sensibly avoids notating music more than is necessary. When possible, they add a note to the lined leaf pointing to where the music has already been written out. For example, opposite Hymn 6, an annotation points us to the appropriate music facing Hymn 2, which uses the same tune.  ¶  Annotations belonging to the second group are entirely in pencil (and not without some variation in handwriting). This notation is much simpler, always using a single clef and never more than one note at a time. We suspect this music was intended for singing. (Our first annotator provides at least two lines of single-clef music, for Hymn 32, which may have been for voice; beneath it is a double-clef score for the same hymn.) Penciled notes are scattered throughout the printed text, too, not confined to the interleaving. Often these are cross references. Psalm 46 and Hymn 367 have notes referring to each other. A penciled number at Hymn 44 points us to 73, which points us to 95, where you’ll find the handwritten music—in this case organ notation, not simple single-staff notation, so we wonder if some penciled annotations may belong to the original annotator or a subsequent organist. The multitude of cross references means the annotations functionally provide notation for a much larger number of hymns than a quick glance would suggest. Conversely, by its absence, the many hymns for which no music has been added may point to those actually used during service. Growing up Catholic, it seemed we only ever sung a handful of hymns from a book that contained hundreds. ¶ A few margins contain strings of numbers, perhaps a simplified kind of notation (see p. 16 and 126 in the Psalms). When played, the marginal numbers beside Psalm 19 do have a “churchy feel,” this according to a professional musician friend who’s played his share of church gigs. When the publisher provides imprecise instructions like “in the familiar melody” (In bekanter Melodie), our annotator sometimes clarifies the matter. Penciled beside Hymn 126 is a helpful 124, for which our earlier annotator has conveniently provided the aforementioned musical notation. Finally, with an index of select hymns penciled on the front fly-leaf.

CONDITION: Early full leather, with only the faintest impression of lettering in the second compartment, and faint gold tooling at the spine ends; endpapers marbled with a Stormont and shell pattern, characteristic of the first decades of the 19th century. ¶ Title leaf two thirds of the way to being detached; leaf inserted between p. 280-281 detached but present. Leather covering the front joint split, but the hinge remains strong, with most (all?) of the five cords intact; leather covering the spine creased and superficially cracked, perhaps once desiccated, but the binding feels like it’s been the recipient (victim?) of a moisturizing leather dressing; extremities worn.

REFERENCES: STCN 256301263 ¶ Ulinka Rublack, Reformation Europe (Cambridge Univ, 2017), p. 232; Richard Crawford and D.W. Krummel, “Early American Music Printing and Publishing,” Printing and Society in Early America (American Antiquarian Society, 1983), p. 189 (“The printed tunes [in early America] were almost certainly known to the people who sang them; and if they were not, they were few enough in number and uncomplicated enough in style to be learned simply by ear. It seems more likely that the tunes were included [in later Bay Psalm books]…in order to record, for the few who could read music, an official version of each tune.”), 190 (cited above); Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen, The Bookshop of the World: Making and Trading Books in the Dutch Golden Age (Yale, 2019), p. 131 (on psalters: “The absence of musical notation became, indeed, the norm rather than the exception”), 234 (“Singing, at home, at work, in the tavern and on the streets, was a ubiquitous part of life in seventeenth-century Europe. For the print industry it became big business. Collections of songs were as old as print itself, drawing on songs sung in the tavern or workplace, or by mothers at the crib.”); John R. Shannon, The Evolution of Organ Music in the 17th Century: A Study of European Styles (McFarland, 2012), p. 3 (“If there is one misconception I hope this book might clarify, it is simply that pedal playing is not required to play the organ”; and as for 17th-century Netherlands: “Obbligato pedal playing is rare”); Richard Schoenbohm, “Music in the Lutheran Church before and at the Time of J.S. Bach,” Church History 12.3 (Sept 1943), p. 195 (“The musical system of the Catholic church proceeded from the Gregorian chant which is strictly a detail of the sacerdotal office. The Lutheran music, on the contrary, is based primarily on the congregational hymn.”), 196 (cited above), 197 (cited above; “the secular folksong of the 16th century was a very prolific source of the German chorale”), 204 (in an early Lutheran service at Leipzig, for example, perhaps around the time of Bach, the hymn number “was not announced, but from tablets placed in conspicuous places around the building, the numbers of all that were to be sung during the service could be read”)

Item #582