FOOTNOTES: 

[20] Mattaehus Ratzenberger, in a passage of his biography preserved in the Bibliotheca Ducalis Gothana, says:  “Lutherus had also this custom:  as soon as he had eaten the evening meal with his table companions he would fetch out of his little writing-room his partes and hold a musicam with those of them who had a mind for music.  Greatly was he delighted when a good composition of the old master fitted the responses or hymnos de tempore anni, and especially did he enjoy the cantu Gregoriana and chorale.  But if at times he perceived in a new song that it was incorrectly copied he set it again upon the lines (that is, he brought the parts together and rectified it in continenti).  Right gladly did he join in the singing when hymnus or responsorium de tempore had been set by the Musicus to a Cantum Gregorianum, as we have said, and his young sons, Martinus and Paulus, had also after table to sing the responsoria de tempore, as at Christmas, Verbum caro factum est, In principio erat verbum; at Easter, Christus resurgens ex mortuis, Vita sanctorum, Victimae paschali laudes, etc.  In these responsoria he always sang along with his sons, and in cantu figurali he sang the alto.”

The alto which Luther sang must not be confounded with the alto part of to-day.  Here it means the cantus firmus, the melody around which the old composers wove their contrapuntal ornamentation.

Luther was the creator of German congregational singing.

[21] Luther’s first poetic publication seems to have been certain verses composed on the martyrdom of two young Christian monks, who were burned alive at Brussels in 1523 for their faithful confession of the evangelical doctrines.  A translation of a part of this composition is given in D’Aubigne’s History of the Reformation in these beautiful and stirring words: 

     “Flung to the heedless winds or on the waters cast,
     Their ashes shall be watched, and gathered at the last;
     And from that scattered dust, around us and abroad,
     Shall spring a plenteous seed of witnesses for God.

     “Jesus hath now received their latest living breath,
     Yet vain is Satan’s boast of victory in their death. 
     Still, still, though dead, they speak, and trumpet-tongued proclaim
     To many a wakening land the One availing Name.”

Audin, though a Romanist, says:  “The hymns which he translated from the Latin into German may be unreservedly praised, as also those which he composed for the members of his own communion.  He did not travesty the sacred Word nor set his anger to music.  He is grave, simple, solemn, and grand.  He was at once the poet and musician of a great number of his hymns.”

HIS GREAT QUALITIES.