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

Author:Joseph Herl [Herl, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, pdf
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2004-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

One tempus (pl. tempora), as Praetorius used the term, refers to what modern editions transcribe as one measure of common or cut time, or a breve in the original notation. Therefore, 160 measures containing four beats each, or a total of 640 beats, could have been performed in a quarter hour. This works out to a tempo of approximately 43 minima per minute, with the minim commonly transcribed as a half note.

Now the foregoing discussion refers not to hymns but to choral music, in particular the Polyhymnia caduceatrix et panegyrica of 1619. The Puericinium of 1621 also carried a count of tempora at the end of each piece. The pieces in these collections did in fact use hymn texts and melodies, but they were not designed for the congregation to sing along, as was the case with some of Praetorius’s earlier works. But there does not seem to be any reason why we cannot apply the same idea to those works; namely, that the basic pulse, on average, should be about 43 half notes per minute.

This was the normal base tempo, represented by the common time signature (c). In the preface to the Puericinium Praetorius also mentioned a quicker tempo, represented by the cut time signature (C). 75 In the Urania of 1613, whose preface called for the congregation to sing along with the choral settings, most (but not all) of the hymn settings used the cut time signature, for example, Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her (Example 9.1). Now the question is, how much quicker should the tempo be with the cut time signature? Praetorius did not say. But it seems reasonable to allow a quicker tempo of about 150 percent of the base tempo, or about one half note per second. Singing Vom Himmel hoch at this tempo would be slow by modern standards, but not unreasonably so.

Example 9.1. M. Praetorius, Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her, 1613

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