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The requirements and demands of the liturgy and the liturgical service
determined the musical forms Lutheran composers wrote early in the Reformation.
Settings of the Ordinary and Propers were needed, as were psalm settings,
canticle and Passion settings. The continuity of liturgical forms and practices between early Lutheranism and the late medieval church was significant for the Lutheran Reformation church. This meant that--whether it was the Mass or the observance of Matins and Vespers--use of earlier musical forms remained intact in 16th Century Lutheranism. The importance of such continuity was self-evident for the church musician-it meant that music useful for Catholic worship continued to be useful in Lutheran worship. The polyphonic motet, whether it was based on chant melodies, the newer chorale melodies, or freely composed, was an important form. Composers used it to set the hymnody of the church as well as parts of the Ordinary and Proper of the Mass. Polyphonic settings of the Ordinary and the Proper texts for the church year, antiphons, responsories, canticles, motets on biblical texts, psalm settings and hymn settings were based on old church melodies. They all were common building blocks for church musicians in both Lutheran and Catholic communities. In addition to the use of vernacular language, such settings continued to be set in Latin and written by a variety of Lutheran composers throughout the 1500s and beyond.
The development of the Lutheran congregational hymn, the chorale, served as an artistic springboard for many composers' work. Simple four-part cantional settings of these melodies, first customary with the melody in the tenor part, and later, with the melody in the upper part, were written by virtually every Lutheran composer beginning with Johann Walter. The liturgy determined the musical settings needed for worship. It was
the composer's role to provide such settings as required under specific
circumstances.
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Both
simple and polyphonic Psalm settings used in worship were written throughout
this period, as were Passion settings, chiefly using accounts from Matthew
and John appointed for reading in Holy Week. This began with Johann Walter's
setting from Matthew and John, the first Passion settings by a Lutheran
composer.