About setting one.

The music for LBW Setting One was written in 1974-75 at the request of the Liturgical Music Committee (LMC) of the Inter-Lutheran Commission on Worship (ILCW).' I accepted this composing assignment in a spirit of duty and obligation as well as enthusiasm, but with only a dim awareness of all that would be involved in its production.

The developments leading to the publication of LBW in 1978 have been largely documented in several other places. The composition of Setting One of the Holy Communion has its own microhistory that, for me as the composer, begins with the earliest meetings of the LMC in 1967-68.

A preoccupation with Lutheran unity took priority in the earliest meetings of the ILCW. The proposed all-Lutheran book of worship was to be a major catalyst in achieving that unity. There were several stages of development within the LMC itself as it sought to fix guidelines and formulate its duties. There were to begin with no firmly established liturgical texts to work with. Nor was there a clearly defined understanding of the function, or even agreement about the nature of music for liturgical texts. These were to be formed only over several years' time. Eugene L. Brand, who was later to serve as Project Director for the ILCW, summarized these early meetings most succinctly:

At first the working committees were issue-oriented. They commissioned papers, and they asked staff for bibliographies and historical comparison charts. While these provoked lively debate, it soon became clear that such debate could continue for a long time without the production of any materials. The committees, therefore, shifted to the project-oriented method. (2)

With no projects for the LMC immediately at hand, we explored and evaluated new liturgical music of other contemporary churches. It is interesting to recall that the late 1960s was a period of rampant unease that was to disturb the status quo in church music, especially among Roman Catholics, who were desperately seeking a "music for the people's song" and were experimenting with folk- and pop-oriented settings of hymns and liturgy, all in response to Vatican II. This search for a new, popular ("contemporary") music was also prevalent in some places within Lutheranism, although it had not yet reached a point of heated concern.

Behind these preparatory discussions there loomed always the theological, liturgical, and aesthetic issues concerning the heritage of Lutheran liturgical music. Whose "Lutheran heritage" would it be? About ten years before, in 1958, the American Lutheran Church (ALC) and the Lutheran Church in America (LCA) had managed some tenuous compromises in Service Book and Hymnal (SBH). Now, with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) and its uniquely defined canons of worship and music added to the mix, the current ILCW makeup rather nicely represented a mild diversity of views about the nature of liturgical music in our time. Retrospectively it is a tribute to the entire ILCW enterprise that many of these apparent diversities ultimately vanished, at least for the time being, in the melding process of attaining a common worship resource.

There was one undisputed basic assumption: the music for the liturgies would be primarily the people's song, sung by the assembled congregation. But other fundamental questions about musical style and the role of music-unison song, accompanied or unaccompanied chant, homophonic hymn texture, "contemporary" vernacular style, the role of the cantor and the choir--would go unsettled until we were actually confronted with a given liturgy. Of equally practical concern was how to acquire the kind of musics that would be needed. Should we adopt and adapt music already existing in the various service books? Who would write any new, original music that might be required? (3)

In the meantime I took part in another project that was to be important for the future composition of Setting One. That was the preparation and publication (1969) of Worship Supplement (WS), prepared by LCMS's Commission on Worship, Liturgics and Hymnology. This book was meant to be complementary, a preparatory rather than a counter proposal. The ILCW had given explicit permission to issue this publication. It represented several years of creative and intensive work within the LCMS-begun in 1961, before the ILCW came into being. This editorial work was originally intended as a thorough revision of The Lutheran Hymnal (TLH), 1941. But that project was abandoned in 1965 when the LCMS invited the other Lutheran churches to join in the preparation of an eventual all-Lutheran service book and hymnal.

WS offered a Hymn Section with a broad, ecumenical range of previously unfamiliar tunes and texts, and a dozen or so completely new, original hymns. And, just as important, half of the 200-page volume was devoted to a Liturgical Section with the classical texts of the Eucharist revised, or adapted from other new text sources, into contemporary English. In the words of the Foreword the WS described itself as "experimental and exploratory in nature," seeking to respond to "a need for updating liturgical and hymnodic materials both as to language and form." (4)

The liturgical section of the WS included a Holy Eucharist, a Morning Service, an Evening Service, and numerous other items, many of which, because of the new text versions, needed new musical settings. It was my special privilege to work with Paul Bunjes on the preparation of the music for these liturgies. In addition to writing music for the office canticles and responses, we prepared completely original settings of all the sung items in Holy Eucharist I.

The decision not to use any kind of formulaic chant for the people's part in the chief songs of the Eucharist made it virtually impossible to use any existent music that would accommodate the new WStexts. So the basic style, form, and performance medium was to be through-composed, accompanied, unison congregational song. This was noted in a later review in which Leonard Ellinwood identified the WS style as "unison melody-simple, modern tunes in the style of plainsong, but with more rhythmic and chromatic interest."' Coming after several generations that had known the Gloria in Excelsis, for example, only as a form of harmonized Anglican chant, this through-composed concept was something not yet common in the Lutheran experience. For a composer espousing artistic integrity and at the same time an integrated style of unison/accompanied songs that would be lyrically attractive and easily accessible to an ordinary assembly of worshipers, the compositional style and creative challenges were very real--and loaded with problems not to be easily solved. Perhaps the most demanding was the writing of viable congregational song for extended prose texts such as the Gloria in Excelsis and the Te Deum--texts that were inherently resistant to melodic formulae. In an incisive review of the liturgical music of WS, Ulrich S. Leupold characterized the style as "neo-Gregorian" (I admit I had not thought of it that way). His descriptions and observations go directly to the practical application of theory to the hard realities of congregational song:

The new Worship Supplement provides ... liturgical chants at the same time creative and new and yet suitable for the average congregation.... There is a tendency to base the music on the text as it appears. Bars are not used in this music, and no textual repetitions are permitted except those demanded by the liturgy.... There is a minimum of musical material, which contributes to the simplicity of the music.... On the whole, one is struck by the observation that the musical effectiveness of the various chants is very much dependent on the text. (6)

While commending the liturgical music as "an instructive example," Dr. Leupold was critical as well of certain melodic lines as in the Te Deum, where "the notes, following each other in conjunct motion, seem to proceed without much rhyme or reason."' In moments of self-evaluation I willingly agreed with him and in later writing sought to avoid the kind of characterless banality that comes all too easily in the hasty setting of a long prose text.

How important the WS may have been finally in the grand history of service books from the last forty years I will not judge. It is seldom mentioned these days, almost forgotten in fact, and in most places the "updating" claimed for it in 1969 is now quite thoroughly passe. As an interim supplementary book, however, it was used quite widely, although mostly in LCMS parishes and schools. But I learned much from the writing for it. And ultimately the publication made its own modest contribution to LBW, for, in addition to many hymns and settings, both the Offertory "What shall I render to the Lord" from the Eucharist and the Venite "O come, let us sing to the Lord" from the Morning Service were subsequently taken into LBW, with slight modifications because of textual variants. (8)

Following closely upon the appearance of WS, the ILCW brought out the first of ten soft-cover Contemporary Worship (CW) trial publications (1969-76). Among these were tentative proposals for new musical settings of the Holy Communion (no. 2, 1970), and new liturgies that were included in Services of the Word (no. 5, 1972) and Daily Prayer of the Church (no. 9, 1976). Finding and commissioning music for the sung liturgies in these publications became a central concern of the LMC. Another concern was the conscientious evaluation of comments received from church musicians who had participated in trial-testing the four settings of the Holy Communion published in CW2. These returns revealed much about the current diversity of taste and preference in liturgical music. Altogether, after the evaluations were received and carefully considered, some of the music was rejected outright,' but the most prevalent criticisms about CW2 were directed to the structure of the services and the theological issues raised by the texts.

Two of the other CW booklet series also contained newly written liturgical music. For Services of the Word (CW5, 1972), I composed the music for six responses, one for each of six church-year components. These were written for unison congregation (or choir) and keyboard. Observable now within the brevity of these songs is a significant evolution in the liturgical music I was writing. The compositional style employs direct, simple, lyrical melodic lines over a calm and unwavering pulse--frequently half-note value--faintly reflective of certain popular styles that were much in the air in the early 1970s. I am just a little amused to remember that, when these responses appeared in CW5, simple guitar chords were printed above the keyboard notation. However, the guitar notation disappeared when the entire set of responses was included six years later-in tune-text notation, as Canticles 7 through 12-in the section just before the hymns in the LBW.

Also in Services of the Word (1972) was a newly composed Te Deum, later included again in Daily Prayer of the Church (CW9, 1976). In this setting I employed musical characteristics quite similar to, but not exactly the same as, the responses described above (more dependent upon the keyboard [organ] accompaniment and without the guitar chords). The melodic line used certain rhythmic figures later to be found in the Gloria in Excelsis of Setting One. Here is also a valiant attempt to avoid the hazards alluded to in Dr. Leupold's comments noted above. CW9 also contained the Venite borrowed from Worship Supplement (in an improved notation). The Te Deum was later to be included as part of the Paschal Blessing in LBW Morning Prayer. In all, the liturgical pieces in the CW trial series, and evaluations of them, constituted a significant preparation phase for practically all of the liturgical music in the LBW.

By 1974 the ILCW and its liturgical committees had carefully studied the text-and- music test evaluations of some of the CW series. A comprehensive worship book, a "one-volume collection of liturgical rites and hymnic materials," was now officially proposed." And the stage was set for full provision of musical settings for the liturgies, with a completion goal of July 4, 1976. It became apparent that the search for additional new settings of the eucharistic songs of the ILCW liturgy should continue. In the meeting of February 19-21, 1974, the LMC determined to settle on four stylistic settings: (1) unaccompanied melody setting; (2) setting similar to SBH Setting II; (3) 20th-century diatonic setting; (4) simple congregational setting. Two methods for achieving new settings were proposed: (a) invite entire settings of the service from the general public, and (b) commission certain composers to write settings according to specified parameters and deadlines. Names of composers to be commissioned for the specific style settings were proposed." Announcements went out concerning the search for new settings for the Holy Communion texts (Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus Dei). In the September 1974 meeting (held at Curtis Hotel and organ lofts of Mount Olive Lutheran Church and Central Lutheran, Minneapolis) the committee members examined viable works from eleven composers who had submitted noncommissioned settings and nine of the ten settings that had been commissioned, with the composers' names remaining anonymous. These were all graded in secret ballot. None received a composite rating above B+. Later, in the same meeting, the commissioned settings were again reviewed in the light of newly suggested criteria about melody, accompaniment, and overall style.

There was conditional acceptance of my music for the communion texts. Committee members also offered detailed suggestions for improvement: the introductory lines (incipits) in the Assisting Minister's part in the Kyrie needed to be reworked; some of the melody/text phrases in the Gloria need to be restudied; some of the accompaniment in the Sanctus seemed to be pianistically conceived; the melodic range in the Sanctus, especially going to the high E-flat, needed to be reconsidered; the use of syncopated rhythmic figures in the Gloria and Sanctus were questioned. This setting and others would be reconsidered at the next meeting.

At the LMC meeting February 18-20, 1975, in Minneapolis the revised communion music, together with the newly composed alternate Song of Praise, "Worthy is Christ" (with its antiphon, "This is the feast of victory"), were accepted for recommendation to the ILCW. The first liturgical use of what was later designated as Setting One occurred at Trinity Lutheran Seminary, Columbus, Ohio, on June 10, 1975, during a conference of both the text and music committees and subcommittees on the liturgy. A full communion service took place just before noon, with Dr. Walter Bouman as Presiding and Dr. Mark Bangert as Assisting Minister. Later that afternoon the music of Setting One was one of the subjects for critical evaluation from the assembled liturgists and worship and church music authorities. The criticisms of the music were generally friendly. But it was also quite apparent that some of the Liturgical Text Committee members were not firmly convinced this was the liturgical music they had hoped for.

Among the comments: the music for the preface dialog and the proper prefaces did not engage the kind of florid and climactic chant lines that would more properly highlight the introductory section of the Great Thanksgiving. I accepted this as a highly valid observation that caused me later to rewrite and edit all of the preface material. "Worthy is Christ" is too long--why need the refrain be repeated so often? A valid question, but the alternation structure--All, Women, Men--was valiantly supported by LCM members. I was reminded that a few items still needed to be written to make the setting complete.

I respected all the comments and at least temporarily accepted them as helpful. I had become accustomed to enduring critical suggestions from about eight years' experience with the LCMS music committee. In the preparation and production of the WS, the music committee had evolved an in-house fine art of locating exactly the right notes and searching out the wrong notes without engaging in personal deprecation. Of course, it is not a composer's favorite thing to have a group of critics picking away at the creative work at hand! However, there were times during the more than ten years in the LMC when I wished for a little more aggressiveness and a little less politeness or reluctance to engage in scholarly music criticism.

In providing for a book that was to serve several million worshipers possessing a multitude of tastes and needs, it was inevitable and even obligatory that the music would need to withstand rigorous evaluation. I developed a theory of three distinct phases of the criticism process: (1) the workaday stage of suggestions and corrections offered internally by members of the LMC, (2) the pre-publication official and voluntary test review and evaluation events carried on by the sponsoring churches, and (3) the ongoing post-publication era when members of the worshiping congregations would be permitted to offer the ultimate, unpredictable, and perhaps undebatable judgment determined by the use of a musical setting in the context of parish worship.

The primary criticisms at the Columbus conference, however, were aimed at nonmusical matters-details of structure and rubrics pertaining to the communion service itself. So it was at the end of the conference that the "Hillert setting" and the music for the revised SBH, Setting II (revised because of textual changes), were voted to be included in the book. There remained much to be accomplished by the LMC: the music for any additional Holy Communion settings that might be needed; the music for the services of Morning and Evening Prayer and the Prayer at the Close of the Day (Compline), and The Litany. And finally, and very importantly, there needed to be developed a useful music for the congregational singing of psalms. These were not easy assignments and were to occupy the liturgical committees and subcommittees for many more months.

During the following months my own composition schedule also had to include the completion of shorter items that would be needed for a final, complete Holy Communion: the Salutation; the Alleluia Verse (to be printed "in place"); the short Gospel Acclamations (one of them in first draft had sounded a little like "O Canada"); the Offertory, "Let the vineyards;" the complete revision of the Prefaces and the setting of the Proper Prefaces; the two Post-Communion Canticles, "Lord, now you let your servant go in peace" and "Thank the Lord and sing his praise;" "Create in me," the optional psalm for the offering of the gifts; and the Benedictions.

Two last items, "Through him, with him, in him," which comes at the close of the Great Thanksgiving, and "Return to the Lord, your God" (the Tract for Lent), were not completed until the late summer of 1976 at the Lutheran Seamen's Center in New York City during a subcommittee meeting with Eugene Brand, Donna Zierdt Elkin, and Gerhard Cartford. (12) All of these musical items, including editing that needed to be done for the completion of the revised Setting II, were subsequently approved by the LMC and ILCW.

Several concurrent events affected the final version of Setting One in an important way. Trial booklets containing text, tune, and setting were distributed in late 1975 to a diversified selection of parishes and schools, together with detailed and well-organized questionnaires about the efficacy of the several settings. The users were asked to use one of the settings in real worship services for a specified, fair, length of time. The evaluations of Setting One came back with some surprises concerning the music, although most comments were still directed to the words and structure of the texts. There was a great mix of favorable and unfavorable replies.

I did not personally receive these returns; they came through to me by way of "unofficial" paths. Some reports about the music were very favorable, in some cases quite enthusiastic. But others were negative-so unfavorable in fact that friends refused to let me read some of them. A few reports were received in the form of letters offering detailed instruction in how to compose for a congregation (music easy to sing, melodic patterns "logical" to the un-trained ear, projecting "a feeling of timelessness"). At least one missive came from an educated church musician who maintained that the tonality was too ambiguous, the rhythm possessed of meaningless asymmetry, the modal harmonizations insipid, and the excellent liturgy spoiled by such inferior music. I might have been tempted to do battle, but I was cautioned not to enter into unresolvable controversies.

Other returns, however, began to follow a pattern that I took more seriously. One review group, for example, reported that "the music was rather drab for contemporary liturgy [and] that the second setting of CW-2 [the setting by Ronald Nelson, later Setting II] had more 'drive' to it.... 'Worthy is Christ' is much too long." (13) Other reports confirmed the reaction that the music was too slow, too difficult, too ponderous, lacking in spirit, uninspiring, and neither melodically nor rhythmically attractive. This, of course, was the opposite of what had been my intentions.

Because of the recurrence of this critical theme, I began to realize that there may have been a problem in the notation. The original notation of the Gloria, for example, employed a half-note pulse that was, because of the visual appearance in notation, misunderstood as a quarter-note pulse. I had notated the beginning in the following way:

In misinterpreting the half-note pulse, the performance tempo was bound to be twice as slow as it was meant to be. I revised the notation to make the quarter note the basic beat. Now the visual appearance of the notation at least strongly suggested a more sprightly pace:

As I adopted a new orientation to the notation of the basic pulse values, I became a veritable convert, and in my enthusiasm I revised the notation of several other items in the liturgies, e.g., the Offertory "What shall I render" (14) and the Te Deum in Morning Prayer. Although doing this was accepted in the LMC as an improvement, it created yet another potential problem: the pairs of eighth notes in the original now became pairs of sixteenths, and the sight of these in a pew book tended to be frightening--giving the impression that the music would be too fast for congregational singing. Time has revealed that the pairs of sixteenths in the Gloria and the Te Deum are not daunting but comfortable for good rhythmic accentuation. Upon the actual publication of "the book" in 1978, most of the editorial hangups began to recede into the depths of historical esoterica.

Many of us involved in one way or another in the elaborate and carefully planned process of introducing the new worship materials tried to point out, however, that the publication of a worship book is not an end of the creative production of such materials. It is, rather, a good beginning. The need for supportive materials would be endless: composing music for the psalm antiphons, choral settings for verses and offertories, organ pieces based on the new hymnic and liturgical music, and music for the Easter Vigil. Much of this eventually came to pass, although not as completely as we may have envisioned. A fair observation now is that the LBW itself has, regrettably, not been explored to its best and fullest potential.

The unsolicited post-publication reviews have been many favorable and some extremely critical. There is at least one interesting commentary on Setting One on the Internet. It acknowledges the popularity of "Worthy is Christ," noting that this canticle is included in most of the newly published hymnals in North America. It continues with random comments:

Hillert's setting was the most difficult for Lutherans to learn in the beginning. [He] composed simple melodies for the Kyrie, then went into a chromatic frenzy with his music for the Gloria. [Some] have said that his Gloria sounds like a record being played backwards. However his "Worthy is Christ" is excellent for congregational singing. [But] congregations fizzle out on [his] "Let the Vineyards" and other pieces [and his] Nunc Dimittis is hardly ever used because it again strains congregations with difficulty. (15)

The simplest commentary to be made is that if Setting One were to be done, or redone, today it would be quite a different musical setting (not for the reasons noted in the preceding commentary). I suspect that through-composed music, always more vulnerable as to variables in style and taste, would be more radically different than in 1975. But, if given the option, I think I would, for example, try to improve all the music for the Prefaces; I would strive for more chant-oriented melodic lines; I would expand the congregational song to include more musical options for the Kyrie and possibly reconsider assembly participation in music during the Eucharistic prayer.

I am too close to the music itself to judge whether Setting One is now a bit old-fashioned, too well-worn, or near to acquiring a kind of tentative classic status, or even whether it is headed toward obscurity. I know that in many places it has already been put aside in favor of a host of other worship music materials. That is every generation's prerogative. While it is gratifying to see liturgical music being kept alive in one way or another for the church of today, it is in the order of things that the church, alive and contemporary today, will tomorrow be the church of yesterday. We should rejoice and not be sad about that.

The inclusion of Setting One of the Holy Communion in LBW was a greatly fulfilling experience in my career as a church musician. I continue to be grateful for the common purpose shared among fellow Christians with whom I was stimulated to plan and create and who accepted and supported my dutiful contribution. My wish is that Setting One, and the other musics created for LBW, whatever their fate, will somehow endure as a kind of tribute to common efforts dedicated to a proper and worshipful Word and Sacrament in liturgy and song.

(1) The Liturgical Music Committee, as one of the four "working" committees, was elected at the first meeting of the ILCW in November 1966. It consisted of nine members, three from each of the participating church bodies (the complete listing of persons involved in preparation of the LBW may be found in that book under Acknowledgments, pp. 922-23. Along with Paul Bunjes and Carlos Messerli, I was a member of the LCMS group of three.

(2) Eugene L. Brand, "Liturgical Reconnaissance;" The Future of Worship in the ELCA (Minneapolis: Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 1999), (7).

(3) In the hope of achieving a superior musical product there was at one time discussion of seeking the services of one or another well-known contemporary "name" composer (such as Benjamin Britten, Halsey Stevens, or Virgil Thomson). Our committee chairperson, Dr. Daniel Moe, was asked to undertake a serious attempt to contact the twentieth-century master Igor Stravinsky (1882-1972), composer of some of the century's most profound concert music using liturgical and scriptural texts. Stravinsky was approaching his 90th year and proved to be unaccessible, although perhaps not for reason of age.

(4) Foreword, Worship Supplement (St. Louis: Concordia, 1969), 9.

(5) Leonard Ellinwood, "Church Music in Review," in one of numerous commentaries on WS contained in Church Music 70.1, 42.

(6) Ulrich S. Leupold, "Church Music in Review," Church Music 70.1, 43-44.

(7) Leupold, "Church Music," 43-44.

(8) "See Randall K. Sensmeier, "The Influence of the Worship Supplement on the Lutheran Book of Worship: A Legacy of Excellence," Church Music 79:77ff. This issue of Church Music devotes about fifty pages to major reviews and commentaries on the LBW.

(9) Six years after the publication of CW2, two of the four settings of Holy Communion were ultimately, and happily, included in the LBW-not, however, without some important additions and editings, due in part to revisions in the texts. But the setting by Daniel Moe, which used simple diatonic melodies with twentieth-century style pandiatonic harmonies, and which I thought showed a high degree of musical and stylistic integrity, was determined to be unacceptable-too strange, too difficult, too modern (but wasn't this after all proposed as "contemporary worship?"). Nor was there readiness to place John Ylvisaker's setting, for all its attractive but rather "period piece" folkish songs, into a hardcover establishment publication.

(10) From the ILCW Minutes, November 89, 1973, 18.

(11) Details of these proposals and procedures may be found in the LMC minutes of February 19-21 and September 23-26, 1974.

(12) Dr. Cartford should be credited with Setting III in the LBW. His work in providing an original, modem, and pure chant setting using all the ILCW Holy Communion texts (in addition to editing the former SBH Setting II to accommodate the new texts) was an outstanding contribution to LBW. The quality, dedication, and honesty of his work and contributions to the ILCW have not been fully appreciated.

(13) Minutes of ALC Review Group for ILCW Materials, Minneapolis, August 18-20, 1975, 11-12.

(14) Cf. the same offertory in tune-text edition of WS, 25.

(15) James Gerhardt Sucha, The Lutheran Book of Worship (LBW) 21 Years Later, October 15, 1999 (www.suite101.com).

Copyright [c] 2003 Richard Hillert

Editor's note: In honor of his 80th birthday, there will be three celebrative concerts for Professor Hillert in October:

Sunday, October 19, 4 p.m. Secular and jazz music Chapel of Concordia University River Forest, Illinois 

Sunday, October 19, 8 p.m. Sacred and concert music Grace Lutheran Church, River Forest

Richard Hillert Distinguished Professor of Music Emeritus Concordia University, River Forest, Illinois