The "Geistreiches Gesangbuch" of Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen (1670--1739): a German Pietist Hymnal. (Volumes I and II).

The most important and influential Lutheran hymnals published in Germany during the time of J. S. Bach were the two edited by Johann Anastasius Freylinghausen, Geistreiches Gesangbuch (1704) and Neues Geistreiches Gesangbuch (1714). The first hymnal was especially popular, requiring a new edition at least every two or three years until the 1730s. This dissertation focuses on the second edition (1705) of Freylinghausen's first hymnal, which contains a large supplement found in all subsequent editions, but not in the first. Altogether, the second edition has 785 hymn texts, 194 with printed melodies and figured bass lines. Roughly three-quarters of these melodies date from the turn of the eighteenth century; the remainder represent a broad spectrum of Lutheran hymnody, some dating back to the beginning of the Reformation. Introductory chapters in Volume One shed light on Freylinghausen's life, on the environment in which the hymnal was first used (the Waisenhaus at Halle, founded by A. H. Francke), and on the significance of the ordering and contents of Freylinghausen's hymnal. The hymnal is then examined from two points of view. First, the 194 hymns with printed music are subjected to structural, melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and rhetorical analyses. The study shows that several commonly-held perceptions about the development of Lutheran hymnody in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries and about hymn melodies printed in Freylinghausen's hymnal in particular are wrong or require modification. The analytical process also yields a discovery about Freylinghausen's book which contains a number of melodies that resemble one another. The controversy surrounding Freylinghausen's hymnal almost immediately upon its publication requires a second examination of the book. Using a variety of relevant materials, the author attempts to identify Orthodox versus Pietist expectations of a hymn, dispelling the notion that the Pietists contradicted themselves when they accepted dance-like hymn melodies. Volume Two of the dissertation contains a critical edition of the 194 hymns with printed music in the second edition of Freylinghausen's hymnal. It also contains an annotated translation and German transcription of one of the most important and extensive pamphlets written by early eighteenth-century theologians about Freylinghausen's hymnal, the Wittenberg Bedencken (1716).(Abstract shortened with permission of author.)