A Square Dance in Heaven

Published: Sept. 17, 2017, 3 a.m.

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For Martin Luther, music, with its power to move emotions, was an \\u201cinexpressible miracle\\u201d second only to Theology. When people engage in music, said Luther, singing in four or five parts, it is like a \\u201csquare dance in heaven.\\u201d For Heart and Soul, The Rev Lucy Winkett, Anglican priest, singer and Bach enthusiast, takes a musical tour of the Reformation.

The programme opens in the Georgenkirche in Eisenach, Germany, where Bach was baptised and both Luther and he were choirboys, separated by two centuries. Luther\\u2019s ideas about music were to have a decisive influence on its development in Germany. Indeed, as Lucy finds out, the dominance of German music from the 17th to 19th centuries would not have happened without him.

The Lutheran Church, with its hymns and chorales, was the seedbed for the choral and liturgical works of Germany\\u2019s greatest composers. No Luther, no Bach. It\\u2019s that simple.

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