Schein: Israelis Brunnlein (Ensemble Vocal Europeen under Philippe Herreweghe)

`Music is a fair and lovely gift of God, which has often wakened and moved me to the joy of preaching,' said Martin Luther. `I have no use for cranks who despise music. Experience proves that next to the Word of God only music deserves to be extolled as the mistress and governess of the feelings of the human heart.' Thus music was encouraged in the Lutheran church as a powerful tool in preaching, by all available means, the Gospel. Of organ music, for example, Michael Praetorius wrote: `One listens with extraordinary joy and love to an agile organist playing psalms gracefully and finely, whereby the heart rejoices with special devotion and attention, and is stimulated and pushed towards the sermon.'

During the first decades of the 17th century German music received a powerful new impetus through embracing the principles and idioms of the New Music emanating from Northern Italy, where the word was to be, in Monteverdi's phrase, `the mistress of the music and not its servant'. Prima le parole. In the beginning was the Word. It was an opportune equation, nicely exemplified by Praetorius's criticism of Palestrina's idiom: `Such …