No hymn is identified with the Protestant Reformation more than Martin Luther’s “A Mighty Fortress.” Luther (1483-1546) left a body of congregational songs that both defined the Lutheran confessional tradition and became truly ecumenical in influence. His thirty-seven hymns stand alongside his theological writings and his translation of the Bible into German as testaments of his creativity and intellectual ability.
Luther’s German version is a metrical paraphrase of Psalm 46 with Christological images embedded. Psalm 46 begins, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” “A Mighty Fortress” may have been written in homage to Luther’s friend Leonhard Kaiser, who was martyred. The first German printing appeared in Form und ordnung Gaystlicher Gesang und Psalmen (Augsburg, 1529). While the exact date of composition is uncertain, it may be from this same year, coinciding with the second Diet of Speyer, the year that the German princes made their formal “protest” against Rome, thus being known as “Protestants.” Often called “the true National Hymn of Germany,” the hymn spread rapidly and was sung on the battlefield of Leipzig in 1631 during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). Heinrich Heine, the famous nineteenth-century German poet, called it “the Marseillaise Hymn of the Reformation.”
Our postlude is the toccata from J. S. Bach’s famous “Toccata and Fugue in D minor” BWV 538. Scholars differ as to when it was composed. It could have been as early as c. 1704. Alternatively, a date as late as the 1750s has been suggested. Thanks to the efforts of Felix Mendelssohn, the piece was first published in 1840. It is the most famous organ work in existence. The piece was used in “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (1931) and “The Black Cat” (1934). Walt Disney solidified the work’s prominence with his use of the piece in “Fantasia” (1940).
