Chapter 14 “Jerusalem” as an Expression of What Is Sacred in Music: Restoration Tendencies in Nineteenth-Century Church Music

Abstract

The last decades of the nineteenth century were an era of renewal for church service plans and church music traditions in Protestant parts of Europe. This was also a period of restauration of historical forms of song and music. This article examines such a restauration project among Lutherans in the German Kingdom of Bavaria, which eventually rippled into Scandinavia. These thoughts of restoration and renewal were expressed officially in journals of liturgy and church music, in Germany and Sweden. It is a less known fact that images inspired by the ancient temple cult on Mount Zion in Jerusalem came to play a certain part in this work. The image of Jerusalem helped shape the restoration of church music in nineteenth-century Lutheran Europe, and this chapter examines how “Jerusalem” became a code to church music in late nineteenth-century Germany and Scandinavia.