General Synod and Cultural Control in Congregational Singing

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the attitude towards congregational sing-ing was free and, in comparison with the present-day situation, to a certain extent

‘wild.’ It was not totally uncontrolled; every now and then the diocesan chapters, bishops and deans gave instructions about singing. However, in practice, until the

1860s the situation remained similar; people sang hymns using their own chorale variants, churchwardens had their own hand-written chorale books, some pastors and churchwardens as well as some other musicians published their own chorale books and collections of liturgical melodies and some of them even their own hym-nals. The training of churchwardens and organists had almost no standards whatso-ever, and there was great variation in their musical skills.

The 1869 Church Law changed the governing of the church and for instance, the offices of churchwarden and organist. Consequently, the churchwarden-organist schools were founded. The new Church Law gave the Church restricted self-govern-ment. In other words, it was granted the right to decide, independent from the state, on its own matters concerning its own books. The General Synod became the ‘par-liament’ of the Church and its highest decision-making body, whereas the bishops and the diocesan chapters remained as an administrative organisation (Juva 1976, 15–17). The General Synod was summoned for the first time in 1876, then in 1886, and then every fifth year from 1893 onwards (ibid., 52–74). It also took a significant role in sustaining cultural control in congregational singing by authorising the Hym-nal and the Agenda as well as common official melodies for them (Vapaavuori 1997, 43, 328–330, 339–343). All of this meant that the field of congregational singing was now under an official supervision, the situation being similar in present-day Finland with educated professional church musicians and authorised hymnals and collections of liturgical music for common use throughout the country.

The even-note versions of chorales, presented mostly by Hæffner and Nordlund, did not receive wide public support in Finland because they were alien to ordinary people. This led to a situation where there were two different approaches. The Finn-ish national line, on one hand, aimed at a hymnal that would have served ‘the habits and traditions of people’ (whatever it meant in a reality with hundreds of different chorale variants). The European line, on the other hand, attempted to remain true to ‘the common heritage of the Lutheran Church,’ which included training Finns to sing hymns dating from the Reformation era, either in forms as close to the original ones as possible or by using the even-note versions presented by Hæffner and Nord-lund (Vapaavuori 1997, 292–311).

One of the first representatives of the national line was D.H. Kukkasela (1857, 4, 6), who saw the uniqueness of Finnish congregational singing and sought to find both chorale and liturgical melodies in the form in which the people sang them. Kon-stantin Saarelainen had some Finnish chorale variants in his chorale books (1862, 1875 and 1883). In the 1890s, Ilmari Krohn and Mikael Nyberg collected chorale variants, and the 1898 General Synod decided that there should be Finnish ‘folksy’

melodies in the chorale book (Vapaavuori 1998, 161–163). Rudolf Lagi can be seen as representing the European line because even though he attempted to create a chorale book out of local chorale variants, he preferred Nordlund’s Chorale Book rather than the hand-written ones. E.A. Hagfors supported the European line and Hæffner’s tradition; a clear indication of this was that he edited a new edition of Nordlund’s Chorale Book in 1876. O.I. Colliander (e.g. 1877, 193–196; 1898, passim) was the leading proponent of the original rhythmic chorale versions but did not receive widespread support for his ideas.

When authorising the new Finnish and Swedish Hymnals in 1886, the General Syn-od also appointed a committee to assign suitable melSyn-odies and publish a chorale book. Even though the General Synod in principle adopted the Finnish national line, the Committee was composed of representatives of both approaches and was influenced more by the European line supporters, to name only one, the Chairman of the Committee, Bishop O.I. Colliander (Vapaavuori 1997, 339–343). He wanted to return to the original, rhythmically living melodic forms of the Reformation and the seventeenth century. When the Committee published its proposal for a new cho-rale book in 1889, it was disappointing from Colliander’s point of view. Namely, the proposal was a compromise in terms of rhythm; although some melodies with more varied rhythmic bodies were included, syllabic chorales still dominated (Colliander 1898, 26–31; Pajamo and Tuppurainen 2004, 240–241).

As already mentioned, local chorale variants had been collected, but they found their way to the official Hymnal only gradually. In Nordlund’s Chorale Book (1850), there were none of them, and Lagi’s attempt to create a chorale book out of them dried up. Consequently, he prepared a proposal for an official chorale book in 1867 and 1868 by following the European line. He nonetheless included a few Finnish folk melodies in his compilation (Vapaavuori 1998, 161–162).

The Committee did not publish an official collection of liturgical melodies either, though it had not yet been given that task in the nineteenth century. Altogether twenty-two different collections of liturgical melodies were published during the century, each more or less different from the others. The situation changed slightly when the General Synod authorised the new Agenda for Divine Services in 1886. It contained only texts and no music. Nevertheless, in the last years of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, the Mass arranged by Johann August Gott-lieb Hymander became in general use in almost every parish, even though it was not officially authorised by the General Synod. The reason for that was that it was included in the second (1897) and the third (1909) editions of the Chorale Book edited by Richard Faltin and O.I. Colliander (more about the collections of liturgical melodies, see Chapter 4).