Musical Training of the Pastors

Even though the main topic of this thesis is congregational singing, it is necessary to have a glimpse of the musical training of the pastors because, as has already been shown, in nineteenth-century Finland and Ingria, many of them took care of teach-ing steach-ingteach-ing to their parishioners, or it was at least their duty to supervise it. At the Divine Services, pastors had their own parts to sing, by turns with the churchwarden or the congregation, or by themselves (see Chapters 4.2 and 4.5). Therefore, it is in-teresting to know what kind of musical training they received. Most of the pastors in Ingria came from Finland, which means that they had got the same education at the university as their colleagues working in Finland: at first at the Royal Academy of Turku and from 1828 on, the Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki¹¹⁹. During the nineteenth century, teaching liturgical singing to students of theology, i.e. future pastors, improved a lot, from almost nothing to singing and playing rehearsals led by qualified pedagogues. Even though singing had always been considered an import-ant skill for pastors, there was no examination of singing included in the pastor’s degree.

In eighteenth-century Sweden, Lutheran pastors had got their education in theology at the grammar schools and universities, but there were only superficial instructions on how it was organised in practice. Neither of these schools had a right to give a pastor’s degree, and therefore, the diocesan chapters tested the knowledge and skills

119 After the Great Fire of Turku in 1827, the university was moved to Helsinki and started there as the Imperial Alexander University in Finland in 1828. In 1919, it was renamed as the University of Helsinki.

of those who intended to become pastors (Kansanaho 1963, 21–23, 26). When Jakob Tengström started as bishop of Turku in 1803, he started to re-organise the education of pastors according to the principles of Enlightenment theology, taking Germany and Denmark as models. He presented his proposal to establish a pastor seminary at the meeting of the Consistory of the Royal Academy of Turku in June 1803; music was probably not high in Tengström’s interests because it was not men-tioned at all, even though the proposal emphasised rehearsing practical tasks of the pastor’s office (HYKA, Archives of the RAA, Minutes of the Consistory, 14 June 1803, §8). After this, the Chapter of the Porvoo Diocese made its own proposal and wanted to set up a seminary in connection with the Porvoo Grammar School.

The biggest difference in comparison with Tengström’s one was that the Chapter of Porvoo mentioned that director cantus should teach liturgical and hymn-singing at his singing lessons (Leinberg 1887, 447–456).

The proposal of the Chapter of Porvoo was rejected (Leinberg 1887, 478–479), whereas Tengström’s instructions were approved in 1806 (Kansanaho 1963, 26–27).

In the Seminary By-laws, it was instructed that there had to be music lessons be-cause pastors had to be able to assess churchwardens’ and organists’ musical abilities as well as to be able to sing liturgical melodies. Instructions were nevertheless super-ficial; ‘necessary care’ must be taken of in musical education, but only ‘as circum-stances and different times allowed’¹²⁰ (Imperial Decree 10 April 1818).

In the archives of J.A. Florin in the National Archives of Finland, there is a hand-writ-ten sheet of music titled HERrar Präst Canditaters Prof Mässa, Med Sång Clav (‘Misters Pastor Candidates Mass Demonstration, with the Song Clef ’; see Figure 4) which includes only the parts sung by the liturgist. There are no names or dates. According to Pajamo and Tuppurainen (2004, 173), it is a copy of Johan Lindell’s collections of liturgical melodies from 1784, but despite the similarities, both the Finnish and Swedish Mass are different from Lindell’s, which indicates constantly changing tra-dition. Nevertheless, it also indicates that at least some students of theology were able to sing some rather demanding parts of the liturgy.

120 ‘Om Undervisning i Tonkonsten. Då det åligger en Präst att ej allenast sjelf wid wissa tillfällen mässe och sjunga, utan ock att pröfwa Klockares och Organisters skicklighet i Tonkonsten, och att för öfrigt hålla noga inseende öfwer den offenteliga Kyrkosången; bör äfwen för dessa slags under-wisning i Seminario dragas nödig försorg, på sätt omständigheterna å olika tider det kunna medgifwa.’

(The Seminary By-laws, 7§.)

Figure 4. The beginning of the Finnish Mass (the Gloria, Salutation, Collect and Epistle) from a hand-written sheet of music for students of theology from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries. KA, Archives of SKHS, J.A. Florin’s collection, HERrar Präst Canditaters Prof Mässa, Med Sång Clav.

In 1837, a new proposal was made to re-organise pastors’ education at the Imperial Alexander University and, according to it, a specific singing teacher should be hired for teaching hymn- and liturgical singing. Following this proposal, the Tsar gave a new decree in March 1846, according to which it was the Consistory’s duty, on the proposal of the Faculty of Theology, to name a specific singing teacher for Finnish and Swedish hymn- and liturgical singing. The same decree established the position of Professor of Practical Theology, whose tasks included visiting the singing re-hearsals when other duties gave way (Imperial Decree 4 March 1846).

In fact, musical education in the Pastor Seminary had already started before the Imperial Decree. Fredrik August Ehrström started as a singing teacher in 1836 and held the position until 1849. Perhaps teaching future pastors was one reason for Ehrström to publish his collection of liturgical melodies in 1837. Unlike many other collections of liturgical melodies, Ehrström included notations for the parts sung by the liturgist, not only the parts sung by the churchwarden or the congregation.

Perhaps he used this booklet as educational material with his students. Unfortu-nately, neither Ehrström nor his successors Axel Granfelt (1815–1892, in the post 1850–1853) or Johan August Lindelöf (1824–1897; in the post spring 1854) gave any notice of the content of their teaching or weekly teaching hours. We only know that Ehrström, who also wanted to improve congregational singing in general, worked hard and performed his duties commendably (HYKA, Faculty of Theology, Minutes 15 March 1850, §2, and 27 April 1850, §1, Consistory of KAU, Minutes 1 February 1854, §8; Collan-Beaurain 1921, 125).

From 1855 on, Music Teacher of the University, Fredrik Pacius, took care of teach-ing hymn- and liturgical steach-ingteach-ing for students of theology. He was abroad from 1856 to 1857, during which time Rudolf Lagi served as his substitute (HYKA, Consistory of KAU, Minutes 17 October 1855, §6, and 7 June 1856, §4; Hufvudstadsbladet 5 Jan-uary 1869). Apparently, Pacius was not too interested in his new duty, and students were dissatisfied with him; they made a request to replace him with a person who was interested in the topic and not just satisfied with superficial rehearsing of the Divine Services (KK, Faculty of Theology Weekly Meeting 5 April 1869). Pacius retired in 1869 but continued nominally as a teacher of church-singing until the end of 1875, even though he was not personally responsible for teaching for many years.

(HYKA, Faculty of Theology, Minutes 6 December 1875, §3). There might have

been two reasons for the lack of appreciation for teaching of church-singing: from a theological point of view, the sermon was considered the centre and core of the Divine Service (Colliander 1877, 186), whereas, from a musical point of view, hymns and liturgical melodies were perhaps too simple music and students of theology not talented and determined enough for such highly educated musicians as Pacius.

Finally, at the end of the 1870s, the teaching of church-singing was properly or-ganised; the Churchwarden of Saint Nicholas’ Church, J.A.G. Hymander started as a teacher in 1878. He announced the organisation of a one-hour rehearsal for liturgical singing every Wednesday and Saturday. In the same year, he also published a new version of his collection of liturgical melodies both in Finnish and Swedish.

The new version was especially meant for teaching liturgical singing to students of theology (HYKA, Faculty of Theology, Minutes February¹²¹ 1878, §1, and 14 Sep-tember, 1878 §1, Consistory of KAU, minutes 27 February, §10, 14 SepSep-tember, §11, 28 October, §18, and 13 November 1878, §11). However, students were not eager to participate in classes due to focusing only on liturgical melodies and the lack of hymn rehearsals. The Dean of the Faculty, Herman Råbergh (1838–1920) agreed with students about the importance of hymn-singing but he thought that the univer-sity was not the right place to rehearse it and just encouraged students to participate in the teaching offered, at least for one semester (KK, Faculty of Theology Weekly Meeting 24 April 1879).

Otto Immanuel Colliander started as Professor of Practical Theology in 1883. As already mentioned, his licentiate dissertation from 1880 fell within the area of hym-nology, and he had by 1877 written an article about liturgy and church music. In the article Colliander (1877, 189) underlined the importance of teaching liturgy and hymnology and suggested that a course of hymnology should be included in the pastor’s degree requirements.

In February 1886, two different imperial decrees were given on the same day, one about pastors’ education and another one about teachers in the faculty of theology, but they did not mean any remarkable changes from a musical point of view; only an assistant was nominated to take care of the liturgical, homiletical and catechetical re-hearsals (Imperial Decrees 11 February 1886a and 1886b). Students requested giving

121 The exact date is missing from the minutes.

their sermon demonstrations in actual service. Accordingly, when rehearsals were moved to the eastern chapel of the Saint Nicholas’ Church in 1887, they were put into practice in the form of a Divine Service (HYKA, Consistory of KAU, Minutes 30 May 1895, §30; KK, Faculty of Theology Weekly Meetings 19 November 1885 and 6 November 1895).

In order to maintain the standard of rehearsing liturgical singing, Hymander pub-lished a new version of his collection of liturgical melodies in 1888 because the previous edition had sold out (HYKA, Faculty of Theology, Minutes 19 December 1888, §1, Consistory of KAU 22 December 1888, §8). In the autumn of 1888, play-ing the harmonium was added to the teachplay-ing of church-splay-ingplay-ing. At first, there were two hours a week, but apparently, students were excited about using this new oppor-tunity, and therefore, the number of weekly hours was raised to four the next spring and to six in 1890 (HYKA, Faculty of Theology, Minutes 5 November 1888, §5, Consistory of KAU 14 December 1888, §6, and 12 December 1890, §9). Hymander died in 1896 and was replaced by Abraham Ojanperä (1856–1916), who worked as a cantor in the New Church and a singing teacher both in the Helsinki Music Insti-tute and Churchwarden-Organist School (HYKA, Faculty of Theology, Minutes 11 September 1896, §3; Consistory of KAU 12 September 1896, §37).

It seems that participation in singing classes varied greatly among students of the-ology. Some of them were excited about it, however, and thought it was important because the topic was discussed now and then on the initiative of students in the Faculty of Theology weekly meetings. It is also likely that some students sang some of the parts possible for the liturgist to sing in a Divine Service at their service demonstrations.

3.7 General Synod and Cultural Control in