The earliest Lutheran chorale collections, the Achtliederbuch,…

The earliest Lutheran chorale collections, the Achtliederbuch, comprising eight poems and four melodies, and the Enchiridion, containing about three times as much material, are published in 1524.

Both volumes are intended for congregational singing.

In the same year, Johann Walter, a twenty-eight-year-old colleague of Martin Luther, publishes the first collection of polyphonic chorale settings, which, because of their greater complexity, are clearly designed for choirs.

Walter was born in Kahla, in present-day Thuringia in 1496.

According to a document filed with his will, he was born with the surname of Blanckenmüller, but adopted out of poverty by a citizen of Kahla, and given an education at Kahla and Rochlitz under his new name, Johann Walter.

He had begun his career as a composer and bass cantor in the chapel of Frederick the Wise at the age of twenty-one.

It is a position he will hold until Frederick’s death in 1525.

By this time, he is the director of the chapel and has become an outspoken musical spokesman for Lutherans.

Walter edits the first Protestant hymnal for choir, Eyn geystlich Gesangk Buchleyn, in Wittenberg in 1524, with a foreword by Martin Luther himself.