German churches keep the Christmas music playing on otherwise silent nights

When an aunt visited me in Berlin a decade ago, her summary of her first German Mass was short and to the point: “There’s certainly an awful lot of singing.”

While Irish Catholics traditionally mutter their way through Mass, German Catholics and Protestants alike are veritable songbirds. A Sunday service is unthinkable without thick books of lengthy hymns, many dating back 500 years, all sung with lusty abandon.

And this church music tradition has proven a lifeline for many Germans as a trying year draws to a close, particularly in Berlin.

It prides itself as a cultural capital beacon but a second lockdown has shut all music venues, from Berghain to the Berlin Philharmonic. As Christmas approaches, the only source of live music is Advent church services.

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And that is only possible because Germany’s Christian denominations spend serious money annually employing thousands of church musicians.

The Lutheran church in the Berlin-Brandenburg region (EKBO) has 315 church musicians on its payroll alone, all musicians and performers with a rigorous, specialist training.

Special places

Among their number is British-born Pam Hulme, since last year a choirmaster and organist in an eastern Berlin Lutheran church.

The 41-year-old learned early on that organ music in German churches is far more than the ornamental underscoring she remembered from home, but an integral part of the liturgy, of equal value to everything else in the service.

“After the sermon, you often have a piece of instrumental music where people sit and listen, reflecting on the words they have just heard,” she said.

Recent concerts have all been full to capacity under Covid-19 regulations, and she wonders if the pandemic has helped people notice churches in a new way.

“My hope is that they might hear the music from the street and be drawn in, not in an evangelising way but from a more general spiritual perspective,” she says. “To enjoy churches as special places in terms of atmosphere and amazing acoustics, as buildings that are, above all, a place for community.”

Music has always been a part of the Christian faiths, but Luther’s Reformation kick-started a multifaceted revolution. Alongside his German-language Bible, Martin Luther saw the evangelising possibilities of music, which he viewed as “a creation of God”. He composed and adapted 36 hymns and compiled them with other pieces in a church songbook for the entire congregation – not just choirs.

That flung open a door to composers like Dietrich Buxtehude and Johann Sebastian Bach, who embraced Biblical and Lutheran themes in their cantatas and oratorios. For the last 500 years, church music has become a foundation stone of German identity, unshakeable even in a global pandemic.

Sebastian Brendel (39), has been playing the organ since he was 15 and since 2002 as a professional, full-time church musician. This is the year when he realised the privilege – and importance – of his work.

“There is nothing stronger than people singing together, that’s what led me to church music,” he said. “For me it is a duty and a privilege to play and, getting a salary for this, I feel a responsibility that the quality is good.”

Financial breathing space

While church closures elsewhere in Europe saw a collapse in voluntary choirs, full-time church musicians in Germany had the time and financial breathing space to rework their offerings – and repertoire – for the new reality.

In this way, a virtuous circle was maintained, where church music offers people live music at low, or no, cost – as listeners, or participants.

For the Christmas season, Brendel has lined up a reduced choir of eight, his own organ and can draw down what remains of his annual budget of €10,000 to pay professional freelance musicians – from trumpeters to string musicians – in desperate need of work after a horrific year.

Equally important for him is the social, pastoral element offered by his choirs.

“For many people the choir is existentially important,” he said, “and we’re trying to bridge this difficult time as best we can.”

On Brendel’s watch, Bach, Beethoven and Bruckner will echo around his church in Berlin’s Schöneberg neighbourhood this Advent season. And around Germany, the lights may be out elsewhere this Christmas; in German churches, the music plays on.