Martin Luther on singing:

"If you say 'Hey Birdie, why are you so gay? You have no cook, no cellar,' he will answer, 'I do not sow, I do not reap, I do not gather into barns. But I have a cook, and his name is heavenly father. Fool, shame on you. You do not sing. You work all day and cannot sleep for worry. I sing as if I had a thousand throats."

"With all my heart I would toll the precious gift of God in the noble art of music, but I scarcely know where to begin or end... David, himself a musician, testified with amazement and joy to the song of the birds. What then shall I say of the voice of man, to which nought else may be compared? The heathen philosophers have striven in vain to explain how the tongue of man can express the thoughts of the heart in speech and song, through laughter and lamentation. Music is to be praised as second only to the Word of God because by her are all the emotions swayed. Nothing on earth is more mighty to make the sad gay and the gay sad, to hearten the downcast, mellow the overweening, temper the exuberant, or mollify the vengeful. The Holy Spirit himself pays tribute to music when he records that the evil spirit of Saul was exorcised as David played...

This precious gift has been bestowed on men alone to remind them that they are to praise and magnify the Lord. But when natural music is sharpened and polished by art, then one begins to see with amazement the great and perfect wisdom of God in his wonderful work of music...

He who does not find this an inexpressable miracle of the Lord is truly a clod and is not worthy to be considered a man."

Luther had a compulsary weekly full-church meeting for singing practice.

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