(b Wildhaus, 1 Jan 1484; d Cappel, 11 Oct 1531). Swiss humanist and church reformer. Of all the reformers of the 16th century he was the most musically gifted and yet the most antagonistic towards the use of music in public worship. He was educated first in Basle, then in Berne where he came under the influence of the poet, composer and humanist scholar Wölflin. While in Berne, at the age of 12 Zwingli entered the chapel choir of the local monastery simply to further his musical ambitions. Many of his contemporaries (e.g. Bullinger and Myconius) commented on his extraordinary musical gifts. Wyss (see Finsler, 1901) wrote:
I have never heard about anyone who, in the musical arts – that is, in singing and all the instruments of music, such as lute, harp, large viol, small viol, pipes, German flute … the trumpet, dulcimer, cornett, and waldhorn, and whatever else of such like had been invented … could take it to hand as quickly as he.
Zwingli studied in Vienna and Basle, receiving the master’s degree from Basle University in 1506, the year of his ordination. In 1516 he entered a monastery in Einsiedeln where he must have continued his music-making for his musical reputation almost hindered a decisive step in his career. In October 1518 the office of people’s priest became vacant at the Grossmünster, Zürich. Myconius campaigned on Zwingli’s behalf but reported that certain influential people in Zürich frowned on his musical activities because they thought it indicated that he was a worldly and sensual man. Zwingli replied that for him music was a private matter that need not offend anyone. He was appointed to the position and began his duties in the Grossmünster on 1 January 1519. He proved to be a powerful and popular preacher. Within three years he had begun his radical reformation in Zürich with the breaking of the Lenten fast and the petitioning of the Bishop of Konstanz for permission for the clergy to marry.
Zwingli’s first attempt at a revision of the liturgy, De canone missae epicheiresis, appeared in 1523; the canon of the Mass was omitted, along with saints’ days, and musical settings were dramatically reduced. His more radical, and wholly vernacular, revision, Aktion oder Brauch des Nachtmahls, was published in 1525; it became the pattern for all subsequent Zwinglian worship. Ritual and ceremony were reduced to the barest minimum and music was excluded altogether. In the previous year organs had been decreed to remain silent and three years later they were dismantled in the Grossmünster; no organ was heard in the building until almost 350 years later.
Zwinglian reform spread throughout the northern cantons of Switzerland, but the south remained faithful to the Roman church. Zwingli organized a confederacy against the southern cantons in the two Cappel wars (1529 and 1531), losing his life in the second.
Why a man so musically accomplished should have been so negative towards music in worship is something of an enigma. By all accounts, the musical standard in the Zürich city churches was very poor when Zwingli arrived there; this must have irritated the sensitive musician, who spoke acidly of off-key praises in the churches. To this sensitivity must be added his intellectual and internal understanding of worship. His explanation of Colossians iii.16 is significant: ‘Here Paul does not teach us mumbling and murmuring in the churches, but shows us the true song that is pleasing to God, that we sing the praise and glory of God not with our voices like Jewish singers, but with our hearts’. It seems that he believed that music had an inherent mystical power which could distract him from his devotions. For Zwingli, music-making was a non-ecclesiastical function. His plague song (and probably also his rhymed version of Psalm lxix) was written to fulfil personal needs, and his Cappel song for corporate needs, but they were to be sung outside the context of public worship.
Zwingli’s reformation was of a different order from Luther’s. The latter excluded from church life only those matters that were condemned in scripture; Zwingli included only those that were expressly commanded in scripture. For Luther music came next to theology; for Zwingli music was an obstacle for the believer, and if a man practised music at all his aim should be to disturb no-one by it. Church music was adversely affected by the spread of such views. Konstanz adopted the principles of Zwinglian reform and music was excluded from the churches. Sixt Dietrich wrote, sadly, ‘I have no one in Konstanz who sings with me. Music is destroyed, lies in ashes, and the more it is destroyed, the more I love it’. Zwinglian influences may have led the English composers Taverner, Tye and Merbecke to give up composition. Thus Zwingli came to be regarded as the arch-enemy of music, an uncritical view expressed in such places as the funeral sermon for Schütz (1672) and the preface to the second edition of the Leipziger Gesangbuch (1730).
This widespread view of Zwingli as the anti-musical reformer is, however, somewhat misleading and does not do justice to Zwingli’s broader view of music. Certainly, he eliminated music from church worship but not from schools and institutions of higher learning. In his educational reforms in Zürich, Zwingli specifically promoted the teaching of music especially in the bipartite institution attached to the Grossmünster. The lower level was a grammar school from which students graduated to the second level, a theological seminary for the training of pastors for the reformed churches of the area. Thus, whatever his reservations about music in worship, Zwingli regarded the study of music as an essential part of a pastor’s education. Similarly, although he specifically rejected liturgical music, he did encourage non-liturgical religious song, as his own compositions demonstrate.
Three complete song settings by Zwingli are extant: Hilff, Herr Gott, hilff in diser Not (the plague song, c1520), a rhymed version of Psalm lxix Hilff, Gott, das Wasser gat mir biss an d’Seel (c1525) and the Cappel song Herr, nun heb den Wagen selb (ed. in Egli and others) for use in the first Cappel war of 1529. Bullinger (see Hottinger and Vögeli) reported that Zwingli not only composed the melodies of the Cappel and plague songs but also wrote four-voice settings of them. There are a number of extant contemporary settings of these songs, some of which may have been composed by Zwingli (ed. in Egli and others). In addition, three psalm tunes and two prayer songs (ed. in Egli and others) share characteristics with the known songs of Zwingli. Later in the 16th century Zwingli’s three songs were included in reformed psalters and hymnals and, contrary to his intentions, were sung as congregational hymns. (see also Reformed and Presbyterian church music, §I.
BlumeEK
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G. Finsler: Die Chronik des Bernhard Wyss (Basle, 1901)
E. Egli and others, eds.: Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, Corpus reformatorum, lxxxviii–ci (Berlin and Zürich, 1905–91)
H. Zenck: Sixtus Dietrich: ein Beitrag zur Musik und Musikanschauung im Zeitalter der Reformation (Leipzig, 1928)
H. Reimann: Die Einführung des Kirchengesanges in der Zürcher Kirche nach der Reformation (Zürich, 1959)
M. Jenny: ‘Zwinglis mehrstimmige Kompositionen: ein Basler Zwingli-Fund’, Zwingliana, xi (1960), 164–82
M. Jenny: Geschichte des deutschschweizerischen evangelischen Gesangbuches im 16. Jahrhundert (Basle, 1962)
C. Garside: Zwingli and the Arts (New Haven, CT, 1966)
O. Söhngen: Theologie der Musik (Kassel, 1967)
M. Jenny: ‘Die Lieder Zwinglis’, JbLH, xiv (1969), 63–102
F. Schmidt-Clausing, ed.: Zwinglis liturgische Formulare (Frankfurt, 1970)
M. Jenny: Luther, Zwingli, Calvin in ihren Lieder (Zürich, 1983)
W.P. Stephens: The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli (Oxford, 1986)
Y. Knockaert: ‘De grote hervormers aan de basis van de huismuziek in de Renaissance’ [The great reformers as the founders of domestic music in the Renaissance], Adem, xxiii (1987), 77–80
G. Aeschbacher: ‘Zwingli und die Musik im Gottesdienst’, Reformiertes Erbe: Festschrift für Gottfried W. Locher zu seinem 80. Geburtstag, ed. H.A. Oberman (Zürich, 1992–3), i, 1–11
B.A. Föllmi: Das Weiterwirken der Musikanschauung Augustins im 16. Jahrhundert (Berne, 1994)
L.P. Wandel: Voracious Idols and Violent Hands: Iconoclasm in Reformation Zurich, Strasbourg and Basel (Cambridge, 1995)
ROBIN A. LEAVER