Word of God. This is why the prophets preferred music before all the
other arts ... proclaiming the Word in psalms and hymns.... My heart,
which is full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by
music when sick and weary."

Luther had a good voice and a knowledge of musical composition. He
played the flute and the lute, and in church he introduced
congregational singing, in which the people took an active part in
worship by means of the chorales. It is related that, as a child, he
used to sing with other boys in the street in winter, for his daily
bread, and that on one occasion, Frau Cotta frantically rushed from
her house on hearing his pleading tones, took him in, and gave him a
warm meal. Later in life, when he was an Augustine monk, he often
chased away his melancholy and temptations by playing on his lute, and
the story goes that "one day, after a self-inflicted chastisement, he
was found in a fainting condition in his cell, and that his cloistered
brethren recalled him to consciousness by soft music, well knowing
that music was the balsam for all wounds of the troubled mind of their
'dear Martinus.'"

Coming to more recent times, we find that some of the greatest
composers and other men of genius were "savages," judged by Dr.
Hanslick's standard.

When Congreve wrote that "music hath charms to soothe the savage
breast," did he not mean to imply that educated people are not
affected by it? Take the case, for instance, of that old barbarian,
Joseph Haydn, and note how he was affected by the "Creation" when he
heard it sung. "One moment," he said to Griesinger, "I was as cold as
ice, and the next I seemed on fire, and more than once I feared I