Four-Part Singing in Mennonite Schools and Church in Russia

The significance of singing instruction may seem trite, but it became a key vehicle in the Mennonite school curriculum for fostering a basic appreciation of the arts and for faith formation.

In Johann Cornies’ circulated guidelines for teachers, singing was recommended as a means “to stimulate and enliven pious feelings” in the children—a guideline he copied directly from a German Catholic pedagogue and circulated freely under his own name (note 1). 

On January 26, 1846 Cornies distributed a curriculum regulation to all schools that mandated “singing by numbers (Zahlen) from the church hymnal” (note 2).

Attention to singing instruction in the schools precipitated significant and controversial changes in Mennonite liturgy. An 1854 visiting observer to the Bergthal Colony—a Chortitza daughter colony outside of Cornies’ purview—wrote:

“Endlessly long hymns from the Gesangbuch (hymnal) were begun by the Vorsänger (song leader) of the congregation, and sung with so many flourishes and embellishments that the melody became completely unrecognizable, and it was impossible despite my good ear, to retain any one of these strange melodies in my memory.” (Note 3)

The apple does not fall far from the tree, apparently. The singing in the Chortitza Colony was especially unbearable and unholy to Heinrich Heese—a former Einlage (Chortitza) teacher and colony administrator and now Cornies’ lead educationalist in Molotschna: “There still seems to be no taste [in the Chortitza area] for singing in harmony. … O that our Lord Jesus would no longer be greeted with such distorted singing in our churches, from which even the angels turn away in offence!” (note 4).

Notably it was not the church, but the schools where a new form of religious singing based upon a system of musical notation was first introduced in Molotschna. This approach was initiated by “Prussian school teachers”—notably Heinrich Franz in the village of Gnadenfeld, a former student of Gnadenfeld’s Elder Friedrich Lange at Rodlofferhufen, Prussia.

Heinrich Heese sought to instill in his students in Ohrloff his own dream for quality singing in the colonies, connecting aesthetics with piety and ethics. He recalled that:

“[… in Prussia] Mennonites would sing so sublimely that all hearts would soften to the blessed joy in Christ and even the angels in heaven would join in ... The songbooks of the time had notes above each song; it was only later, when the notes were omitted in the newer revised hymnals, that the singing in our churches deteriorated into the present-day disharmony. To the extent to which the harmonious singing in our churches was lost, to the same extent our fathers lost their holy way of life in true love to God and his holy Word.” (Note 5)

There was some support for new music styles in Rudnerweide too, for example, where Jacob Bräul was teacher (also previously in Einlage). P. M. Friesen reported on Bräul’s ability to teach Russian as well as the fact that he was “famous for his teaching of arithmetic, singing, and penmanship” (note 6). In 1840 Rudnerweide Elder Benjamin Ratzlaff wrote to his Chortitza counterpart Jacob Hildebrandt about a proposed hymnal not yet in print (note 7). In 1844, a new edition of the Prussian hymnal was published in Odessa for Russian Mennonite congregations—the same hymn texts, but in many cases new suggested melodies, though without notation; 15,400 copies were published in three editions by 1859, and soon every household had a hymnal—together with a Bible, and a few instructional and devotional books (note 8).

As early as 1837 copies of Heinrich Franz’s growing collection of music also started to circulate, and in 1860 the Choralbuch was published in its first edition of 5,000 copies. Franz introduced four-part harmony instruction in his school and beyond “for the beauty, purity and correctness” as well as “uniformity” of singing across congregations (note 9).

Besides offering 163 melodies for songs in the hymnal, the Choralbuch also introduced another 112 songs for church, school and home. For Franz, singing participates in God’s own work of “training for the kingdom of heaven” (note 10); four decades later P. M. Friesen could write that Franz’s “Chorale-book in ciphers has transformed the spiritual singing of Russian Mennonites (…) and even dominates it today” (note 11).

Not surprisingly the change in music proved to be a source of great distress for others (note 12). If traditional Mennonite singing could be described in 1822 as “exceedingly harsh and loud, forced from the throat” (note 13), traditionalists now compared part-singing in harmony “to a pub-song” style (note 14). Others thought that it “was military in character,” and found it to be so “repugnant” that they “could not attend such meetings”; some even saw in it “a great evil” and an “innovation as contrary to the Christian faith” (note 15).

Yet by 1890—after many conservatives had left for North America—most churches especially in the secessionist Mennonite Brethren congregations “had a choir that sang on Sunday morning” (note 16). The love of good hymn-singing that developed among Russian Mennonites would later give great joy in faith, and sustain many in the darkest chapters still to come—wholly consistent with the long tradition of writing and singing hymns that is reflected even in their martyr stories (note 17).

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Note 1: In David Epp, Johann Cornies: Züge aus seinem Leben und Wirken [1909], Historische Schriftenreihe, Buch 3 (Rosthern, SK: Echo, 1946), 62, https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/?file=1dok15.pdf. For further and detailed research on this topic, see especially the references below to the writings of Peter Letkemann and Wesley Berg.

Note 2: In Epp, Johann Cornies, 75.

Note 3: Cf. Augustin Engelbrecht, Aufsätze pädagogischen Inhalts. Ein Buch für Seelsorger und Volksschullehrer zur angenehmen und belehrenden Unterhaltung (Landshut: Krüll, 1821), 237, https://books.google.ca/books?id=ZTlNAAAAcAAJ&lpg. On Cornies' use of Engelbrecht, cf. James Urry, “The Source of Johann Cornies’ ‘Rules’ on Schools and Education,” Mennonite Historian 45, no. 4 (December 2019), 10–11, http://www.mennonitehistorian.ca/45.4.MHDec19.pdf; and Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Cornies and Engelbrecht on Schools and Rules,” Mennonite Historian 46 no. 2 (June 2020), 9–10, http://www.mennonitehistorian.ca/46.2.MHJun20.pdf.

Note 4: Jacob A. Klassen, cited in Wesley Berg, “The Development of Choral Singing Among the Mennonites of Russia to 1895,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 55, no. 2 (April 1981), 133. See also Berg, “Music among the Mennonites of Russia,” in Mennonites in Russia, edited by John Friesen, 203–219 (Winnipeg, MB: CMBC, 1989).

Note 5: Heinrich Heese, “Brief History of our Mennonite Brethren,” excerpted in Peter M. Friesen, The Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia 1789–1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Christian, 1978), 113, https://archive.org/details/TheMennoniteBrotherhoodInRussia17891910/.

Note 6: Heese in Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 111. Cf. Wesley Berg, “Hymns of the Old Colony Mennonites and the Old Way of Singing,” The Musical Quarterly 80, no. 1 (1996), 77–117.

Note 7: Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 781.

Note 8: John B. Toews, Perilous Journey. The Mennonite Brethren in Russia 1860–1910 (Winnipeg, MB: Kindred, 1988), 21, https://archive.org/details/PerilousJourneyBookocr. Cf. also “Vorwort zur dritten Auflage,” Gesang-Buch in welchem eine Sammlung geistreicher Lieder befindlich, 3rd edition in Russia (Odessa: Franzow, 1859), https://books.google.ca/books?id=MtwTAAAAYAAJ&lpg.

Note 9: August von Haxthausen, Studien über die innern Zustände, das Volksleben und insbesondere die ländlichen Einrichtungen Rußlands, part II (Hannover: Hahn, 1847), 189n., https://archive.org/details/studienberdiein03kosegoog/.

Note 10: Heinrich Franz (1880), “Vorwort,” Choralbuch zunächst zum Gebrauch in den mennonitischen Schulen Südrusslands, 2nd edition (Leipzig, 1880), https://hdl.handle.net/2027/nc01.ark:/13960/t50g5wb1m. Abram Kröker (Pfarrer Eduard Wüst. Der große Erweckungsprediger in den deutschen Kolonien Südrußlands [Spat, Crimea: Self-published, ca. 1903], 64f., https://media.chortitza.org/pdf/Pis/Kroeker.pdf) contends, however, that Eduard Wüst—or more specifically his wife—introduced Russian Mennonites to four-part harmony and mixed choirs; Jakob Prinz, Die Kolonien der Brüdergemeinde. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien Südrußlands (Pjatigorsk, 1898), 90, http://digital.slub-dresden.de/id369529960.

Note 11: Friesen, Mennonite Brotherhood in Russia, 712.

Note 12: Cf. James Urry, “None but Saints”: The Transformation of Mennonite Life in Russia, 1789–1889 (Winnipeg, MB: Hyperion, 1989), 216; John B. Toews, “Harmony amid Disharmony: A Diary Portrait of Mennonite Singing in Russian during the 1860s,” Mennonite Life 40, no. 4 (1985) 4–7, https://mla.bethelks.edu/mennonitelife/pre2000/1985dec.pdf; idem, Perilous Journey, 70f.

Note 13: Daniel Schlatter, Bruchstücke aus einigen Reisen nach dem südlichen Rußland in den Jahren 1822 bis 1828 (St. Gallen: Huber, 1830), 364, https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/object/display/bsb11008440_00005.html.

Note 14: "Brandweingesang"; cf. full quotation in Peter Letkemann, “Der Streit um den Zifferngesang und der Gesangunterricht in den mennonitischen Schulen Russlands, 1845-1870,” Rückblick: Glaube und Gemeinde im Spiegel der Geschichte, no. 1 (July 2011), 14, https://neu.chortitza.org/2022/02/zeitschrift-rueckblick-2011-01/.

Note 15: Toews, “Harmony and Disharmony,” 5–6.

Note 16: Berg, “Development of Choral Singing,” 134f.

Note 17: See previous post, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/02/when-singing-becomes-urgent-survival.html.

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To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, “Four-Part Singing in Mennonite Schools and Church in Russia,” History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), June 13, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/06/four-part-singing-in-mennonite-schools.html.