But though the mastersong was musically sterile, the German folk-song, which had been vigorously developing through the centuries, now came to brilliant flower. The Lutheran Reformation was, as we have said, a popular movement. Without the hearty support and understanding of the masses it could never have succeeded. And Luther, understanding this, sought to draw the congregation as closely as possible into the church service. His chief means were the reading of the Bible and the liturgy in the native tongue instead of Latin, and the congregational singing of chorales. Hymns, as they are sung now in Protestant churches, were almost unknown in the Roman church. Their introduction was a complete innovation of the Lutheran movement. But Luther understood that congregational hymns could not be imported from another country and engrafted on his people. So he took the folk-songs that were actually being sung by the people and wrote devotional words to fit them. He caused many other tunes to be written in the folk-manner and in all probability wrote some himself (including the famous ‘Luther’s Hymn,’ ‘A Mighty Fortress is our God’). These hymns spoke with a familiar voice of the people and were one of the powerful sources of strength to the church in its early days of persecution. The purely musical results of this introduction of folk-song into the church service were very great. From Luther’s time onward the chorale--profound, dignified, and solemn--was the spiritual basis of German music. By it German music became emancipated from the Italian. The German church mothered its own musicians, greatest of whom was Johann Sebastian Bach. And the German chorale was one of the two great influences on later German song. From the ‘Spiritual Songs’ of Johann Sebastian Bach, which are nothing more than solo chorales, through the songs of the same name composed by his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, to the direct precursors of Schubert, we see a direct line of succession. If the German music preceding Schubert was serious, closely knit, firmly based, we must lay it in large part to the influence of the German folk-song which had the same German qualities--and especially those of simplicity and honesty.