Luther’s fervent desire was to bring all elements of the church service within the comprehension of the whole congregation; it was to be a people’s service. The congregational hymns, so conspicuous in his scheme of public worship, were not only sung in the mother-tongue, but many of them were sung to melodies whose origin was equally close and dear to the people’s heart. Luther was the founder of German Protestant hymnody (though not of German hymnody, as we shall see), and in furnishing tunes to the multitude of hymns which he and his helpers wrote, translated, or adapted, to give voice to the new religious aspirations and ideals of the Protestant faith, recourse was had to two popular sources, the rich treasury of religious folk-song that had been in existence for centuries[43] and contemporary secular folk-song of the more noble and sedate type. In thus transferring the familiar and beloved melodies of home and social life to the use of the sanctuary, an intimate and personal relation of the congregation to the church service was established that was wholly lacking in the old church associations. A third source of Luther’s melodies was Gregorian chant and the stately Catholic hymns. Many of the melodies were original, and this was more and more the case as time went on, but the musician of this period, as has been pointed out in the discussion of Netherland music, was thoroughly accustomed to borrowing his melodies (subjects) either from popular song or plain-song. The name ‘chorale’ was soon given to these hymn-melodies, from whatever source they were derived, and the chorale, from its importance in the Lutheran liturgy, promptly became the nucleus of the whole Lutheran musical system, in exactly the same sense that plain-song was of the Roman musical system. Its close relation to the sturdy folk-song gave to the chorale and to the entire literature of religious music evolved from it a virility and vitality that made it, of all the artistic products of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, alone comparable with the superb creations of Palestrina and his school. The origin of probably more than half of the melodies of the Lutheran chorale-books may be traced to folk-songs of some kind or period. Moreover, in wedding his hymns to music Luther was careful to provide strongly rhythmical melodies, which naturally made a more lively appeal to the people than did the unrhythmical Latin music of the Roman service, a fact whose significance has been largely overlooked by historians. The militant and assertive ring of many of the early chorales, contrasting strongly with the calm, contemplative mood of so many of the Catholic hymns, finds at least partial explanation in this fact.