How important was music to Martin Luther? Drawing on hundreds of liturgical documents, contemporary accounts of services, books on church music, and other sources, Joseph Herl rewrites the history of music and congregational song in German Lutheran churches. He traces the path of Lutheran church music to show how they acquired their reputation as the "singing church". Herl writes with academic precision and clarity, for specialists and non-specialists alike. Focussing on events, peoples, ideas and anecdotal evidence, Herl draws readers inside his story and gives them a vivid sense of what it would have been like to attend a Lutheran church from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century.