A new era in church music dawned with the creation of German-language sacred songs functioning as the counterpart to Latin Gregorian chant. The WESER-RENAISSANCE ensemble under its experienced conductor Manfred Cordes is now presenting a colorful selection of the most beautiful hymn settings from the Wittenberg first edition of 1524-25. The Urkantor Johann Walter was a close associate of Martin Luther and the founding father of the important institutional and artistic tradition of the Protestant cantorate. In his music Walter followed the model of the German tenor song, a genre important in the development of German music history and of secular orientation in its principal variant. The melody is in the tenor part of the song settings, all of them in four parts, and in formal respects differs only slightly from the monophonic tradition. With his Gesangk Buchleyn Walter marked the beginning of the significant tradition of Protestant chorale settings that would reach its artistic high point in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.