This event is free and open to the public. MLC students are encouraged to attend.
Saturday, December 3 at 6:00 pm in the Martin Luther College Auditorium, Dr. Carl Schalk, noted Lutheran composer, author, and lecturer will present a 45-minute lecture on Martin Luther and his influence on Lutheran church music. Dr. Schalk’s topic will be “Luther on Music After 500 Years: Paradigms of Praise Revisited.” Schalk’s ability to engage his audiences and provide keen insight into church music topics have made him a highly desirable speaker in this area. Dr. Schalk will direct his comments to Luther and music in general and then, specifically, to music the audience will hear at the MLC Christmas concert which follows at 7:30 pm. Three of Schalk’s compositions will be on the Christmas Concert program. We look forward to hosting Dr. Schalk in this special pre-concert talk at 6:00 p.m. on Saturday, December 3.
Dr. Schalk has extensively researched the history of Lutheran music as a specific genre of church music. He has, throughout his life, undertaken a multi-faceted approach to preserving the legacy of Lutheran church music. Recently, he has been an integral part of the establishment of the Center for Church Music at CUC, where many manuscripts of 20th-century composers of Lutheran church music have been preserved, as well as Schalk’s own extensive first-edition American hymnal collection.
Between 1965 and 2004 Dr. Carl Flentge Schalk taught church music at Concordia University Chicago. During this time he guided the development of the university’s Master of Church Music degree program, which has since graduated more than 140 students. Dr. Schalk himself graduated in 1952 from CUC (then known as Concordia Teachers College River Forest) with a BS in education and proceeded to earn his M.Mus from the Eastman School of Music and M.A.R. from Concordia Seminary in Saint Louis. Schalk is well known for his numerous choral compositions and more than 100 hymn tunes and carols. His hymn tunes are found in modern Christian hymnals of various denominations. He is also the author of several books on Lutheran music and hymnody.
