“Everything with, Nothing because of Religion”

Abstract This work offers an annotated translation of Christoph Krummacher, “ ‘Alles mit, nichts aus Religion’—F.D. Schleiermacher und die gegenwärtige Theoriediskussion zur Kirchenmusik,” in Krummacher, Kirchenmusik in Theorie und Praxis. Ausgewählte Texte aus der Hochschularbeit und der kirchenmusikalischen Lehrtätigkeit (Olms, 2014), 271–288. Krummacher traces the rehabilitation of “religion” as a category in German Protestant discourses as well as a renewed interest in Schleiermacher’s thought as relevant to those discourses. He then seizes upon insights drawn from Über die Religion (1799) and the Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik (1819, 1825, 1832/33) to address current questions about an uncritical functionalism bearing upon the practice of church music. He concludes that the value of art (including religious art) derives from what it is rather than what it does—from its Schleiermacherian status as “free productivity” rather than from the utilitarian efficacies often used to justify it. The article arose in part from seminars held in context of Krummacher’s 2013 residency in the Sacred Music Program, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. An editorial preface situates the work’s significance in the current Anglophone context.