The Standardisation of Lutheran Congregational Singing and Liturgical Melodies in Nineteenth-Century Finland and Ingria

This study focuses on attempts to standardise Lutheran congregational singing and  liturgical melodies in nineteenth-century Finland and Ingria. The research question is how and why congregational singing was standardised both in general and in liturgical melodies in particular. The purpose of the study is to gain a deeper understanding of the philosophical, theological, political and societal background of the standardisation process as well as the interaction between congregational singing and other (music) culture. My key concepts are standardisation, congregational singing and liturgical melodies. The method of this study is a close and critical reading of sources. Rather than strictly following one particular theory, I applied many different theories and theoretical trends. My main research perspectives are local, translocal and transnational  which I use to open up the nature of dynamic contexts and to analyse different levels of the process of standardising congregational singing and liturgical melodies.  This study is based on printed and hand-written primary source materials, including  hand-written chorale books and altogether twenty-two printed collections of liturgical  melodies published in Finland and two in Ingria. The secondary source material  was applied to provide the liturgical, cultural, administrative and political context in  which these documents appeared