Konrad Ameln

Konrad Ameln (Neuss, 1899 – Lüdenscheid, 1994) was a German musicologist and choral conductor whose work spanned university teaching, the editing of musical texts and research into the Protestant hymnal. His name is associated above all with the revival of religious music in the Lutheran tradition and with the promotion of choral practice in twentieth-century Germany.

He trained in musicology under Ludwig at the University of Göttingen between 1919 and 1921, and then continued his studies under Gurlitt in Freiburg, where he earned his doctorate in 1924 with a dissertation on the melodies of the hymns «Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen» and «Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh' darein». Between 1924 and 1926 he taught at the Bauernhochschule (farmers' college) in Rendsburg and at the Volkshochschule (adult education college) in Kassel. He then worked as musical adviser to the Central Librarians' Office in Leipzig (1926–1928) and taught Protestant church music at the University of Münster from 1930 to 1939. After the war he taught at the church music schools in Hanover (1947–1948) and in the Rhineland (1949–1957).

In the early 1920s he began a career as a conductor of choirs and orchestras and as a leader of choral courses. His aim was to perform early music authentically, a goal he pursued alongside an extensive editorial output. He edited the journal Die Singgemeinde, of the Finkenstein League, from 1925 to 1933. In 1935 he founded the Lüdenscheider Musikvereinigung, which he led until 1973, and in 1938 he launched the Kleine Musikfeste (Little Music Festivals) of Lüdenscheid.

His most significant writings on church music are the Handbuch der deutschen evangelischen Kirchenmusik, which he co-edited with C. Mahrenholz and others, and his studies in hymnology, published mainly from 1935 onwards in the Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie, of which he was editor. He also produced numerous facsimile editions of sacred songs and hymnals. In 1959 he founded the Internationale Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Hymnologie and was co-editor of Das deutsche Kirchenlied, an interdenominational critical edition of hymn melodies. He also wrote extensively on Bach, Handel and Leonhard Lechner, and in his later years continued preparing a cumulative bibliography of hymnology.

His legacy centres on the study of hymns and Lutheran music, as well as on the critical edition of sources. His work on Lechner and on the history of the Reformation hymn remains a point of reference for researchers in that tradition.