Martin Luther, the Protestant Reformer, had strong opinions about music and wasn’t afraid to express them. In an introduction to a sixteenth-century collection of chorale motets, he wrote that anyone who didn’t appreciate the beauty of these multipart pieces and view them as a gift from God “must be a clodhopper indeed and does not deserve to be called a human being; he should be permitted to hear nothing but the braying of asses and the grunting of hogs.”1
