Derek L Stauff

This chapter sets out the book’s major focus, issues, and challenges. Concentrating on Electoral Saxony during the 1620s and 1630s allows us to treat a well-documented but previously neglected period when intense religious tension divided the main warring parties. Although most Lutheran sacred music from this era is now divorced from its original contexts, a layer of political and confessional significance can often be restored by adopting a two-pronged approach: first, starting with the music by itself, investigating its scriptural texts, showing how Lutheran writers of the era interpreted these texts in ways that could become political, and asking whether the composers themselves helped to encourage similar interpretations; and second, the view from outside, that is, examining the music’s larger historical setting, where it was performed or published, and how this context shaped the music’s meaning. The results work to show the meaning of specific pieces and collections of Lutheran music, which frequently resonated on multiple levels within a single performance, simultaneously addressing Imperial and local politics. Yet, against a strong theory of confessionalization, which might see this repertoire as an agent dividing Lutherans from rivals, this book’s findings rather support the more modest idea that listeners were at least positioned to recognize the political and confessional significance in this music, even if we can never measure its direct effects on their political thinking and action.

At key points in the liturgical year, early modern Lutheran worshipers heard confessional polemics and warnings about persecution, past and present. Lutherans of Bach’s age worried about persecution from rival confessions. Although Luther’s Reformation had met with early successes, by 1600 Catholic Reform had begun to reverse many Protestant gains in central Europe. Persecution against Protestants, as Thomas A. Brady Jr. has noted, “became far more systematic and purposeful among the Catholics,” in part because Catholics had a uniform program of reform and the advantages of better political and ecclesiastical organization.¹ Even during Bach’s lifetime, Lutherans still feared that their