Music, Piety, and Propaganda: The Soundscapes of
Counter-Reformation Bavaria explores the nature of sound as a
powerful yet ambivalent force in the religious struggles that
permeated Germany during the Counter-Reformation. Author Alexander
J. Fisher goes beyond a musicological treatment of composers,
styles, and genres to examine how music, and more broadly sound
itself, shaped the aural landscape of Bavaria as the duchy emerged
as a militant Catholic bulwark. Fisher focuses particularly on the
ways in which sound-including bell-ringing, gunfire, and popular
song, as well as cultivated polyphony-not only was deployed by
Catholic secular and clerical elites to shape the religious
identities of Bavarian subjects, but also carried the potential to
challenge and undermine confessional boundaries. Surviving
literature, archival documents, and music illustrate the ways in
which Bavarian authorities and their allies in the Catholic clergy
and orders deployed sound to underline crucial theological
differences with their Protestant antagonists, notably the cults of
the Virgin Mary, the Eucharist, and the saints. Official and
popular rituals like divine worship, processions, and pilgrimages
all featured distinctive sounds and music that shaped and reflected
an emerging Catholic identity. Although officials imposed a severe
regime of religious surveillance, the Catholic state's dominance of
the soundscape was hardly assured. Fisher traces archival sources
that show the resilience of Protestant vernacular song in Bavaria,
the dissemination and performance of forbidden, anti-Catholic
songs, the presence of Lutheran chorales in nominally Catholic
church services into the late 16th century, and the persistence of
popular "noise" more generally. Music, Piety, and Propaganda thus
reveals historical, theological, and cultural issues of the period
through the piercing dimension of its sounds, bringing into focus
the import of sound as a strategic cultural tool with significant
impact on the flow of history.
General
Imprint: |
Oxford UniversityPress
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Series: |
New Cultural History of Music |
Release date: |
April 2022 |
Authors: |
Alexander J. Fisher
(Associate Professor of Music)
|
Dimensions: |
235 x 157 x 22mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
384 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-19-067392-5 |
Categories: |
Books >
Arts & Architecture >
Music >
General
Books >
Music >
General
|
LSN: |
0-19-067392-3 |
Barcode: |
9780190673925 |
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