Music, Piety, and Propaganda

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 sound shaped the aural landscape of Bavaria as the duchy emerged as a militant Catholic bulwark. Fisher focuses particularly on the ways in which sound 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.