‘Music and confession in Heidelberg, 1556–1618’
Matthew Laube, Royal Holloway, University of London
matthew.laube.2009@live.rhul.ac.uk
This thesis examines the close relationship of music and religion in the city of Heidelberg in
the turbulent period between its first fervent Lutheran reforms (1556) and the start of the
Thirty Years’ War (1618). Examining the theory of confessionalisation in relation to music,
my PhD challenges the theory’s central premiss that, in the process of building unified states
and using social discipline to enhance secular power, ‘the three great confessions –
Catholicism, Lutheranism and Calvinism – developed into internally coherent and
externally exclusive communities distinct in institutions, membership and belief’.i By
Electoral decree, Heidelberg’s parish churches, university, schools and Electoral court
violently oscillated four times between Lutheran and Reformed (Calvinist) confessions
between 1556 and 1618. Although each change caused confessional tension throughout the
city, Heidelberg’s musical spheres showed continuities as much as discontinuities both
within learned circles and on the popular level. Music offers a useful scholarly lens on
confessionalisation, not only because it was performed in sacred and secular contexts, but
also because music’s aural and textual qualities enabled a greater permeation of society than
other communicatory or devotional media such as Bibles, catechisms and visual art.
My thesis consists of an introduction and four chapters:
 ‘Hymns and hymnbooks’, examining the printing, circulation and uses of hymns
and hymnbooks as tools of confessionalisation. The analysis of official printed
hymnbooks alongside manuscript hymns and hymnbooks reveals that Lutheran
and Calvinist hymn cultures were never fully distinct, but drew on common
origins and complementary aims of vernacular singing.
 ‘Music and cultural exchange’, investigating how Heidelberg’s musical culture
was influenced by the large number of foreign visitors to the city. Not only was
Heidelberg’s print culture marketing foreign music, but the inflow of university
students, refugees and court visitors created a more diverse musical culture than
heretofore observed.
 ‘Music and education’, considering how strategies and goals of music education
were shared by Lutherans and Calvinists. The career paths of two former
Heidelberg university students who became professional musicians are traced as
micro-historical case studies of how confessional lines were negotiated and
transgressed.
 ‘Music and courtly festivities’, exploring how the desire for musical splendour
commensurate to princely status was achieved in light of not only confessional
tensions but also music’s ephemeral nature. Extant commemorative books reveal
that strategies for musical splendour were regulated by imperial expectations and
also local traditions.
This thesis brings together hitherto unknown archival material and numerous printed
sources with theories of cultural history, material culture and cultural exchange to challenge
misunderstandings about Reformed musical culture, to show the extensive overlapping of
Reformed and Lutheran musical cultures, and to explore the relationship of confessionalised
music to pre-Reformation religious and political networks.
Heinz Schilling, ‘Confessional Europe’, in Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: Late Middle Ages,
Renaissance and Reformation, Volume 2, ed. Thomas A. Brady et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 641.
i