Baroque Piety: Religion, Society, and Music in Leipzig, 1650-1750.
Peters, Mark A.
Tanya Kevorkian. Baroque Piety: Religion, Society, and Music in
Leipzig, 1650-1750.
Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2007. xiii + 251 pp. index.
illus. bibl. $99.95. ISBN: 978-0-7546-5490-2.
A valuable contribution to Ashgate's growing catalogue of
interdisciplinary studies, Tanya Kevorkian's Baroque Piety
concurrently explores three main themes in relation to Leipzig during
the years 1650-1750: religion as public arena in which social, cultural,
and political changes were reproduced and contested; the crucial role of
music in religious culture; and the conflict between Pietists and
non-Pietists that shook the entire religious system. In addressing these
themes throughout the book, Kevorkian defends her thesis that
"religion was the arena where social and cultural change, relations
among status groups, and interactions between the authorities and the
governed were negotiated" (123). Baroque Piety is meticulously researched, drawing extensively upon archival sources in Leipzig,
Dresden, and Halle. Kevorkian's approach is also deliberately
interdisciplinary, grounded in the fields of social history of religion,
musicology, and Pietist history. She further treats themes of agency and
negotiations of power, particularly in relation to gender and to social
and economic status.
Particularly interesting are the book's first two chapters, in
which Kevorkian unveils the rich and complex tapestry of public
religious life from the perspective of the congregants. In addressing
congregants' involvement in and reception of the main Sunday
service (particularly the music and the sermon), Kevorkian demonstrates
that those attending were not passive recipients, but active agents, in
religious life. She further reveals the high value Leipzig's
residents placed on church attendance, as evidenced through patterns of
pew ownership. Pews were highly valued commodities and important objects
in the negotiation of social status. In exploring the complex
relationships revealed by pew-holding records, Kevorkian concludes that
"how people 'listened to the Word of God' depended on
their social status and gender" (73).
Chapters 3-5 address Leipzig's religious life from the
perspective of those responsible for producing it: the city council and
the clergy; the Dresden court and its consistories; and the cantors. In
exploring the roles of the city council and the clergy, Kevorkian
demonstrates not only their expectations and duties, but also how their
roles made them reliant on and accountable to congregants. She further
examines the social processes by which individuals became clerics, as
well as the everyday lives of theology students and the means by which
"future clerics became an integral part of the social and cultural
fabric of Leipzig" (78). In addition to city council members and
clerics, the other primary producers of religious culture in Leipzig
were the cantors responsible for music in the city's churches.
Kevorkian particularly explores how Johann Kuhnau (cantor 1701-22) and
J.S. Bach (cantor 1723-50) "negotiated a working enviornment rich
in opportunity as well as conflict" (123).
Kevorkian's discussion of the Dresden court and its
consistories in relation to religious life (chapter 4) is not as
convincing as the surrounding chapters. While much of the information is
valuable, the connection with Leipzig is only briefly made, and the
relation between the court's actions and larger trends in Saxony is
not clarified until the chapter's conclusion. A similar criticism
may be made of "The Pietist Alternative" (chapters 6-7): while
this section includes much fascinating information, its content does not
always clearly relate to the book's earlier chapters. However,
taken within the context of the entire volume, these three chapters do
serve to broaden our understanding of the many facets of religion in
Leipzig.
In the book's final chapter, Kevorkian considers how the
various agents in Leipzig's religious culture--congregants, council
members, clerics, the court, consistories, cantors, and
Pietists--interacted during a period of rapid social and economic change
in the early eighteenth century. She particularly explores the various
contributions of, and negotiations among, these groups in relation to
changes in public religious life, notably through the opening of new
churches and the major construction projects related to them.
Baroque Piety provides new insight into how we consider the
religious arena in early modern Europe. By examining 100 years of
Leipzig's history, Kevorkian demonstrates the complexity of
religious life during this time and requires us to think about religion
in the early modern period in a new way: as one of the primary venues in
which social interactions and negotiations took place.
MARK A. PETERS
Trinity Christian College
