Musical Authorship from Schutz to Bach

Aimed at students and researchers of music history, publishing history and cultural history, this study illuminates ideas of creativity and individuality in the seventeenth century. Its interdisciplinary approach shows how notions of the musical author were defined via the making, ownership, performance and reception of music.

What did the term ''author'' denote for Lutheran musicians in the generations between Heinrich Schütz and Johann Sebastian Bach? As part of the Musical Performance and Reception series, this book examines attitudes to authorship as revealed in the production, performance and reception of music in seventeenth-century German lands. Analysing a wide array of archival, musical, philosophical and theological texts, this study illuminates notions of creativity in the period and the ways in which individuality was projected and detected in printed and manuscript music. Its investigation of musical ownership and regulation shows how composers appealed to princely authority to protect their publications, and how town councils sought to control the compositional efforts of their church musicians. Interpreting authorship as a dialogue between authority and individuality, this book uses an interdisciplinary approach to explore changing attitudes to the self in the era between Schütz and Bach.