Sounds and Silences: Reflections on Music, Sound, and the Phenomenology of Space in the Confessional Borderlands of the Holy Roman Empire

The present paper offers some observations on the study of urban soundscapes in post-Reformation Germany, where confessional divisions created competing notions of sacral space. To some degree the study of historical soundscapes is a phenomenological exercise, as we try to reconstruct sensory worlds and “hear” long-vanished sound. In doing so we begin to understand the ways in which the perception of sensory media, including music and sound, actively shaped notions of space, which could be defined as sacred, confessional (Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist), or secular, and in turn shaped identities and behaviors, religious and otherwise. Beginning with some methodological reflections on the study of sound, space, and sensory histories, this paper will briefly touch on three specific research areas of great relevance to post-Reformation urban soundscapes along the Empire’s confessional boundaries: spaces of worship; processional culture; and the sounds of the “public” sphere including bells, vernacular song, and the popular “noise” that officials increasingly targeted for regulation. Sound and music were often deployed—with great effect—to enforce notions of confessional space, but the mobile, complex, and ephemeral nature of the resulting space highlights sound’s ambivalence as a medium. This paper will draw on recently-examined archival and musical sources from the confessional borderlands of central and southern Germany.

Alexander J. Fisher is Professor of Music at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, where he teaches courses in music history from the Medieval through Baroque eras and directs the university’s Early Music Ensemble. His research focuses on music, soundscapes, and religious culture in early modern Germany. He is the author of Music and Religious Identity in Counter-Reformation Augsburg, 1580–1630, published by Ashgate Press in 2004, and of Music, Piety, and Propaganda: The Soundscapes of Counter-Reformation Bavaria, published by Oxford University Press in 2014.