The Ecclesial Dialogue During the Thirty Years War

Abstract To understand how some musical settings of biblical texts could gain political significance during the war, we need a broader and historically grounded view of the musical dialogue and the representation of voices in sacred music. Lutherans, along with numerous earlier Christian traditions, saw certain passages of scripture as ecclesial, that is, as referring to the Christian church as an institution. Early modern Lutheran commentators applied ecclesial readings to many parts of Hebrew scripture including Isaiah 49, Isaiah 63, and Jeremiah 31. These texts have confessional potential because Lutherans believed them to be voiced by the church lamenting her trouble or by God comforting his people or destroying his enemies. The ecclesial mode of interpretation helps explain why Lutheran composers applied dialogue techniques to this repertoire. In some cases, Lutheran composers like Stephan Otto and Andreas Hammerschmidt even created their own ecclesial dialogues by assembling different parts of scripture. Most importantly, all this sets a foundation on which Lutherans could naturally cultivate political subtexts during times of confessional unrest.