Sontägliche Evangelien

Thomas Elsbeth's Sontägliche Evangelien (1616 and 1621), a collection of sixty motet settings of the gospel lessons for every Sunday and major feast day of the liturgical year, was one of the five most prominent gospel motet cycles in use in Germany during the first half of the seventeenth century. His particular treatment of the gospel texts resulted in an unusually versatile collection of motets—they were equally appropriate for liturgical, didactic, and devotional use. Because Elsbeth selected the most comforting passages from the gospels, his publication is not merely a liturgical cycle, but a unique hybridization of the traditional verbatim gospel setting and the devotional trostreiche Spruchmotette (a motet that expressed comfort to the believer). In short, the Sontägliche Evangelien is a collection of devotional motets organized around the liturgical calendar.