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Until recently, research into the relationship between Johann Sebastian Bach and Lutheranism was dominated by theological interpretations of his music. Scholars including Eric Chafe, Robin Leaver and Renate Steiger have argued that Bach was no 'mere musician' but was also steeped in Lutheran theology. Accordingly, they have interpreted Bach's vocal and instrumental output as being rich in symbols of Lutheran doctrine. Yet such studies are undermined by the impossibility of knowing exactly what Bach believed and the difficulty of attaching theological meanings to compositional features in his music such as tonal relationships or melodic motives.
Tanya Kevorkian offers a radically new approach, viewing Bach's Lutheran milieu in Leipzig through the eyes of a social historian. Her book interprets religion as a 'public arena' in which 'social, cultural, and political changes were reproduced and contested' (1). Borrowing Pierre Bourdieu's notion of 'fields', she regards religious life as a sphere of cultural production in which individuals competed to gain dominance (5). Drawing on her extensive research in the Leipzig archives, she traces the negotiations between the city's pastors, councillors and musicians that shaped the contents of church worship. She also reconstructs the varied ways in which members of the congregation experienced church services, especially elements such as the cantata and the sermon. Music forms only one strand of Kevorkian's interdisciplinary study, yet by considering Bach's work within the religious life of Leipzig, she offers a model of how music can be integrated within social history.
Besides her use of Bourdieu, Kevorkian's study tacitly draws inspiration from the work of French cultural theorists such as Michel de Certeau on the 'practices of everyday life'. Indeed, Part...