Publication and the Anxiety of Judgement in German Musical Life of the Seventeenth Century

Abstract

Much music published in Germany during the seventeenth century contained prefaces expressing anxiety about critical or hostile readers. Often such anxiety was a rhetorical conceit intended to gain patronal support. But it may also have been legitimately aroused by the practice of judging composers from their publications. The recipients of presentation copies often had them reviewed before granting a monetary reward. Professional musicians also subjected the published works of colleagues to stern scrutiny, as seen in the critiques that Heinrich Albert, Philipp Friedrich Böddecker, and Samuel Capricornus made of printed pieces. Such hostile criticism could stem from professional jealousy, and it also reflected uncertainty about what made a good composition in an era of rapid stylistic change.

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