Janette Tilley (New York)

Piety and the Feminine Voice in Song of Songs Settings of Early Modern Germany

In 1627 Martin Opitz published a German poetic translation of the Song of Songs, applying his newly formulated rules of vernacular prosody to the biblical text. The book appears to have struck a chord, for it inspired a short-lived but intense period of artistic fascination with the Song of Songs among Lutherans, including other complete poetic renderings by Filip von Zesen (1657), Johann Michael Dilherr with Georp Philip Harsdörffer (1640, expanded 1651), musical settings of Opitz by Heinrich Schütz, Andreas Hammerschmidt (1645), and Johann Erasmus Kindermann (1642), and of Zesen by Johann Philip Krieger, Johann Schop, and Peter Meier (1657). The text rather rapidly, though, appears to fall out of favour among composers and this project traces the arc of interest in the Song of Songs among German composers from the first decade of the seventeenth century to the cantatas of J. S. Bach, exploring shifting interpretations of the book and exposing attitudes and stereotypes which the colourful and erotic language of the book elicits. In particular, this project examines the role of the female voice in expressing pious desire and modeling marital virtues.