Music, Piety, and Propaganda represents a bold step forward in writing a regional history of music that deploys methods used by musicologists and ethnomusicologists alike. It is a study that examines repertories holistically and places them within a particular space, be it enclosed or open. As such, one will find discussions of German lieder, Lutheran chorales, madrigals, magnificats, masses, motets, and psalms as they were performed in the enclosed architectural spaces of a cathedral, a parish or collegiate church, a court chapel, or in a house, whether monastic or domestic. On the other hand, Fischer also takes into account the types of music that were heard in the open-air spaces of a city, where processionals were held, or in the countryside, where pilgrimages took place. Fisher’s holistic approach is also evident in the way that he defines his Bavarian soundscape, which is not limited to discussions of music by composers with surnames like Lasso, but also by little-known ones like Johannes Khuen. Indeed, Fisher’s approach is actually not limited to what many of us, as musicologists, would even call music. Numerous passages in the book are devoted to the sounds of bells ringing, muskets firing, cannons blasting, congregations shouting, or even dogs howling. All of these sounds, whether we classify them as polyphony, monophony, homophony, or simply just noise, help the author capture the ways in which music and sound reinforced Bavaria’s identity as a militant Catholic bulwark in the wake of the Counter-Reformation.

The book opens with a wonderful account of a Lutheran demonstration that seriously disrupted the celebration of a Mass held at the Augustinian church in Munich on the Sunday morning of 19 June 1558. Fisher writes up the account, which was first transcribed and analyzed by Friedrich Roth back in 1900, in a way that can only be described as cinematic. “A ragtag group of about a dozen men … were back, and had taken up positions around the pulpit … Benedictine father Wolfgang Seidl … trying to silence the impromptu choir with angry gestures, without avail” (1). A few weeks before the June 19th incident, there was another spectacle in Munich, this one, however, not a protest, but a great procession of Catholic propaganda. It was the celebration for the feast of Corpus Christi. And here again, Fisher engages all of our five senses as he brings to life a spectacular outdoor event announcing “the triumph of the Eucharist, the real presence of the flesh and blood of Christ that was so central to Catholic belief” (2). From this moment on, however, the tone of the book changes dramatically as Fisher moves from writing in the style of a Hollywood screenplay to a full-blown academic publication.

After providing us with an exhaustive historical account of the meanings of “soundscape,” “sound,” “space,” and “place” in the secondary literature, Fisher take us to a subchapter entitled “Identity, Discipline, and Confessionalization” (13–17). I must confess that I had a hard time understanding the meaning of the word confessionalization as described by Fisher, if only because I encountered many sentences that sounded like they were originally written in German: “The aural shaping of space was a key dimension of confessionalization, which in turn implicates the formation of religious identity and the imposition of religious and social discipline” (13). Sentences like this, of which there are unfortunately many in the book, should have been caught by Oxford’s editors, if only because Fisher’s study is a valuable one. He shows that by the early seventeenth century, traditional polyphony for both liturgical and paraliturgical purposes was on its way out and being supplemented by more fashionable genres underscoring the meaning of a text, like the Venetian polychorus or by sacred concerti. As we walk with Fisher through the streets of both cities and villages in Bavaria, we learn many things: what were the songs of pilgrimage, of procession, of devotion, and how where they performed and by whom? What types of music were heard in the homes of the devout Catholics and devout Protestants? And how distinctly different was their music, their sound, their space, and their devotion?

Since this book is essentially a study in musical anthropology, where few works by important composers are discussed or outlines of significant repertories traced, I suspect that it will not be to everyone’s taste. Yet given the enormous amount of archival documentation resident in the book and in its wonderful website companion, I’m sure many diners at Fisher’s table, whether they are scholars of Bavarian history, Reformation history, or music history, will not walk away feeling hungry.