Although the Baroque period represents the "Golden Age" of Lutheran church music, scholarly attention to the repertoire of this era has been uneven. Two of the great heroes of the age, Schütz and Bach, dominate either end of the period, but a tacit assumption exists, perpetuated by the conspicuous absence of this repertoire in scholarly discourse and music history texts, that those who flourished in the interim -- the Buxtehude generation -- were for the most part forgettable. Much of their music still lies unedited in libraries, little of it has been recorded, and no comprehensive study of the repertoire exists. Granted, some real barriers to performance have worked to keep many of these compositions off concert programs, particularly the level of virtuosity demanded by many of the vocal and instrumental parts. But does this alone account for the neglect of the repertoire? Or have we judged it against a definition of greatness that cannot accommodate many of its defining characteristics? Whatever its true causes, this neglect has left us with only a partial understanding of the period as a whole, and has undermined our attempts to fully contextualize the music of the giants as well.

When the repertoire of this middle generation is approached with traditional analytical methods, it often fares poorly, for musical aspects that have traditionally engaged scholars have ceded place to those that offer little to "tear apart." Counterpoint no longer dominates these musical structures, which depend on more transparent melody and accompaniment textures. The tonal language, now crypto-tonal rather than quasi-modal, has lost the "spice" of Schützian harmony, but does not yet approach the chromatic richness of Bach. And the musical rhetoric of the Schütz generation has also been supplanted by a new conception of affect.

But the differences that we perceive in this repertoire are not solely musical. Around mid century, the essential nature of German sacred music began to change, in response to a new consciousness of the personal in devotional life. While the repertoire of the earlier half of the century -- the era of the 30 Year's War -- attempted to reassure a ravaged population of God's power through a 'monumentality' of message, the latter half of the century exchanged this monumentality for a quality of quiet intimacy. These changes are most evident in the adoption of a new style of text, often extra-scriptural and poetic in nature, that came out of Italy, and which focused on the piety of the individual rather than the traditional "community of believers." As a result, the later repertoire is dominated by texts that probe the speaker's (and thus the listener's) personal relationship with God. In their musical response to these texts, composers reach for a similar degree of intimacy, and project the "voice" of the individual believer through the voice of a soloist. Thus "preaching in music" largely disappears, and the use of vocal counterpoint -- the musical analogue of the "community" -- becomes less prominent, losing place to simple, lyrical melodies that capture the sensibility of the text.

In this paper, I will locate the origins of this repertorial "problem" in the nature of the musical responses to the new spirituality of the era, and will demonstrate how these often conflict with our notion of "greatness" in music -- the power to elicit intense intellectual and emotional responses from the auditor. Such a view fails to take into account the changes in the nature of public and private spiritual life that occurred over the course of the seventeenth century, and that fostered a movement toward quiet introspection in sacred music. If we attempt to view the music of Buxtehude, Pohle, Geist, Bernhard, and their contemporaries through the lens of either Schütz or Bach, we will always encounter disappointment, for they do not share the same musical agenda. Thus it is essential that we establish the religious and cultural context of this music, in order to better understand the forces that animate it.