To define what Brahms thought of as ‘early music’ is not difficult. It was essentially the same view as that of his musical contemporaries, particularly those in the German-speaking world. For them, it ended with the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Friedrich Händel (since they thought of him as German); it began roughly in the era that we think of as the mid-Renaissance, in particular with composers who were important contributors to the development of church music. For Catholics, interest centred on the works of Palestrina and his contemporaries, extending to seventeenth-century composers in the religious tradition. For Lutherans,the history that began with Martin Luther and culminated in the works of Bach was a principal thread that included composers such as Heinrich Isaac, Ludwig Senfl, Johannes Eccard, Michael Praetorius and Heinrich Schütz.