The quincentennial of the Reformation, celebrated in 2017, provided the impetus for fresh insights into its rich theological and cultural heritage and, of course, the pronouncements and legacies of Martin Luther himself. This new volume originated in a 2017 conference organized by Uppsala University, and it contributes to the discourse a thought-provoking set of essays covering several centuries. Straddling the interdisciplinary line between theology, music, and social history, these essays reflect Luther's own high regard for music and for its power to support and enhance religious experience in individuals and in the Protestant community.

Subtitled Ideals and Practices, the volume represents an engagement with a range of aesthetic viewpoints—both from Luther himself and from the later reinterpretation of his ideas—and considers how these viewpoints resonate in a small selection of musical repertoires. The introduction by the three editors draws particular attention to recent (non-musical) studies in confessional culture, particularly Thomas Kaufmann's scholarship and Bridget Heal's A Magnificent Faith: Art and Identity in Lutheran Germany (2017). The editors situate this volume as a musical parallel to Heal's work, aspiring to a discourse demonstrating “the interaction between theological precepts and the manifold social and cultural practices that constitute musical life within Lutheran churches and societies” (9). Given the range of ways in which Luther's theological and musical views have motivated theoretical and creative thought between the Reformation and the present day, it is understandable that this book does not establish a clear or even narrative but rather presents a range of interesting case studies (organized chronologically) that show the scope of such ideas across history.

Luther's own writings on music as a powerfully human and individualistic art provide a natural starting point for the volume, with Dietrich Korsch discussing Luther's preface to Georg Rhau's Symphoniae iucundae (1538) and Eyolf Østrem contextualizing Luther's views through those of select contemporaries. Looking to the Lutheran influence on musical practice, Robin A. Leaver unravels the relationships between clergy, choir, and congregational singing in Wittenberg, while the Reformation's economic impact is considered by Grantley McDonald, who connects reductions in polyphonic singing to the loss of income from indulgences. Psalm motets by Johann Reusch (1551) give Maria Schildt an opportunity to track surviving copies across confessional networks and boundaries to Mainz, Stockholm, and Uppsala.

Moving to the early eighteenth century, Joyce L. Irwin's chapter considers how Johann Mattheson amplified the joy that Luther held for music. Connections between theology and the music of J. S. Bach provide the impetus for Ruth Tatlow's discussion of 1:1 proportions in Bach's compositions and Pieter Dirken's connection of the fuga contraria with Bach's growing historical awareness. A view from outside of Germany is presented in Mattias Lundberg's rich study of Swedish Lutheran doctrine, in which the defending of music supported the formation of confessional identities. The volume ends with a small selection of studies bringing music and Lutheran thought to the present: Michaela G. Grochulski views Mendelssohn's Hymn of Praise through the lens of Lutheran psalmody; Jonas Lundblad navigates the precarious line between Lutheran theology, National Socialist politics, and musical modernism in the writings of Oskar Söhngen; and Chiara Bertoglio reconsiders the points of contact between Catholic and Protestant music-making through the framing of the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999). The volume is wrapped up with a brief afterword by John Butt and translations of some key sixteenth-century texts.

The quality of the chapters is generally high, with the majority engaging intently with primary source materials and recent research. Some of the authors do replicate research that they have already published elsewhere. Grochulski draws on her German-language article on the topic, questionably referring the reader back to the previous article for evidence of her thesis (223). Tatlow's chapter reiterates research from Bach's Numbers: Compositional Proportion and Significance (2015), with exactly half of the citations referring back to it; given that Bach's Numbers received a mixed reception from reviewers, questions about her methodology and conclusions naturally carry over to this chapter too. Nevertheless, this is a volume packed with interest for scholars of the intersection between theology and music, with an engaging range of topics and time periods and an interdisciplinary breadth of inquiry.