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Alexander J Fisher

University of British Columbia, School Of Music, Faculty Member

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I am Professor of Music in the School of Music at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. I specialize in music, sound, and religious culture in early modern Europe, teach courses in early music, and coordinate the university's Early Music Ensemble. My homepage is http://alexanderjohnfisher.weebly.com.

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Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya

Kansas State University

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University of the Basque Country, Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea

University of Liverpool

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Books by Alexander J Fisher

Music, Piety, and Propaganda: The Soundscapes of Counter-Reformation Bavaria

Music and Religious Identity in Counter-Reformation Augsburg, 1580-1630

Editions by Alexander J Fisher

Anton Holzner, Viretum pierium (Munich: Nikolaus Heinrich, 1621)

Rudolph di Lasso, Virginalia Eucharistica (Munich: Nikolaus Heinrich, 1615)

Articles by Alexander J Fisher

Hearing the Trumpets of the Church Militant: Weather Bells and Supernatural Audition in Post-Reformation Germany

Sixteenth Century Journal, 2022

In the charged religious context of post-Reformation Germany, the power of consecrated bells to d... more In the charged religious context of post-Reformation Germany, the power of consecrated bells to disperse thunderstorms became the object of spirited debate. Were bell sounds heard by terrestrial auditors alone, or by supernatural auditors like demons and witches who were traditionally accorded the ability to generate storms? Catholics and Protestants alike inherited medieval notions of demonic agency in the atmosphere, but they differed on the appropriate remedy. Protestant critics ridiculed the consecration of bells as a corruption of baptism and rejected their sonic agency as a violation of God’s providence, retaining weather bells as a compulsion to the collective prayer that alone could assuage God’s wrath. Defenders of Catholic practice, however, rehearsed medieval arguments for bell apotropaism and continued to insist on their efficacy against storms, appealing variously to their consecration or to the prayer they compelled. If published Catholic opinion shifted markedly against apotropaic sound in the Enlightenment, local populations continued to hear weather bells in traditional ways, and to posit bells as powerful deterrents against demonic listeners.

Information: A Historical Companion, edited by Ann Blair, Paul Duguid, Anja-Silva Goeing, and Anthony Grafton (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 2021

Reworking the Confessional Soundscape in the German Counter-Reformation

Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis, 2014

DRAFT ONLY

Music and the Jesuit "Way of Proceeding" in the German Counter-Reformation

Journal of Jesuit Studies, 2016

Jonas Losch and Musical Culture in Late Sixteenth-Century Augsburg

Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereins für Schwaben, 2017

Thesaurus Litaniarum: The Symbolism and Practice of Musical Litanies in Counter-Reformation Germany

Celestial Sirens and Nightingales: Change and Assimilation in the Munich Anthologies of Georg Victorinus

Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, 2008

Per mia particolare devotione: Orlando di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro and Jesuit Spirituality in Counter-Reformation Munich

Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 2007

Song, Confession, and Criminality: Trial Records as Sources for Popular Musical Culture in Early Modern Europe

Paul Hindemith, Gottfried Benn, and the Defense of the Autonomy of Art in the Late Weimar Republic

Essays by Alexander J Fisher

Die Teutsche Nation: Musical Links between the Habsburg Courts and the German States of the Empire

A Companion to Music at the Habsburg Courts in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, edited by Andrew W. Weaver (Leiden: Brill), 2020

A Companion to Late Medieval and Early Modern Augsburg, 2020

Musicalische Friedens-Freud: the Westphalian Peace and Music in Protestant Nuremberg

Rethinking Europe: War and Peace in the Early Modern German Lands, 2019

Lectiones sacrae: Musik um 1600 in Würzburg

Julius Echter, Patron der Künste. Konturen eines Fürsten und Bischofs der Renaissance, 2017

‘Mit singen und klingen’: Urban Processional Culture and the Soundscapes of Post-Reformation Germany

Listening to Early Modern Catholicism: Perspectives from Musicology, 2017

A Musical Dialogue in Bronze: Gregor Aichinger's Lacrumae (1604) and Hans Reichle's Crucifixion Group for the Basilica of SS. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg

Visual Acuity and the Arts of Communication in Early Modern Germany, 2014

Music, Piety, and Propaganda: The Soundscapes of Counter-Reformation Bavaria

Music and Religious Identity in Counter-Reformation Augsburg, 1580-1630

Anton Holzner, Viretum pierium (Munich: Nikolaus Heinrich, 1621)

Rudolph di Lasso, Virginalia Eucharistica (Munich: Nikolaus Heinrich, 1615)

Hearing the Trumpets of the Church Militant: Weather Bells and Supernatural Audition in Post-Reformation Germany

Sixteenth Century Journal, 2022

In the charged religious context of post-Reformation Germany, the power of consecrated bells to d... more In the charged religious context of post-Reformation Germany, the power of consecrated bells to disperse thunderstorms became the object of spirited debate. Were bell sounds heard by terrestrial auditors alone, or by supernatural auditors like demons and witches who were traditionally accorded the ability to generate storms? Catholics and Protestants alike inherited medieval notions of demonic agency in the atmosphere, but they differed on the appropriate remedy. Protestant critics ridiculed the consecration of bells as a corruption of baptism and rejected their sonic agency as a violation of God’s providence, retaining weather bells as a compulsion to the collective prayer that alone could assuage God’s wrath. Defenders of Catholic practice, however, rehearsed medieval arguments for bell apotropaism and continued to insist on their efficacy against storms, appealing variously to their consecration or to the prayer they compelled. If published Catholic opinion shifted markedly against apotropaic sound in the Enlightenment, local populations continued to hear weather bells in traditional ways, and to posit bells as powerful deterrents against demonic listeners.

Information: A Historical Companion, edited by Ann Blair, Paul Duguid, Anja-Silva Goeing, and Anthony Grafton (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 2021

Reworking the Confessional Soundscape in the German Counter-Reformation

Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis, 2014

DRAFT ONLY

Music and the Jesuit "Way of Proceeding" in the German Counter-Reformation

Journal of Jesuit Studies, 2016

Jonas Losch and Musical Culture in Late Sixteenth-Century Augsburg

Zeitschrift des Historischen Vereins für Schwaben, 2017

Thesaurus Litaniarum: The Symbolism and Practice of Musical Litanies in Counter-Reformation Germany

Celestial Sirens and Nightingales: Change and Assimilation in the Munich Anthologies of Georg Victorinus

Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, 2008

Per mia particolare devotione: Orlando di Lasso’s Lagrime di San Pietro and Jesuit Spirituality in Counter-Reformation Munich

Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 2007

Song, Confession, and Criminality: Trial Records as Sources for Popular Musical Culture in Early Modern Europe

Paul Hindemith, Gottfried Benn, and the Defense of the Autonomy of Art in the Late Weimar Republic

Die Teutsche Nation: Musical Links between the Habsburg Courts and the German States of the Empire

A Companion to Music at the Habsburg Courts in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, edited by Andrew W. Weaver (Leiden: Brill), 2020

A Companion to Late Medieval and Early Modern Augsburg, 2020

Musicalische Friedens-Freud: the Westphalian Peace and Music in Protestant Nuremberg

Rethinking Europe: War and Peace in the Early Modern German Lands, 2019

Lectiones sacrae: Musik um 1600 in Würzburg

Julius Echter, Patron der Künste. Konturen eines Fürsten und Bischofs der Renaissance, 2017

‘Mit singen und klingen’: Urban Processional Culture and the Soundscapes of Post-Reformation Germany

Listening to Early Modern Catholicism: Perspectives from Musicology, 2017

A Musical Dialogue in Bronze: Gregor Aichinger's Lacrumae (1604) and Hans Reichle's Crucifixion Group for the Basilica of SS. Ulrich and Afra in Augsburg

Visual Acuity and the Arts of Communication in Early Modern Germany, 2014

The Sounds of Eucharistic Culture

A Companion to the Eucharist in the Reformation, 2014

In the age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the Eucharist-the de nition and signi cance of... more In the age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the Eucharist-the de nition and signi cance of which was so contested among the confessional churches-lay at the center of a sensuous nexus of sight, touch, and taste. The representation of the Eucharist in sound proliferated in contexts of both liturgy and devotion. Sound was and is an evanescent, yet powerful medium for the articulation of religious ideas and the very production of sacred space itself. In Catholic regions, music and sound not only aurally decorated the eucharistic ritual itself, but they were also deployed as a means of representing the triumph of eucharistic ideology over its confessional antagonists. Musical elaboration of the eucharistic ritual existed as well in the Lutheran and Reformed faiths, although its altered role and signi cance led to a less distinctive role for eucharistic music.

Themes of Exile and (Re-)Enclosure in Music for the Franciscan Convents of Counter-Reformation Munich during the Thirty Years War

Enduring Loss in Early Modern Germany: Cross Disciplinary Perspectives, 2010

Alls wie mann inn krieg pflegt zue thuen: Music and Catholic Processions in Counter-Reformation Augsburg

City Limits: Perspectives on the Historical European City, 2010

Combinatorial Modeling in the Chorus Movement of Cantata 24, Ein ungefärbt Gemüte

About Bach, 2008

Music and Religious Change

Reform and Expansion, 1500–1660 (The Cambridge History of Christianity, vol. 6), 2007

New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2011

Fugger [family of bankers and music patrons]

Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2d ed., 2002

Salminger, Sigmund

Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2d ed., 2005

Narratives of Middle Eastern Music History

Andrew Weaver, Sacred Music as Public Image for Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III: Representing the Counter-Reformation Monarch at the End of the Thirty Years' War

Richard Wetzel and Erika Heitmeyer, Johann Leisentrit's Geistliche Lieder und Psalmen, 1567: Hymnody of the Counter-Reformation in Germany

In the end, it is not Michelangelo but one of his followers, Gaspar Beccera, who may have supplie... more In the end, it is not Michelangelo but one of his followers, Gaspar Beccera, who may have supplied drawings to the printmaker. Dillon's method for making the attribution is circuitous and might be called circumstantial. Beccera is a Spanish artist who supplied drawings to Beatrizet for Juan Valverde's anatomical book. At least one of the figures who is being disemboweled recalls some of those anatomical illustrations. The patron of the broadsheet is the Spanish Cardinal Juan Álvarez, who was also the patron of Valverde's book. Dillon goes on to argue that the "actual recipient" of the broadsheet is Philip II, king of Spain and husband to Queen Mary of England. These Spanish connections are more convincing than the suggestion that Michelangelo was involved in the design. Whether or not Beccera saw Michelangelo's drawings, it is difficult to believe that Michelangelo's ideas about sola fide were transmitted through the broadsheet, especially since (as Dillon strongly argues) Michelangelo hid his beliefs from others.

Mattias Lundberg, Tonus peregrinus: the history of a psalm-tone and its use in polyphonic music

We encourage you to use Adobe's editing tools (please see the next page for instructions). If thi... more We encourage you to use Adobe's editing tools (please see the next page for instructions). If this is not possible, please (i) print out the proof, mark your corrections clearly in black ink, and fax it to +44 (0)1865 355764 (or scan it and email it to [email protected]) or (ii) send a list of corrections (in an email or Word attachment) listing each change in the following manner: line number, current text, change to be made. Please do not send corrections as track changed Word documents.

Mary Frandsen, Crossing Confessional Boundaries: The Patronage of Italian Sacred Music in Seventeenth-Century Dresden

Tanya Kevorkian, Baroque Piety: Religion, Society, and Music in Leipzig, 1650-1750

Theodor Göllner and Bernold Schmid, eds., Die Münchner Hofkapelle des 16. Jahrhunderts im europäischen Kontext

James Haar, ed., European Music, 1520–1640

Heinrich Schütz, Cantiones sacrae (1625), ed. Heide Volckmar-Waschk (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2004); and Symphoniae sacrae III (1650), ed. Werner Breig (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2002)

Juan José Carreras and Bernardo García García, eds., The Royal Chapel in the Time of the Habsburgs: Music and Court Ceremony in Early Modern Europe, English version ed. Tess Knighton, trans. Yolanda Acker

Flores Jessaei (1606); Florum Jessaeorum (1607), and: Flosculus vernalis (1621), and: Harmonia concertans (1623) (review)

Notes, 2005

Gabrijel Plavec [Gabriel Plautzius], Flosculus vernalis (1621), ed. Tomaž Faganel; Daniel Lagkhner, Flores Jessaei (1606), Florum Jessaeorum (1607), ed. Jože Sivec; and Isaac Posch, Harmonia concertans (1623), ed. Methoda Kokole