Zugl.: Frankfurt (Main), Univ., Diss., 2008

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The present study deals with interconfessional exchange of oratorios in German-speaking countries during the 18th century. In doing so, it pursues the goal of focusing on the question of the denominational or non-denominational nature of the sacred music genre, a question that has so far been insufficiently discussed in musicological and literary research. It analyses selected oratorios between 1715 and 1781 which were written at important contemporary musical locations and were received interdenominationally (Hamburg, Leipzig, Brunswick, Catholic imperial court of Vienna, Catholic Saxon court at Dresden). The study comes to the conclusion that the oratorio of the 18th century was not defined solely by its denominational orientation, but influenced by a number of other factors reflecting the intellectual-historical upheavals of the Age of Enlightenment: contemporary musical aesthetics, socio-cultural developments (middle-class concert business), and fundamental religious-historical dynamics that led to a distancing from dogma and to a change in piety practice.