Article Review Song, Confession, and Criminality Trial...

The first article up for review, Alexander Fisher’s â€Å"Song, Confession, and Criminality: Trial Records as Sources for Popular Musical Culture in Early Modern Europe,† is extremely thorough and detailed. After a lengthy introduction, the thesis is finally stated. His goal with this article is to gain an understanding of popular music in early-modern Europe through trial records of three cases of people being accused of anti-Catholic sentiment. He lists his methodology after this, planning to comb through their individual case files which includes documents on the interrogation questions used and other tactics that were employed (i.e. torture). Fisher then gives us his plan for the conclusion, in which he says he will offer some unifying†¦show more content†¦Fisher gives us the Fragstà ¼ck as promised and the reveals to us that Schà ¤dlin was released a day after his confession due to his honesty. Fisher then dives into analysis of both text and music to gi ve us an understanding of why this song was punishable by law and why it was popular among Schà ¤dlin’s protestant peers at the time. Fisher builds his case backwards (in my opinion) but it works beautifully. First, he gives us Psalm 124 from the Bible, which was set to music by two prominent early Protestant composers, Johann Walter and Justus Jonas. Fisher draws connections in both text and technical set up between the three to give the reader an understanding of the strong political imagery employed by Schà ¤dlin. He mentions specific changes Schà ¤dlin to draw out anger in the Church, including an implication that the Catholics â€Å"clamor for his blood† (Dr. Mà ¼ller being the subject given to us in the introduction). Fisher also highlights Schà ¤dlin’s connection between local government and ancient Roman tyranny. Fisher ends this section of his article by focusing on the link between the Justus Jonas setting of the Psalm and Schà ¤dlin’s alt ered version, citing this as a reason for its popularity among dissenting Protestants at the time and as a reason the local governments took such offense to the song. Next, Fisher moves on to The Case of Jonas Losch. He starts out with a little historical background on Losch, including the