Christopher Boyd Brown: Harmonious Monk

Dr. Christopher Boyd Brown and UMBC’s Camerata and Collegium Musicum will present an interdisciplinary concert-lecture commemorating the 500-year anniversary of Martin Luther’s contribution to the Reformation (October 1517 – October 2017). Christopher Boyd Brown will discuss Martin Luther’s use of music and the community practice of hymn-singing in the Protestant Reformation. Luther harnessed the power of music to deliver devotional texts in the vernacular and to bring communities together in worship. UMBC students in the Camerata and Collegium Musicum will provide live musical examples of plainchant, Reformation hymns, and multi-part choral works by Walter and Bach. They will perform examples of pre-existing music Luther altered for his own purposes, music newly composed for Protestant communities, and music written after Lutheranism was long established.

Christopher Boyd Brown is a recognized scholar of Martin Luther and Reformation music. He has published Singing the Gospel: Lutheran Hymns and the Success of the Reformation (Harvard University Press, 2005), and several studies on the role of midwives in early modern Lutheranism. His translations of Luther and early modern Lutheran theological texts can be found here.

Sponsored by the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Program, the Department of Music, the Dresher Center for the Humanities, and the Religious Studies Program.