Mystical Love in the German Baroque

This book identifies the cultural and devotional conventions underlying expressions of mystical love in poetry and music of the German baroque. It sheds new light on the seemingly erotic overtones in settings of the Song of Songs and dialogues between Christ and the faithful soul in late 17th- and early 18th-century cantatas by SchYtz, Buxtehude, and J.S. Bach.

Isabella van Elferen is assistant professor of Music and New Media at the Department of Media and Cultural Studies of Utrecht University. She is the editor of Nostalgia or Perversion? Gothic Rewriting from the Eighteenth Century until the Present Day (2007).