Thomas Tomkins: The Last Elizabethan (review)
seventeenth century” (i). He focuses on the period ca. 1630–80, the heyday of the continuo lied, but rather than retrace the development of the genre, as previous scholars have done, he instead raises a number of interesting issues that arise out of an examination of the continuo song as a musical, sociological, and cultural phenomenon. In his treatment of the continuo song in parts 2–4, Braun begins with early developments in Saxony (Leipzig and Dresden), and first focuses on the works of Johann Hermann Schein (1586–1630), most of which predate the important poetic reforms of Martin Opitz (1597–1639) and prefigure the continuo song. He then looks at the emergence of the continuo song in Dresden in the work of Johann Nauwach (pub. 1627) and Christoph Kittel (pub. 1638), and the reform poetry of Opitz, “without [whom] there would be no Baroque Lied” (141). Braun emphasizes the impact and influence of Opitz, and points out that with the new reform poetry of Opitz a new relationship developed between word and music, and thus between poet and composer. Now the composer served as “Beseeler” (“enlivener” or “animator”) of the poetry, and as such was courted by the poet. This new relationship defined the continuo song throughout its existence — in the period of its first flowering, as represented by the Königsberg school with its primary representative Heinrich Albert, and its later period, defined by the works of Dedekind, Staden, Löhner, Krieger, and others. In part 5, Braun looks at the relationship between music and poetry from a more analytical perspective. Here he addresses such topics as the metric (i.e., musical meter) responses of composers to various poetic meters, the effect of various styles of musical declamation on the original form and punctuation of the poetry, the implications of enjambment for musical settings (and the consequences of certain types of musical setting for enjambment), the rediscovery by poets of the dactyl and its musical results, and many other matters central to the more practical aspects of setting poetry to music. MARY E. FRANDSEN University of Notre Dame