After ten years of writing, Associate Professor of Music Derek Stauff published his book, “Lutheran Music and the Thirty Years War: Confession, Politics, Devotion,” in late February.
The book, published by Oxford University Press, explores how the specific hymns and sacred music performed in German churches give insight into the German sentiment during the Thirty Years War.
“My main goal was to try to figure out the way in which sacred music could have contemporary and often political meaning in ways that are less than obvious,” Stauff said.
Stauff, who has worked at Hillsdale since 2015, said his research for his doctoral dissertation at Indiana University inspired him to write the book.
“I wrote on Lutheran music from central Germany during the Thirty Years War,” Stauff said. “That developed into this book project, and I reworked a lot of what I had in that dissertation over the past ten years until it was in good condition.”
Stauff grew up in an area of Pennsylvania that had a strong German influence and studied German in school. Because of his experience with German, Stauff said he was drawn to studying German music. The real question, Stauff said, was what time period to specialize in.
“I had wanted to study a parallel time in European history, which would be the 1920s and ’30s,” Stauff said. “But it seemed like everybody was writing their dissertations on 20th-century music.”
Stauff said he was next drawn to 17th-century German music, which eventually became his specialization.
“It wasn’t as crazy as 20th-century music, and that could be better or worse, but there’s lots of interesting stuff to talk about,” Stauff said. “There also wasn’t as much competition in the field as there might be with 20th-century music in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s.”
The process of retrieving his sources was taxing, Stauff said. He visited Germany several times during the course of his research, including while on sabbatical last year.
Stauff said his knowledge of German was particularly useful when analyzing different primary sources. He scoured libraries and archives, looking at records and diaries to place which hymns were performed in what churches across Germany.
One of the most exciting discoveries Stauff remembers from his research was finding a diary page that told of a famous piece performed after a major victory in central Germany.
“A lot of it is just sheer accidental luck,” Stauff said. “I happened to be in the music library at Indiana University, and I looked on the shelf and pulled this book down and opened it up. The ironic thing was that I had just spent a month or two in Germany. I could have shot myself because the original diary page had been a block or two away from me in Dresden when I was there.”
Senior music major Ezra Blackwell has taken organ lessons with Stauff as well as several music theory and history courses.
“Dr. Stauff as a professor does a great job at explaining historical, musical concepts, either large or small, through his vast bank of modern and pop culture analogies or parallels,” Blackwell said.
Senior Anna Perrone described Stauff as a thorough and engaging teacher, who cares about helping his students fully grasp the course material. She said she has taken several classes with Stauff, including Music History I and II, which cover some of the material from Stauff’s book.
“The classes themselves were both highly entertaining and informational,” Perrone said in an email. “Time always flew by. The workload was heavy, but Dr. Stauff was always available to help.”
