ABSTRACT
In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, liturgical music in Augsburg's Catholic churches underwent several significant changes. When the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 created a new basis for Augsburg's religious and political structure after several decades of sectarian conflict, it would have been difficult to speak of an ongoing tradition of Catholic music in the city, liturgical or otherwise. While the 1597 decree and 1610 synod streamlined liturgical rites according to the Roman model, Johann Otto and N. Heinrich were nevertheless loath to eliminate the traditional Augsburg Sanctorale entirely. Of all the composers active at Catholic musical institutions in Augsburg in the early seventeenth century, Gregor Aichinger alone was demonstrably an ardent partisan of the Counter-Reformation. It is a great irony that the one musician charged with the composition of liturgical music for the cathedral left not a single published collection reflecting his duties.
