ABSTRACT
Saxony and Thuringia were large and diffuse areas; Electoral Saxony was a political unit with a number of smaller states within it, especially after the secundogeniture division of the House of Saxony at the death of Johann Georg I in 1656. Thuringia was also politically broken up into a number of minor states. There were universities at Wittenberg, with its strong tradition of Lutheran theology, Leipzig, Erfurt, although the great days of Erfurt Humanism were already past, and Jena. The social and cultural conditions were certainly all there at that time for an explosion of literary activity associated with music. The lively musical tradition with not only sacred church music but also a range of secular instrumental and vocal street and house music is one important such factor. A word about the poetry of 1640 included at the rear of the volume Art vnd Weise may round off this overview of Christian Brehme's song-production.
