ABSTRACT

So wrote Konz Leffel in his ‘Zü eeren so wöll wir singen’, a musical call to arms to the German people from the early years of the Reformation.1

Like many authors in the sixteenth century, including Martin Luther himself, Leffel saw fulfilment of prophecy in the events of his own lifetime. Just as the young David employed music to drive away the evil spirit troubling King Saul,2 Reformation polemicists used popular song as a weapon against the epitome of evil, the Antichrist. This figure reared his head with surprising frequency in Reformation-era song, and the prevalence of apocalyptic themes in popular music shows how pervasive the millenarian interpretation of sixteenth-century events was at that time.