Die frühneuzeitliche Kontrafaktur und ihre geschichtswissenschaftlichen Potenziale

Abstract

Abstract Recently, there has been a marked increase in the interest in contrafacta among scholars in terms of sources, contexts, and technique, as well as in regard to systematic and terminological approaches. Focusing on the collections of contrafacta published in the second half of the 16th century by Georg Baumann the Elder in Erfurt, the article investigates the relevance underlaying music with new texts can have for historiography. Considering the importance of Italian secular repertory for Baumann’s prints with contrafacta on the one hand, and the wide range of re-texting strategies which – as the contributions of the Lutheran theologian and neo-Latin poet Ludwig Helmbold show – could exceed the pragmatic and pattern-oriented production of contrafacta on the other, the idea and meaning of two concepts prominent in Early Modern History are re-evaluated: Humanism and model-based thinking (the latter, not surprisingly, associated with Fernand Braudel’s famed modèle italien ).