Tanya Kevorkian reviews recent studies of religion, music and Pietist practice in Leipzig from 1650 to 1750, using ‘Baroque’ in her title both as a retrospective description and as a means of initiating discussion of the artistic movements of that period, and adding to previous studies her own original research on the Leipzig and Dresden archives (with their pew allotment records), consistory and council records, and the Franckesche Stiftungen records and correspondence in Halle. This research enables her to suggest how musical services were experienced in Leipzig, to explain the complexities of musical and clerical appointments and expectations, and the overlapping involvements and responsibilities for those in city and court, alongside the differing attitudes for which Pietist or Lutheran Orthodox commitments were answerable. A short history of Pietism leads to detail regarding social dimensions of the Leipzig collegia pietatis and their interrogation in 1689–90. She concludes that social status was reflected in where people sat and the type of pew they held so that status and gender issues shaped the experience of Leipzig services, that the New Church and the University Church offered fresh opportunities for musicians and for new music, both developments in pew availability and the extending of performance occasions illustrating Baroque's responsiveness to social change, and that whereas Pietism meshed uneasily with Baroque culture and responded negatively to the discussion of music in the debate on adiaphora, J. S. Bach and his family were caught up to some extent in Enlightenment social, literary and musical patterns. While illuminating the role of Bach's secular music and texts the book raises questions regarding the placing within the period's theological debates, especially those between orthodox and Pietists, of the Leipzig liturgical cantata material (see, for example, the studies in Steiger's 2002 Gnadengegenwart).