The five hundreth anniversary of the onset of the Lutheran Reformation is naturally a ripe time to assess the state of scholarship concerning music and religious reform in the early modern era. If Martin Luther's own musical interests and commitments have long been a subject for study and appreciation, there has been rather less emphasis on comparative approaches across confessional boundaries. The latter approach is precisely the greatest strength of Chiara Bertoglio's Reforming Music, an impressively ambitious attempt to synthesize current knowledge on music and religious culture in the sixteenth century. The comparative method compels her to explore common impulses toward reform in three introductory chapters on music, society, politics, and religion, before continuing, in part 2, into more traditional accounts of musical culture and reform in the Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican, and Catholic churches, respectively. The third and final part of the book is devoted to cross-confessional perspectives and harmonizes the most with Bertoglio's evident personal commitments to sacred music as a mode of bridging religious differences, then as today. This can at times lead to fairly speculative accounts of how music reflects and informs faith (see chapter 11 and the conclusions in particular), but it also allows for a keener appreciation of how the semantic ambiguity of musical sound confounds simple confessional definitions. Indeed, the theme of music as a unifying force is one of Bertoglio's principal lessons. With respect to the established scholarship—methodically cited in copious footnotes and in the bibliography, which extends to nearly a hundred pages—Bertoglio gives a satisfying synthesis, and gives ample space to some of the more recent directions in the field, including the diversity of post-Tridentine Catholic music (chapter 9), the ways in which music shaped and was reflected by an emerging sense of confessionalization (chapter 10), and indeed the manner in which music expressed a shared devotional culture that defied confessional boundaries (chapter 11). Of special interest will be her discussion of women and their role in religious music of the century (chapter 12), a much-needed and thoughtfully-written riposte to the overwhelmingly patriarchal character of traditional scholarship.

Reforming Music, however, is a challenging read. One is immediately struck by the fact that in nearly seven-hundred pages of prose, there is not a single musical example; in fact, the volume is devoid of any illustrations or figures whatsoever. The impression of density is deepened by the systematic use of multilevel numbered subheadings (for example, “11.4.7.4”) that better suit an academic thesis than a book for a broader public and sit rather uneasily with Bertoglio's relaxed prose (one notes an affinity for informal alliterative headings and subheadings, such as “Words, words, words” [2.3.7], “Seducing or sanctifying?” [2.4.4], or “Virtuous and virtuosos” [3.3.2.10]). With respect to the music “itself,” some well-selected excerpts would have conveyed more texture and insight than the prose can on its own. Granted, Bertoglio's intent to favor “the history of genres and forms over that of composers of genius” (xxx) is well taken as an antidote to musicologists’ overly canonical accounts of sophisticated polyphony, and indeed one of the strengths of her book is her extensive attention to genres that often fail to attract their attention: Lutheran hymnody (particularly in popular/devotional contexts), vernacular Psalmody, spiritual songs and laude, litanies, and simple polyphony that could be performed by amateurs in a range of domestic and public contexts. Doubtless this balance will make Reforming Music more approachable and relevant to audiences outside of music. Nevertheless, given Luther's own enthusiasm for polyphony in worship, it is odd that so little space is devoted here to the diverse and sophisticated range of Lutheran church music that emerged during the century; to understand this more deeply we must continue to rely on surveys like Friedrich Blume's Protestant Church Music: A History (New York: Norton, 1974), which is now becoming quite dated. Bertoglio's welcome emphasis on the diversity of post-Tridentine Catholic polyphony, moreover, would have been well served by deeper discussion of music by figures like Lasso, Palestrina, Victoria, and Byrd in a comparative context.

But this is perhaps too much to expect in a volume that aims for a truly comprehensive account of sixteenth-century religion and music in all of its stylistic and social dimensions. Bertoglio's Reforming Music is an outstanding reference work that deftly synthesizes the latest thinking and scholarship in the field, and it will be of great use not only to musicians and musicologists but also to historians of early modern religious culture and the interested public more generally. Bertoglio's comparative approach, stressing the powerful yet ambiguous power of musical sound, will also serve as a model for scholars keen to challenge simplistic notions of confessional cultures and boundaries.