In commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation (October 1517-October 2017), the MEMS Minor and the Department of Music will host Dr. Christopher Boyd Brown (School of Theology, Boston University), who will discuss in a concert-lecture how Lutheran hymns, sung in the streets and homes as well as in the churches and schools of the Bavarian mining town of Joachimsthal, were central instruments of a Lutheran pedagogy in the Reformation.  Throughout the lecture the Department of Music’s Collegium Musicum and Camerata will provide live musical illustrations of Reformation hymns and choral pieces which Dr. Brown discusses.

Christopher Boyd Brown is Associate Professor of Church History in the School of Theology at Boston University.

Dr. Brown’s period of specialization extends from the Renaissance through the Reformation and Counter-Reformation to the period of Orthodoxy and Pietism. His teaching and research interests include the interpretation of ancient (Biblical, Classical, and Patristic) texts in the Renaissance and Reformation, and the relation between learned theology and lay piety in the Protestant and Catholic reforms in the contexts of home, church, and schools. His book, Singing the Gospel: Lutheran Hymns and the Success of the Reformation (Harvard University Press, 2005), appraises the Reformation in light of the use of vernacular hymns to spread Lutheran doctrine and piety and to form Lutheran identity among the early Protestant laity.  His degrees are in History & Literature (A.B.) and History (A.M., Ph.D.) from Harvard University, as well as an M.Div. from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis.

Sponsored by MEMS, Music, and History/Religious Studies