Adam Brakel plays Buxtehude Praeludium in D Minor

“Stokowski Symphony of Fifteen Thousand”

The city of Erfurt was, by the middle of the seventeenth century, the most important city in the central German heartland of Thuringia (Figure 1). With nearly 18,000 residents, Erfurt was the largest city in Thuringia and was the commercial and cultural capital of the region.¹ Following the Thirty Years War and under the electoral archbishopric of Mainz, Erfurt became a uniquely ecumenical (i.e., bi-confessional) city, with nearly twenty percent of its residents worshipping as Roman Catholics.

Editor’s note: Part 1 of this series appeared in the June 2021 issue of The Diapason, pages 18–19; part 2 appeared in the July 2021 issue, pages 12–14; part 3 appeared in the December 2021 issue, pages 16–18; part 4 appeared in the August 2022 issue, pages 15–17