Abstrakt:
This article demonstrates how the salons in Copenhagen in the last decades of the 18 century might
be seen as an arena of secularization. These environments are stages for the performance of Johann
Christoph Friedrich Bachs Geistliche Lieder. The texts of Geistliche Lieder are religious, and written
by the vicar in St. Petri congregation in Copenhagen. Bach breaks with the prevailing norm for such
songs, and by doing so, he creates tension between the traditional religiosity of the text and the novel
secularization of the setting.