This PhD-thesis describes cultural exchange through travelling musicians and how music circulated in the first half of the 17th century. With this point of departure, the thesis gives an account of how musical activities in Copenhagen and Rostock were carried out as in-teractions between local and foreign musical traditions. Focusing on the musical milieus in schools and churches in the two cities as well as at the Danish court, this thesis argues that local musicians integrated foreign musical practises in their daily duties on organizational, aesthetic and practical levels.
Based on source studies the thesis outlines the traffic of musical culture in the two cities and the infrastructural channels through which non-local music and new musicians found their way to the local milieus. Various strategies of recruiting musicians are described in order to explain how travelling musicians were appointed to jobs in the milieus coming from the surrounding area of the cities as well as from more distant places such as England, Poland and Italy. The recruitment took place in different ways depending on various circumstances linked to both the external connections of the milieus and adminis-trative, organisational and economical factors.
The circulation of music was also an important part of the cultural flows in the cities. The thesis shows that booksellers and other travellers brought non-local music to the two cities. The sources consulted substantiate that the daily repertoires of the musical milieus to a considerable degree were based on music written by non-local composers. While the schools and churches were dependent on local booksellers and their commercial connec-tions to obtain new music, the Danish court was secured new supplies when foreign mu-sicians arrived with their private collections.
The last part of the thesis demonstrates that the local music milieus changed because of the cultural traffic. Music examples stemming from the milieus show how non-local music was changed in order to make it conform to the daily repertoire of the local milieu. The music sources also show how musicians and composers that worked in the cities taught themselves the performance practices and compositional techniques on which the foreign music was based.
The thesis shows the cultural receptivity of the milieus towards non-local music, and it demonstrates how musicians and composers (consciously or unconsciously) moved their cultural borders as a result of these cultural exchanges.