Johann Christoph Lorber

Johann Christoph Lorber (Weimar, c. 1645 – Weimar, 1722) was a German poet and writer who engaged with music from the standpoint of a cultivated amateur. He lived in Weimar, where he served as court poet laureate and as a lawyer in the service of the dukes, and where he had studied music with the cantor Stephan Burckhard. The date of his birth is uncertain, so it is best taken as approximate.

In 1696 Lorber published a poem entitled Lob der edlen Music, and the following year a critical review, Vertheidigung der edlen Music, written as a reply to a public lecture by the theologian Gottfried Vockerodt. In that lecture, De falsa mentium intemperatarum medicina, Vockerodt attributed the madness and despotism of the Roman emperors Caligula, Claudius and Nero to the harmful influence of the theatre, dance and music. Lorber, together with Johann Beer in his Ursus murmurat, took these words to amount to a general attack on music, implying a recommendation that it be withdrawn from schools and churches.

Vockerodt responded in 1697 with Missbrauch der freyen Künste, insonderheit der Music, a book that gathered his lecture together with extracts from the replies. These documents are today a valuable source on the debate between orthodox Protestants, represented by Lorber, and Pietists, represented by Vockerodt, concerning the place of music in worship.