This thesis proposes a new critical perspective on Bach's Collegium musicum and its performances at a Leipzig coffee house. Based on a range of fresh literary, architectural, and administrative sources, I argue that coffee houses in Bach’s time were highly prestigious, if often controversial performance-venues. As a cultural sphere, they were guided by a neo-humanist ideal, known as 'useful edification' (nützliche Erbauung), which has not been recognised by scholars so far. Yet, applied to...