The Music of the Moravian Church in America (review)

This volume, the latest in the Eastman Studies in Music series, provides the most up-to-date and comprehensive treatment of music in the Moravian Church (known also as the Unitas Fratrum, or simply “Unity”) in the United States. A foreword by Laurence Libin (research curator, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, emeritus), and a preface by the general editor, Nola Reed Knouse (director of the Moravian Music Foundation in Winston-Salem, NC since 1994), form the prologue to the ten chapters of the text: “The Moravians and Their Music,” by Knouse; “Moravian Worship: The Why of Moravian Music,” by C. Daniel Crews; “Hymnody of the Moravian Church,” by Albert H. Frank and Knouse; “Moravian Sacred Vocal Music,” by Alice M. Caldwell; “The Organ in Moravian Church Music,” by Lou Carol Fix; “The Role and Development of Brass Music in the Moravian Church,” by Paul Peuker; “The Collegia Musica: Music of the Community,” by Knouse; “Music in the Moravian Boarding Schools through the Early Nineteenth Century,” by Pauline M. Fox; “The Piano among the Moravians in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Music, Instruction, and Construction,” by Jewel A. Smith; and “Moravian Music: Questions of Identity and Purpose,” by Knouse. Two appendices (the first containing eighty-one biographical sketches and the second, “A Moravian Musical Timeline,” tracing the important dates in a history spanning more than six and a quarter centuries), plus a bibliography of around 400 citations (considerably larger than the one on “Moravians, music of the” in Grove Music Online), and an index round out the publication. The bibliography should be particularly noted for its inclusion of approximately forty-three dissertations and theses, and it would be worthwhile issuing a separate, annotated compilation of those titles now available. A few typos have crept into the bibliography (e.g., “Dodge, Alfred,” instead of “Dolge, Alfred” on p. 311 and “Goldman, Richard Franks,” instead of “Goldman, Richard Franko” on p. 313). The text is well documented with chapter endnotes and amply illustrated with music examples, facsimiles from early sources, and photographs. This is an encyclopedic source book, providing historical, biographical, musicological, and theological overviews, along with bibliographical resources for further study, a veritable vade mecum for the subject.

In the opening chapter, editor Knouse makes a convincing case that there is a genuine need for this book. She maintains that the treatment of Moravian music in most general music history texts and encyclopedias has been inadequate, stemming at least partly from the notion that Moravian music has had little impact on American musical culture in general. Furthermore, most of the studies in English specifically on Moravian music, with the exception of Donald M. McCorkle’s Moravian Music in Salem: A German-American Heritage (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1958), have been fairly narrow in coverage. Her treatment of Moravian history and major figures since Jan Hus (ca. 1369–1415; note that the birth date is slightly different from that in the timeline mentioned above) provides a good framework for the following chapters. (The martyrdom of Hus a hundred years before Luther’s ninety-five theses stimulated the Protestant movement leading to the establishment of the Moravian Church.)

In chapter 2, C. Daniel Crews explains the theological underpinnings of the major worship services (Gemeinstunde, Singstunde, Abendmahl, Liebesmahl) and the important practice of hymn singing. He illuminates the special applications of the terms liturgy, litany, and Losungen (literally, “watchwords,” more commonly known as Daily Texts, which are still in use), in the daily life of church members.

Chapters 3 (by Frank and Knouse) and 4 (by Caldwell) cover the vocal repertoire. Moravian hymnody, which can be traced back as far as the early sixteenth century, constitutes an immense body of tunes and texts in hundreds of hymnals and could, in some sense, be considered the backbone of Moravian Church services. In the case of independent vocal compositions, many with sophisticated instrumental...