Moravian Soundscapes: A Sonic History of the Moravian Missions in Early Pennsylvania by Sarah Justina Eyerly (review)

In Moravian Soundscapes: A Sonic History of the Moravian Missions in Early Pennsylvania, Sarah Justina Eyerly describes how colonial Pennsylvania's Moravians produced, shaped, and functioned within an array of spaces and sound-ways. This distinctly creative study holds that sound played a generative role in the worship, work, and social life of indigenous and European Moravians dotting the eighteenth-century northeast. Eyerly, a professor of musicology and director of the Early Music Program at Florida State University, convincingly demonstrates both that hymns and singing practices "served as sonic markers of history, place and identity" and that understanding Moravian acoustics is indispensable for understanding Moravian theology and community (11–12). At its heart, this monograph deftly interprets Moravian experience through their relationship to early American sound and space, grounding this understudied revivalist group within their common "belief in the power of sound to shape religious community" (108).

Eyerly's extensive research into Moravian hymnody makes her use of it as a lens through which to present Moravian experience both vivid and masterful. For European and native Moravians, hymn singing functioned in numerous ways. For white leadership, such as that given by Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, hymnody represented the means by which settlers could "claim and sanctify a Christian space within what they heard as a vast wilderness" (67). Singing hymns strengthened the courage of itinerants like David Zeisberger and Johann Martin Mack as they roved through menacing physical landscapes that might include forest fires, river floods, and treacherous mountains. Likewise, Moravian Indians starting to "incorporate Christian concepts of divinity into their spiritual practices" now channeled Christ in the woods, believing his salvific love—realized in hymn singing—brought fruitful hunts (68–71). Pious melodies served many purposes in early Moravian Pennsylvania.

Eyerly also vividly shows how hymnody underpinned everyday life in Moravian communities like Bethlehem. Outside of worship spaces, believers of all ages and occupations were expected to structure their daily occupations—"even the most mundane activities"—around hymn singing (108). Divine ditties could be heard at all times and in all places, from graveyards and homes to worship halls and smithies. In one of her most striking examples, Eyerly shows readers how Moravian hymn-singing practice included singing hymns as most community members lay asleep. Every evening, Beter (intercessors) or Nachäwater (night-watchers) would pray and sing long past sundown, convinced that their dozing neighbors piously digested their tunes. Regardless of the occasion, space, and time, whether or not a day was festal or dull, the sound of hymn-singing colored it (114–21).

The book's accompanying website represents further realization of Eyerly's ambition in Moravian Soundscapes.¹ One of the richest examples of the intertextual enrichment given by the website comes from her "Listening Tour of Eighteenth-Century Bethlehem," which offers visitors a "sound map" of early Bethlehem, with fine-grained acoustic reproductions of eighteenth-century daily life. With great sensitivity, Eyerly's curation of sounds—from twittering birders and bleating sheep to swinging blacksmith hammers and hymn-signing girls—represents a compelling attempt to explore historic soundways by recreating them. Readers will thus find the website an exceedingly relevant and useful companion to the book.

Eyerly's extensive fieldwork, carefully gathered spatial data, clever use of geographic and acoustic technologies, and artistic storytelling all make Moravian Soundscapes a pathbreaking study of colonial Moravians. However, certain areas of inquiry remain untouched in this book. Given how integral Moravians were to the broader eighteenth-century evangelical movement, it is a little surprising that the Atlantic awakenings do not play a bigger part in Eyerly's account. Given the central role played by sonic expressions in the American, English, Scottish, and Welsh revivals, it would have been quite intriguing to see Eyerly apply her expert analysis to what perhaps could be shown to be common acoustic traits running through eighteenth-century...