Musical Treasures from Moravian Archives, Volume 1: Johannes Herbst: Hymns to Be Sung at the Pianoforte ed. by Tim Sharp (review)

The series Musical Treasures from Moravian Archives makes an auspicious debut with the publication of Johannes Herbst: Hymns to Be Sung at the Pianoforte. A welcome addition to the repertoire of modern, printed editions of Moravian music, Herbst's Hymns is a unique treasure among Moravian music holdings which provides an easily accessible set of compositions for study and authentic performance. This collection is not only a valuable resource for the seasoned student of Moravian music but also an ideal starting point for an introduction to the field.

In contrast to the overwhelmingly large repertoire of concerted sacred vocal music found in worldwide Moravian archival collections, involving choral-orchestral sets of parts, German (or other non-English) texts, and multiple copies in various locations, Johannes Herbst's (1735-1812) Hymns to Be Sung at the Pianoforte presents the scholar or performer with a single discrete, representative collection in a well-defined genre. The English-language Hymns can be performed in reasonably authentic fashion by two musicians, or even one (more on that subject below), using a historic or modern keyboard instrument. This practical yet scholarly edition can provide a first glimpse into the multifaceted realm of Moravian music, yet also stands on its own as an example of its kind.

Editor Tim Sharp places the Herbst collection in the context of its time in his thorough preface. Simple songs with sacred texts were a recognized genre cultivated by the so-called Berlin song school, where the composer J. A. P. Schulz figured prominently. Herbst's volume contains not only songs of his own composition but also examples by Schulz, the Moravian composer John Gambold, J. G. Naumann, J. F. Reichardt, and other contemporaries. Sharp points out that "each song is a contrafactum" (p. vii), in which "underlaying existing Moravian hymn texts to preexisting compositions" resulted in a distinctly Moravian body of music and text that communicated theological concepts in the pedagogical context of school or home. These sacred songs were widely disseminated in Moravian communities, and they can be found in the handwritten tune books and collections that belonged to other prominent Moravian musicians.

The significance of the word "hymns" in the title takes on a startling new dimension in Sharp's discussion of performance practice. The texts of these songs, borrowed mostly from the English Moravian hymnals of the period, were already being sung to familiar chorale tunes on a regular basis in Moravian congregations. What purpose, then, does a newly composed piano piece serve as the underpinning to a familiar hymn text? At first glance it would appear that Herbst's songs were meant to be performed by a vocal soloist singing to the accompaniment of a pianoforte or other comparable keyboard instrument. Yet a whole new approach to performing "vocal" music emerges through Sharp's careful analysis of the music and text. Pointing out that numerous texts do not fit the melodies very well, and in some cases even end before the music is finished, Sharp develops a case for performance simply by a keyboard player meditating on the words of the hymn while playing what is in essence an instrumental composition with associated text. The hymn text is no longer a medium for communal singing in public but rather a channel for inner hearing and meditation.

Such an explication of these simple songs as a way to internalize hymn texts while accompanying on a keyboard instrument raises fascinating questions about the performance practice of hymns both historically and in the present day. The slow tempos used in eighteenth-century hymn singing, together with the keyboard interludes played between phrases of a hymn, also promoted inner meditation on the meaning of a text apart from the musical sense of the chorale tune. The faster tempos generally used in hymn singing today...