Why a Book on Moravian Music?

The breadth, depth, and significance of the worldwide Moravian musical culture is unknown to most, and a mere curiosity to many others. The musical life of the Moravians has been one of artistry, integrity, and harmony with their spiritual and moral values. From the beginning of the Unitas Fratrum in the middle of the fifteenth century through the beginning of the twenty-first century, music has greatly enhanced the Moravians’ ability to worship with the heart as well as the mind, to express and teach their faith to each other, to strengthen their communities, and to go around the world in mission and service. As the Moravian Church spread from its modest beginnings in Bohemia and Moravia into a worldwide unity, its musical culture traveled as well, adapted in each new settlement to local needs but retaining a surprising coherence with its roots. This musical story, spanning five hundred fifty years and circling the earth, deserves to be known.

Music history texts of the mid-twentieth century deal with the Moravians only in passing, and then principally with regard to their American settlements. Those few that do make mention of the Moravians in Europe refer to the early hymnals published by the Unitas Fratrum rather than to the rich classical musical culture of the eighteenth century. Indicative of the lack of awareness of Moravian musical culture in Europe through the mid-twentieth century is the fact that the 1949–51 edition of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart has no listing for any of the names by which the Moravian Church has been known. There is a brief biography of Zinzendorf, which mentions his hymn writing, the emphasis on hymn singing in the Renewed Moravian Church, and the fact that some Moravians settled in Pennsylvania. Although musicologists such as Gilbert Chase, Paul Henry Lang, Donald Jay Grout, and John Tasker Howard were aware of the musical life of the eighteenth-century American Moravian settlements, they were also unanimous in their judgment that the Moravians had no effect on the American musical landscape.