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The Moravian musical tradition in America began with the earliest Moravian settlers in the first half of the 18th century.
From its very beginning the Unitas Fratrum, or Moravian Church, kept and preserved careful and meticulous records of church, community, and commercial life. Along with this emphasis on record-keeping, the Moravians maintained active communication with other Moravian centers in Europe and throughout the world. This dedication to sharing and receiving information continues today through the worldwide Moravian Unity, including Africa and the Caribbean. Along with their rich devotional life and their missionary fervor, the Moravians maintained their high regard for education and their love of music as an essential part of life. Moravian composers – also serving as teachers, pastors, and church administrators – were well versed in the European Classical tradition of music, and wrote thousands of anthems, solo arias, duets, and the like for their worship services, for voices accompanied not only by organ but also by string orchestras supplemented by woodwinds and brasses. In addition, these musicians copied thousands of works by the best-known and loved European composers of their day – Carl Stamitz, Haydn, Carl Friedrich Abel, Adalbert Gyrowetz, Mozart, the Bach family, and many whose names have descended into relative obscurity. This rich collection of music manuscripts and early imprints comprises nearly 10,000 manuscripts and printed works, with some works appearing in several individual collections. The collections originating in North Carolina are housed in the Moravian Music Foundation headquarters in Winston-Salem, NC; those originating in Moravian centers in Pennsylvania and Ohio are housed in the Moravian Archives, Northern Province in Bethlehem, PA. The musical life in the Moravian settlements was rich and became respected by many in the young country. This musical life included sacred vocal music for worship services, including, of course, hymns; brass ensembles, especially trombones, serving specific sociological and liturgical functions; and instrumental ensemble music for recreation, ranging from works for unaccompanied solo instrument to symphonies and large oratorios. A musicologist who knows nothing of the Moravian Church or of its theology and life in the 18th and 19th centuries can analyze and certainly appreciate Moravian music. However, the more one knows of the Moravian Church, its life and worship, the more adequate and helpful is the appreciation and understanding of the music. Nearly all of the sacred vocal music written by Moravian composers was for use in worship services. Because of the Moravian penchant for recording the crucial factors in their lives, and for preserving these records in their archives, there is ample means of knowing in depth the context in which the early Moravian composers lived, wrote, and performed. In the thought of Zinzendorf, and of the Moravians of his time, all life was seen as “liturgical”. That is, every aspect of life, even the most mundane, was a sort of worship to be offered to God, after the example of Christ himself. For this reason, such normally “secular” matters as beginning a new business or reaping the fields had a religious connotation. To give this ideal of life concrete expression and to nurture the soul of those who would live it, practical realities naturally led to the development of various worship services and devotions which gave the Moravian communities a character of their own. Each day began and ended with worship, both in smaller groups within the community (divided by age and condition of life) and with the community as a whole. A significant addition to Moravian worship materials was made with the introduction of the ''Losungen'', or Daily Texts, in 1728. This could be a private devotional, but it assumed corporate congregational importance as well. From the time of the first printed Text Book (1731), Moravians throughout the world have used these texts as a daily devotional guide, either in private devotions or in the brief morning or evening services for the whole congregation or a specific part of it. While the 18th century ''Losungen'' were generally drawn from Scripture texts, they might also consist of a hymn stanza or a portion thereof. This was characteristic of the Moravian Church, for it was in its hymnody and music that it expressed its theology most frequently and visibly. Zinzendorf encouraged the development of hymn singing. In the early days of Herrnhut, when the community did not yet enjoy a large repertoire of hymns, he conducted singing classes in which not only the hymns, but something of the life and purpose of the author was learned. A large hymnal was produced in 1735 and many more texts were added in its numerous appendices. A slightly more manageable collection was made in 1754 and 1767. In 1778 there appeared the extremely influential hymnbook of Christian Gregor, which remained in use among the German-speaking congregations for about a century. This contained 1750 hymns, 308 of them written or recast by Gregor himself. Gregor’s procedure in compiling these hymns is also instructive: he often took familiar stanzas from originally different hymns and put them together into one hymn, sometimes weaving them together with new stanzas of his own. In 1784, Gregor edited a ''Choralbuch'' which contained the most-frequently-used tunes for these hymns. In this book he cleaned up and added to a tune numbering system developed earlier in the century – a system by which tunes of the same meter share a number and are distinguished from one another by a letter. For instance, all the “tune 22s” are long-meter tunes with 8 syllables in each of their four lines. Tunes with the same number are interchangeable with regard to their meter, although the selection of which particular tune to use with which text is a choice requiring care and experience. The church bands still use this system today, with tunes called by number rather than name. Gregor’s procedure of recombining and adding to the stanzas of hymns may sound a bit unusual. In fact, that is a very Moravian thing to do, and indeed this sort of approach, which combined new and old hymn stanzas in creative ways, was central to that most characteristic of Moravian services, the Singstunde. In a Singstunde, the person in charge selects with care individual stanzas from various hymns in such a manner that they will develop some Christian truth or theme as the singing progresses. In the 18th century, the congregation, which possessed an unusual command of the hymnal, would fall in with the leader before he reached the end of the first line of each stanza, singing by heart. No address was given on such occasions as none was needed. And even now, the first-line index to the Moravian Book of Worship includes first lines of all stanzas, not just the first. ==Categories of Moravian music== The richest body of Moravian music is that composed for worship. However, there are other aspects of the musical life of the American Moravians which should not be overlooked. First is what is most likely the best known aspect of Moravian music: the trombone choirs. Moravians have used brass ensembles and bands since their earliest years in Herrnhut to announce special events and to accompany singing at outdoor services and funerals. The Easter Band for the sunrise service in Salem numbers some 500 band members representing the 12 congregations of the Salem Congregation (the Moravian churches in Winston-Salem, NC) as well as players from across the country. Moravian chorales used by the trombone choirs and church bands tend to be fairly stately and to have active parts for all four voices, which reflects the singing of a congregation – also singing in parts. The second type of music is the secular instrumental music in the Moravian collections. This includes some music by Moravian composers, but by far the greater part of the instrumental music is not by Moravians, instead by composers who were the most popular ones in Europe in the middle 18th century and later. Moravians seemed to have a voracious appetite for new music and collected, purchased, and copied everything they could get their hands on. American Moravian music collections contain several thousand pieces by composers as well known as Haydn, Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, Karl Stamitz; and as little known as Wenzel Pichl, Adalbert Gyrowetz, and Kleinknecht. What the Moravians have in their instrumental collections is a cross-section of the musical culture out of which the masters arose – the cultural sea in which Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven were swimming. Many of these works in the American Moravian collections are “only known surviving” copies of music from these composers. Moravian contributions to the instrumental works, while fairly few in number, are significant. An example is David Moritz Michael’s “Water Journey” for woodwind sextet, which was written for a holiday outing along the Lehigh River in Bethlehem, PA. Musicians played on a barge and floated down the river while the townspeople strolled along the bank. There are also string works by Moravian composers. John Antes (1740–1811) wrote a set of three string trios, which are lovely and challenging and have been recorded. These trios were published in England prior to 1795 under the name “Giovanni A-T-S, Dillettante Americano”. They are the earliest known chamber music written by a composer born in America. Antes was born in Pennsylvania and served the Moravian Church as a missionary in Egypt. In addition to the trios we have, he also wrote some string quartets which are now missing. The truly international scope of the Moravian Church can be seen in the story of these quartets: here was an American-born missionary in Egypt, sending copies of his string quartets to an American diplomat in France, quartets which he had written for an English nobleman and his associates in India. His three trios were dedicated to the Swedish ambassador in Constantinople. These trios have been published by the Moravian Music Foundation in a scholarly edition. Also by a Moravian composer are the six string quintets (two violins, two violas, and cello) by Johann Friedrich Peter. These were written in Salem, NC in 1789. Peter was probably the most gifted and accomplished Moravian composer. In addition to these string quintets, he wrote nearly 100 vocal works. "Secular" groups—chamber ensembles and concert bands—developed along a parallel stream to the "trombone choirs". While the trombone choirs and church bands focus their attention primarily on chorales, the community bands and chamber ensembles play primarily what we would now call "secular" music -- chamber music, marches, dances, arrangements of popular music of various sorts. These groups provide not only entertainment for player and audience alike but also enable the players to improve through playing more challenging music. By the 1780s the Bethlehem Collegium musicum was playing the music of the best composers of the day—Bach's sons, Hasse, Stamitz, Haydn, and many others, now lesser known. Other Collegia musica were founded -- Lititz (c.1765), Nazareth (c. 1780), and Salem (c.1786) -- the latter continuing on until about 1835. The increasing demand for music by these groups stimulated the American Moravians to a veritable frenzy of copying and transcribing from European masterworks as well as composing their own works. The Salem Collegium musicum collection holds about 500 compositions, of which about 150 are in manuscript form. String music is prevalent in all of the instrumental music collections, with genres ranging from works for unaccompanied violin through classical symphonies. The final aspect and the “heart and soul” of Moravian music is the sacred vocal music. This was music specifically written for worship services. Moravians wrote thousands of anthems, solos, and duets for voices accompanied by chamber orchestra – a rarity in colonial America. In 1783, Moravians in Salem held the first celebration of July 4 in the country with a challenging music program assembled by Johann Friedrich Peter. This work was titled the Psalm of Joy. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Moravian Church music」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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